A former PNCR Central Executive member and member of Team Alexander which challenged PNCR Leader Robert Corbin’s position at the party’s last biennial congress is urging Corbin to transfer the leadership of the party to party chairman, Winston Murray.
The member, Frederick Hamley Case, in his response to the charge levelled against him by the party through its disciplinary committee, urged Corbin to transfer leadership to Murray as soon as possible.
“Procedurally, it cannot be faulted,” he said, contending that “Murray will bring qualities to the leadership that the media, PPP, and Corbin detractors have robbed him [Corbin] of.”
Case’s position is one of the responses the disciplinary committee was dealing with and sources said that it was in the process of determining how to treat with them since some were considered “offensive.”
Claiming that under Murray the party would attract major funding and the resources now beyond the party’s reach, Case said that at the margins the party could fare no worse. “Murray could best head the PNCR rebirth and new image,” he said.
‘Alleged misconduct’
Responding directly to the “alleged misconduct, which was for issuing a press statement in direct contravention of guidance given by Corbin and Murray,” for which he was asked to respond by writing or meet with the disciplinary committee by January 26, Case said that he was not sure that one could “contravene” guidance in the way one contravenes a law.
He said he considered the counsel of the Party Leader and Party Chairman to be sound, but nevertheless advice which could be taken or disregarded. He said that the question of whether disregarding the guidance was in the best interest of the party or not, was not a closed question. Even if it were, he said, it ought to be seen in the wider context of other acts inimical to the party’s interest and for which others more important than Team Alexander members must accept responsibility. “In such a context I am sure that it would pale into utter insignificance,” he said.
He went on to say that the decision to disregard the guidance was not taken lightly. “In the end it was seen as the only insurance against the onslaught of petty, vindictive acts directed at Team Alexander members individually or collectively.”
He said that he could not take the risk of having scurrilous and defamatory statements made against him because, as one bearing his father’s name, Frederick (first Guyanese Director of Education), he was burdened with a family name and identity synonymous with rectitude and high achievement in the service of Guyana which he could not jeopardise or allow to fall into odium.
Walking away from the April 27, 2007 meeting without the benefit of an accurate contextual press statement would have left his name and the Case tradition vulnerable to negative forces intent on putting a spin on the meeting’s discussion and “calculated to vilify and excoriate the pursuit of a normal democratic right and outcome,” he said.
Case’s alleged misconduct was that on April 27, 2007, as a member of Team Alexander he issued a press statement in direct contravention of guidance given by the Party Leader and Party Chairman that it would not have been in the best interest of the party.
Offering some guidance of his own, he said that the PNCR, as the main opposition party was in high dudgeon and was no longer seen as a viable alternative to the PPP/C; that the PNCR-1G leader was seen as ineffective, self-indulgent, selfish and uninterested not only among the party’s primordial base and constituents, but also among the soft PPP voters, the diaspora and the diplomatic corps.
Unpopularity
Stating that Corbin’s unpopularity will continue and magnify well into the pre-2011 election period, he said that the chances are that if the PNCR-1G contests the 2011 elections without serious decontamination, it will lose more seats to the PPP/C and possibly the AFC. Loss of one more seat to the PPP, he said will give it a technical majority with help from the AFC.
“This is far too great a risk for (Corbin) to take and for intelligent party members to remain silent on,” he said, urging Corbin to transfer leadership to Murray.
Stabroek News understands that with the exception of Vincent Alexander, who challenged Corbin’s leadership and former executive member and PNCR-1G MP Deborah Backer, all the other leading members of Team Alexander were written to requesting responses to the charges leveled against them or alternatively to meet with the disciplinary committee.
This newspaper understands that of those charged former executive members Joseph Hamilton and Dr Dalgleish Joseph and former GYSM Chairman Andrew Hicks have not responded. Hamilton had told this newspaper that he does not recognize the current leadership of the party.
Sources have said that the matter has become more complicated because some of the responses were considered “offensive” and the disciplinary committee was in the process of determining their responses.
Meanwhile, former GYSM Chairman of Region Ten (Upper Demerara/Upper Berbice) Randy Nurse, who was mandated by the committee to apologise to another colleague for allegedly making racial slurs, a charge he denied, has been barred by the party’s disciplinary committee from holding any leadership position in the GYSM until August 16, 2008, since he did not issue the apology.
Nurse, who had two other charges dropped against him, had argued that he had not used any racial slur and he had issued a public apology on the matter. He had also felt that the two were culpable for the heated exchange they had in the campaign in the run-up to the election for the party leadership. (Miranda La Rose)
