We said in our editorial last Tuesday that after the occurrences at the PNCR’s Biannual Congress the weekend before last, it would be naive in the extreme for the political party to pretend that it will remain unaffected by those events and that it can simply assume an ‘as you were’ posture.
It is not so much the swiping that has come from its political opponent that the PNCR should be concerned about. That is an occupational hazard of being in politics. The party’s greater concern should be with accounting to its members and supporters across the country for those episodes of indiscipline that blighted the Congress proceedings and which would have perplexed and perturbed those members and supporters.
For a start the leadership of the party has, up until now, neglected to extend that altogether merited apology for some of the goings-on at the Congress. What ought to have been a serious and sober event was, at the very least disrupted by interludes of unacceptable indiscipline including, shockingly, the discharge of a firearm. It would be nothing short of arrogance in the extreme were the PNCR not to treat those occurrences as not meriting a timely apology, whatever subsequent internal inquiry into the events of the Congress it chooses to make.
The party chose to pass up the opportunity afforded by its July 30 post-Congress media release to tender that apology. Instead, it proffered a chronological account of some of the events that took place before and during the Congress and expressed a view on whom it felt was to blame for some of what took place at Sophia.
It might even have been acceptable if, having moved to placate and assure members who might have been either upset or concerned over the brouhaha at Sophia, the PNCR had entered into a period of introspection designed to contemplate how best to recover from the unfortunate events at the Congress. In those circumstances one might have excused the party an interlude of media silence during which it contemplated an appropriate public response.
That too has not happened. Instead, the period succeeding the Congress has been littered with sniping, recrimination and, in one particular instance, a public pronouncement by a very senior party member that may well come back to haunt the PNCR down the road.
The question that arises here is whether the wiser course of action ought not to have been to try to close ranks in order to create an environment in which the party could deal with the fallout from the Congress internally. That, of course, would have required the counsel of a mature element within the party that had elevated itself above the affray and to which the warring sides would listen. Ought we to assume that the PNCR is so polarised as not to allow for the mustering of such a contingent?
After the Congress the PNCR can no longer conceal what now appears to be its considerable internal challenges. Apart from the very public confrontations between the party’s leadership and a Region Ten contingent, seemingly led by Region Ten Chairman Sharma Solomon and former Party General Secretary, Aubrey Norton, some of which is detailed in the July 30 media release, there is the very public assertion by Mr Norton that aspects of the registration procedures for the leadership elections were applied in a manner designed to produce a particular result.
Before that and in the immediate aftermath of the Congress, Solomon, Norton and former PNCR Member of Parliament Clarissa Riehl were among those who made pronouncements that pointed to difficulties with Mr Granger’s leadership style, so that while Mr Granger has been re-elected party leader it has to be said that he, nevertheless, has detractors inside the party.
At the end of the day, whoever may have been at fault for the distasteful events that occurred at Sophia, it is the party leadership’s duty to accept the responsibility for what occurred. After all, one assumes that the leadership is aware that a concomitant of power is responsibility and it is that responsibility that compels the leadership to account to its support base for what happened at Sophia and to get to work to repair the damage that has been done. Mr Granger’s own personal challenge as party leader is to locate himself on the side of uniting the party.
It is, quite simply, a matter of accountability. A public display of contriteness and regret might well spare the party’s leadership accusations of arrogance and aloofness. More than that, it may even contribute to changing the widespread view that political parties in Guyana are interested in votes rather than whom they come from.
As an aside it has to be said that intra-party ruckuses are nothing new to our political culture. There have been instances in which senior members of political parties have behaved in a manner which suggests that they do not consider themselves accountable. Perhaps, in the light of this recent occurrence, there is a case for members and supporters of political parties laying down and having the authority to enforce their own code of conduct for the leadership of their political parties as the price for their loyalty and their support.
It would be absurd, at best for a serious schism to be allowed to fester within the PNCR when the party knows only too well that a credible performance at national and regional elections depends on the party’s support being at full strength, so that when all the internal theatrics are over it is really a matter of whether the PNCR, experienced political party that it is, will come to its senses, circle its wagons and get on with the job.
It would be easy to either magnify or miniaturise the scale of what happened at Sophia. If it may well be tempting fate to assert that what happened at Sophia will not hurt the PNCR’s image, one gets a feeling that it is up to the party to determine whether and how quickly it gets across this particular hurdle.
