PNCR member Carl Greenidge today said the party should appoint a new General Secretary (GS) to replace Oscar Clarke in light of the controversy surrounding the accreditation of delegates and the preparation of the list of voters eligible to vote at the party’s Congress.
He also declared that he will not vie for any of the party’s leadership posts – in recent times, Greenidge has not been active in the PNCR – unless/until those charged with managing the process are replaced.
Greenidge, a former PNC Finance Minister and international civil servant lost two controversial elections in the PNCR in 2011 and 2012 to incumbent and now returned party leader David Granger.
Today, pandemonium ensued at Congress Place, Sophia as the PNCR Linden faction challenged the integrity of the list of delegates eligible to vote during the party’s 18th Biennial Congress which started on Friday and ended today.
Around 2:30pm today, the majority of the Linden delegation, led by parliamentarian Vanessa Kissoon, challenger for the PNCR leadership Aubrey Norton, and Chairman of the Region 10 Regional Democratic Council (RDC) Sharma Solomon, exited Congress Place, stating that the process was flawed. Norton, saying that he had no confidence in the process pulled out of the leadership race ensuring that Granger remains as leader.
It was stated that no votes were cast by the Lindeners owing to their dissatisfaction with the accreditation process.
Flawed process
Minutes after the Lindeners started to leave Congress Place, Greenidge told reporters that “it is unacceptable that the delegates list is challenged on the morning of the Congress.” The PNCR’s ideology, he continued, has allowed it to elect a leader that is popular and he said that the current leader ought to ensure that the question of the legitimacy of his standing does not arise.
“The problem here,” he offered, “has to be the Secretariat’s General Secretary which runs such a system.” Greenidge believes it imperative that the party “makes the arrangements to ensure that these things do not fall in the arena of being disputed or questioned.” He said that the management of the accreditation process and the resulting delegates list was one of many concerns he and others raised with former party leader Robert Corbin during the last Congress.
With regard to Norton’s and Solomon’s challenge of the delegates list for the latest Congress, Greenidge believes “the issue of Linden as far as I am concerned should never have featured here…it is something that should have been resolved a long time ago.”
Greenidge believes that the current realities warrant the replacement of Clarke as the party’s GS. “I believe it is time a new General Secretary is appointed…it is time that proper rules are imposed on the senior staff of the Secretariat because in the past, we’ve had members of the Secretariat campaigning on behalf of people which cannot be right,” he asserted.
Harassment
There have been several claims that Norton’s supporters have been abused over the course of this Congress. Greenidge, whose supporters were allegedly abused when he challenged Granger in 2012, said that such things occur because there is a perception that the current leader of the party should not be challenged. He stated that the elections should have been straightforward but lamented that “we start from an unfortunate position where there is a tendency to assume that this elections is unnecessary, (that) there is a leader there so you don’t need to have an election. I think that is unfortunate.”
“In the last three or four congresses these aspects of intimidation seem to have become part and parcel of the arrangement where people are shouted at, booed etc.,” he added.
Greenidge said that these things – demonstrations etc. – ought not to be involved in the process as they do nothing to keep the temperature of the Congress down. He said that there was an agreement between the various candidates during the last Congress that there would be no campaigning during the congress. “But men infringed it…and at that point I was thinking about withdrawing,” he recounted.
Greenidge recalled that even members of the Secretariat, which is responsible for accreditation and preparing the list of voters, have been known to openly campaign for candidates they prefer. “It is something that needs attention and clearly Mr. Granger will have to give it attention,” Greenidge noted.
