APNU Presidential candidate David Granger has jumped out of his crease and swung his bat and connected with a thick outside edge.
The soldier-turned-politician says that he has committed himself “to convening a Commission of Enquiry into any wrongdoings” by the PNC while the Party was in office.
Not exactly earth-shattering! Brave but foolhardy? Probably not that either. After all pre-elections promises are just what they are, pre-elections promises, though you have to expect that if Brigadier Granger becomes President Granger, Prime Minister Roopnaraine will certainly lose no time in providing him with a less than gentle reminder of that particular promise.
Now let’s see…there are any number of things associated with the PNC’s twenty-eight years that can find their way onto the list of issues to engage the attention of a Granger Commission of Enquiry. The rigging of elections would come top of the list; then there are some side issues like the 1973 ‘ballot box martyrs.” Those could take a while with so many witnesses to call and so many pieces of archival evidence to unearth; and an APNU Government, or rather the PNC faction in an APNU government could be squirming before the Commission of Enquiry in much the same way that Roger Luncheon has been squirming in the witness box in the current Jagdeo vs. Kissoon et al lawsuit.
People might ask that the Commission consider the allegations that Burnham stashed money in Swiss banks though, given the fact, that no millions appear to have turned up since the Kabaka’s death that might pass without incident. That apart, the eighteen or so years between the PNC’s tenure and now has seen so much corruption anyway that that might pass without anyone paying any real attention.
There are other sticky ones too…like the killing of Father Darke and the activities of Rabbi Washington’s House of Israel. These could be sticky issues for an APNU administration since some of the people who will comprise the hoped-for APNU administration were on opposite sides of the political fence in those days.
Setting elections-rigging aside the killing of Walter Rodney would be the big one. The WPA, not least Dr. Roopnaraine, cannot be expected to back away from its sustained insistence that Rodney lost his life at the hands of the PNC administration. There is an army connection there and Mr. Granger was an army man in those days and the whole ‘blood on his hands’ thing will resurface afresh and there will be difficult moments between the country’s President and its Prime Minister………if, of course, APNU topples the PPP/C.
There are other lesser issues which the Commission of Enquiry might conceivably be required to probe and the PNC faction in an APNU government may have to take its blows and perhaps even to concede that their Founder Leader was no paragon of virtue, after all. But Granger said that if ever he gets to be referred to as Your Excellency he will set up the Commission of Enquiry, anyway.
