PNCR’s ‘tattered image’ limiting its influence -James McAllister

The PNCR needs to repair its credibility to ensure it can effectively participate in any electoral alliance, says former MP James McAllister, who thinks the party’s “tattered” image has limited its influence.

According to McAllister, the suspicions about the last two elections for party leader have wrought tremendous damage on the party’s credibility. McAllister, who was part of two successive campaigns that failed to unseat current party leader Robert Corbin, maintains that both elections were manipulated. Further, he added that after last year’s election, no effort was made to respond to the “plethora of discrepancies” raised and documented concerns were “just brushed under the carpet.”

“The whole issue of the party’s internal democratic processes remain under question,” he explained. “In any attempt to go towards an alliance, it will impact its acceptability and its credibility.”

While the opposition parties, including the PNCR, GAP, WPA and NFA, seek to rally a broad coalition to contest next year’s polls, the fallout from the loss of the AFC has increased the prominence of the main opposition in the prospective opposition alliance. After Corbin said the AFC’s decision to forgo any partnership with his party was not in line with the people’s desires, AFC Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan suggested last week that he was out of touch with the desires of his own membership and the wider society about his leadership of the main opposition.

Stabroek News was told that in reaching its decision, the AFC’s National Executive Committee was guided by the feelings of supporters who were against working with the PNCR in “its current state” as well as the party leader. It was not unexpected that the former PPP supporters now in the AFC ranks wanted nothing to do with the PNCR; however, it surprised some of the small party’s leaders when former PNCR members baulked at the prospect of an alliance with their former party. Corbin’s “undemocratic” leadership was cited by some.

Last year, when an appeal for national reconciliation in the form of a letter was published by political and civic forces during the Caricom Heads of Government summit here, a plan to include the names of the supporters was scrapped because some of them objected when Corbin affixed his name to the letter. As a result, the publication only featured the symbols of the AFC, GAP, WPA, the Unity Party and the Guyana Trades Union Congress.

Recently, in response to the suggestion that a PNCR party led by him would weaken an opposition coalition, Corbin said he could not seriously contemplate the PNCR as represented by its membership and those who had been elected by its membership, being ignored in any such process. But McAllister said if the PNCR were differently positioned, those persons within the AFC who were pushing for a grand opposition alliance would have had greater leverage in making an argument for it. As a result, he characterises the AFC’s decision as a sign of the PNCR’s failure to address its genuine problems.

Despite calls to step down as a result of the party’s waning fortunes, including the departure of a number of high-profile members and supporters, Corbin withstood a strong challenge by former party Chairman Winston Murray to win re-election last year. However, in what has been couched as part of his attempt to honour his “commitment to reconciliation” within the party, in March he announced that he would not be the party’s presidential candidate. The announcement was met with scepticism and it was not until last month that approval was given to set the process in motion to identify the party’s presidential candidate. Meanwhile, Corbin has also ruled out being the candidate for an opposition alliance and given the assurance that the PNCR will not play a domineering role or insist that one of its members be the candidate.

However, McAllister did not view Corbin’s announcement about not being the candidate as a concession towards reconciliation with disaffected members, since he had also ceded the party’s influence in a prospective coalition. “It is evident that he understands what has happened to the PNC,” he noted, while arguing that as the largest party the PNCR should be responsible for gathering the momentum for the movement. Because the party’s “credibility is in tatters,” he said, the party did not appear able to negotiate with leverage. As a result, he said Corbin should step aside as leader and allow credible persons to go forward, which any potential partners “could see an advantage in.”

“It would be in the interest of any coalition force to have credible persons within the PNCR, once they have repaired its image, to be leading such a process,” he said.

With just over a year before polls are constitutionally due, McAllister said it was not too late, particularly when the recent Trinidad and Tobago People’s Partnership experience was considered. “But we need to have political will,” he said, “And persons would have to put the interest of the country ahead of small political deals and personal interests now driving the process.”