Dear Editor,
I would like to join with the rest of Guyana in expressing heartfelt condolences to the families and relatives who lost their loved ones during the recent shooting spree at a peaceful picketing exercise in Linden. I urge Lindeners to remain focused and resolute in their demands for justice.
Please permit me to respond to a letter in your letters column on July 18 by Ms Lurlene Nestor (‘The PNCR can take care of its own business’). Ms Nestor, in making a case for Mr David Granger to be party leader stated that successive leaders of the PNCR simultaneously served in the positions of leader and president/opposition leader, and by extension Mr Granger has a right to the office. However, she failed to mention a number of things:
1. Messrs Burnham, Hoyte and Corbin contested the elections as presidential candidates for a PNC/PNCR List.
2. In the case of Mr Granger, the party leader facilitated a process that allowed a separate presidential candidate. Therefore, in the same way that two separate persons hold the offices of leader and leader of the opposition before the Congress, there is nothing wrong with two separate persons continuing to hold the offices after Congress.
3. Mr Granger as the Leader of the Opposition and Chairman of APNU is already heading the entity whose list he represented as presidential candidate. The two caps Mr Granger now wears, as previous leaders of the party did, are great responsibilities and need his full attention. The leadership of the PNCR is not a minor office that is tacked on to Mr Granger as stripes are awarded to a soldier merely to increase his rank.
4. The APNU construct is new to Guyana politics and is likely to have teething problems, as is already evident from the WPA’s public disagreement with Mr Granger’s agreement with President Ramotar to remove the Commander of E & F Division of the Guyana Police Force. The PNCR cannot afford to have APNU splinter and collapse. Mr Granger owes it to the members and supporters of the party to give this job his full attention. As a soldier he knows he cannot desert his post. He signed on to hold the APNU together and ensure it delivers benefits for the Guyanese people. He cannot turn his back on this responsibility to power grab.
I would also like to take this opportunity to call on party members to reclaim the party’s identity and once again promote and showcase its symbols. Members at this Congress must return to wearing the party colours and emblem – the Palm tree. Let’s not forget that our Founder Leader’s favourite colour was purple, and at no time in the party’s history was his colour of choice imposed on it, neither did subsequent leaders seek to change the colours. GYSM members should once again lead by example and proudly wear their red tops and black bottoms as proud members of the PNCR.
The PPP over the last twenty years has been trying to destroy and remove any and everything that was associated with our Founder Leader, former Executive President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana and Father of the Nation, Cde Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham. I therefore plead with the members at this Biennial Congress to reclaim our party identity and send a clear message to those who may wish to destroy his legacy that “this confounded nonsense must stop.”
Yours faithfully,
Julianne Gaul
