Dear Editor,
Reading the press these days I notice an ongoing brouhaha involving PNC’s Central Executive Committee (CEC); sometimes it reads like a ganging up on the party’s leader Mr. Granger. What is really the problem in the PNC? Can someone define it in terms of the PNC not having a winning electoral strategy and not having a programme for national development? In other words, it has no relevance to a multiracial democracy, one that needs to improve the quality of governance in the State. PNC is an ethnic party, an Afro-ethnic party. Is this not an anachronism in a multiracial society and a society that seeks to forge a multiracial democracy? The members are ganging up on Mr. David Granger. How did Granger fail the party? Or was Granger so emasculated by the party, him being a placeholder who later became a titular president? Mr. Granger, as president, always did what the Central Executive wanted him to do, namely:
– – Strengthen the ethnic character of the party. 90/125 Afro’s appointed to top State jobs; 16/17 Permanent Secretaries were Afro’s.
– – Restore disaffected/expelled leaders. Expelled leader Hamilton Green was brought back; special legislation passed to award him a king’s pension; awarded him a housing portfolio.
– – Corruption, starting with drug-bond scam. Several other major corruption deals.
– – Shredding the Constitution. Rejecting 18-names to head GECOM. PNC wanted an Afro-loyalist and crony to head GECOM.
– – Who was behind the attempt to steal the election?
PNC developed no programme to win over cross-racial votes, so necessary to win an election and to create a semblance of a genuine multiracial democracy. PNC’s ethnic character is incompatible with a policy to win cross-racial votes. PNC has no programme for national development. PNC negotiated in secret the 2016 Oil Contract, signed it in secret, kept it secret for over a year. A PNC govt. minister signed that demonstrably lopsided contract – and with that one signature made it into law. The parliament never debated and approved that contract. Was this a fault of the PNC-gov’t or the Constitution of Guyana that allowed this to happen? Who did all these things – Mr. Granger or the PNC government? It should be clear now that CEC’s members should work to reform the PNC. Not pile on, on poor Mr. Granger.
Sincerely,
Mike Persaud
