Party Leader David Granger on Friday said the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) has not seen and therefore has not considered any no-confidence motions against him.
“That isn’t true. CEC met on Thursday and no motions were brought. If it is a motion against me I am entitled to know what I am accused of…We have not seen the text of any motion, we’ve not heard of any official meeting of any part of the party. Even in common law if an accusation is made about some misconduct at least the person is told what the accusation is about. I’m not aware of any wrongdoing and I’ve never seen any motion,” Granger declared in an interview broadcast on his party’s programme ‘The Public Interest’.
Stabroek News had reported yesterday that the CEC met on Thursday to discuss motions brought by the Georgetown and East Coast Demerara Districts against Granger.
“There were two motions and they are now resolutions…which expressed a lack of confidence in Mr Granger among other things. These motions are now resolutions,” one source told Stabroek News.
Challenged to respond to Granger’s position and that of at least one other CEC member that Thursday’s meeting did not discuss any such motion, the source maintained that a “faction” of the CEC had met with members in the districts, received these motions and accepted them, making them resolutions.
“We are the Central Executive Committee [and] when we are ready we will release them,” they contended when asked why the accusations in the motions have not been presented to Granger to allow a response. The size of this faction remains unknown.
The CEC includes the Party Leader, Chairman, Vice Chairman and fifteen (15) members of the Executive Committee who are elected at the Biennial Congress. Ten members are co-opted to the Central Executive by the Leader and other elected members while each of the party’s 10 regional groupings elects a representative to the CEC. The Chairpersons of the Youth and Women arms of the party are also CEC members.
‘Not sanctioned’
Granger has challenged those members of the CEC who convened meetings within the referenced districts and issued public statements accusing him of wrongdoing to step forward.
“These two meetings which seem to have been held certainly were not sanctioned by the CEC of the party. We don’t know who was invited. We don’t know what the motions were, who moved and seconded the motions or how many votes were taken…People are planting these releases in the media and the public believes it might be fact. I don’t know if anyone will claim responsibility for convening these so-called meetings and passing those motions,” the party leader explained, adding that he is unclear about what game plan is being executed.
You can’t win elections by dividing the party, he admonished, before adding that Congress will decide who the next leader of the party is.
“We cannot run the party in newspaper columns and these invented motions of no confidence…Phantom motions designed to falsely create the impression that there is chaos within the party,” he pronounced.
Addressing the delayed Congress, Granger explained that a sub-committee of the CEC is currently examining the recommendations submitted on April 19 about the modalities which can be used to convene the meeting in light of COVID-19 restrictions.
A section of the party referring to itself as the CEC last week released a statement urging that Congress be held before the end of the year.
That same statement accused Granger of turning the party into a one-man show. It maintained that the party did not endorse the inclusion of two “shell parties” in the umbrella grouping, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), while claiming that the CEC had actually directed Granger and PNCR General Secretary Amna Ally to put on hold any further involvement of the PNCR with the APNU until the status of that Partnership was fully discussed and decisions on the way forward are taken.
The statement has been endorsed by party Chair Volda Lawrence and elected CEC members Richard Van West-Charles, Aubrey Norton and Winston Felix.
Two days later Jennifer Ferreira-Dougal and Annette Ferguson, two of 15 Congress-elected members of the PNCR Central Executive Committee (CEC), along with Shurwayne Holder; Ganesh Mahipaul and Ernest Elliott, the regional representatives for regions Two, Three and Four, respectively, contended that the elected members of the CEC were “dismayed” by an unsigned and unauthorised statement containing the allegations against Granger.
“We denounce, most emphatically, the personal attacks against our constitutionally-elected Party Leader, Mr. David Granger, by a minority of persons who did not have the courage to affix their names to the ‘Statement’ but who claimed, cowardly, to write on behalf of the entire CEC,” they stated, adding that the CEC had not reached a decision on the issue which the “minority” has complained about.
Yesterday Granger reminded that these public disagreements, while frowned upon, are not new to the party. He stressed that previous party leaders have been subject to similar attacks with those factions breaking from the party to form new political parties, such as the Working People’s Alliance, A Good Green Guyana and the Alliance for Change.
