Faith’s show-womanship, Basil’s lapel buttons and Carl’s calumny are the latest episodes in what is now a ponderous PNCR drama to pick a winner for the 2011 political Grand Prix. Our would-be first Guyanese-born woman President kicked off her campaign in Georgetown last week in fine fashion, riding aback a BMW convertible. Her slogan? Faith brings hope, though she would perhaps have hoped that her miniscule motorcade would have attracted a little more public attention.
Is Carl still interested in the PNCR nomination? Who knows?…………now that he has effectively parted company with his CARICOM position at the insistence of the PPP/C administration that deemed his pronouncement about the state of the economy during a tribute to the now departed Winston Murray unacceptable. Experienced campaigner that he is, Carl ought surely to have known that the PPP would not allow him to get away with dissing its economic record which they insist was a damned sight better than his own. Surely, Ashni Singh’s outburst of a few months ago after the Economist Intelligence Unit had taken a tilt at the veracity of his budget statistics ought to have taught him something about the PPP’s disposition to anyone who dares to challenge its economic record.
Basil too has been busy as a bee, publishing ads in the media and more recently, releasing a lapel button – few people appear to be sporting the button, anyway – presenting him all be-suited and austere against the backdrop of a favoured PNC colour……Green. It is perhaps an elaborate gesture, the kind of thing that you do when running for the presidency itself rather than simply for a party nomination. Basil clearly wants it badly.
With three, perhaps four candidates now locked in a struggle for the PNCR’s presidential nomination characterized by vigorous campaigning one wonders whether the eventual winner will have the energy – or the funding, for that matter – to face off against the incumbents in 2011.