About a week after President David Granger made his controversial choice of Justice James Patterson as the chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission, which many viewed as signalling the PNCR’s intention to manipulate future elections, he took to the podium to speak to the North American Chapter of the PNCR in Georgia, USA. According to Mr. Tacuma Ogunseye, an executive member of the WPA, keen political observer and staunch supporter of the coalition government, the leader of the PNCR delivered a speech that ‘is likely to be seen as one of the most important and, to some onlookers, disturbing political addresses to the PNCR party faithful since he became President of Guyana in 2015’ (SN:10/11/17). In his presentation, the president asked his audience to focus their attention in the months leading up to the 2020 national and regional elections on “‘how the PNC gained office in 1964?’ … ‘how did the PNC remain in office and what did it do during that year?’ … ‘how the PNC (regained office) in 2015 and … how the PNC would retain office after 2020.’” (SN: 06/11/17) To say the very least, in this era of instant global communications and given his party’s sordid electoral history, something very important must have motivated the president to so closely couple the appointment of the chairperson with this statement.
I agree with Tacuma that it is difficult to predict what the president intended, but since, one way or another, our future is likely to be severely affected, attempt to predict we must. Tacuma surmised that the president ‘is attempting to gauge the public’s response to a “strong inclination” within the PNCR to contest the 2020 General and Regional elections, outside of the APNU framework’ and ‘to push back’ against these pressures ‘that he may not be in agreement with’. The existence of such a ‘strong inclination’ would indeed be very worrying to the party faithful, for, apart from the period 1968 to 1985 when the PNC rigged the elections, never in its history has it won an election alone and it is obviously in no position to do so now. If the coalition wants to retain power, this ‘strong inclination’ must be coming from either a lunatic fringe or from those who have other means of taking the party to victory!
