Winston Murray has to answer questions

Aug 22, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I have a high regard for Winston Murray. I believe he brings credibility and image to the PNC. Over the years, Murray has carefully avoided confrontation, unbecoming behaviour and controversy. He comes across as a politician that lacks the bad boy image we are so accustomed to in this country.
Before we proceed to discuss the new role of Winston Murray and what that entails, it needs to be mentioned that he has to get some closed door sessions with his advisors on how to handle the media.
He didn’t do a good job on Thursday. I am not a media expert but would be glad to share my knowledge with Mr. Murray on the subject.
When asked by a reporter a question that began like this; “Assuming you don’t win the nomination on Saturday,” Mr. Murray told the journalist, “Your assumption is wrong.” He should never have said that.
The best direction to go in was to say; “That is your assumption Sir, mine differs from yours.” How is Mr. Murray going to face that media operative if he loses today?
My assumption is that he will lose. And he will lose because Team Murray’s leading spokesperson, Dr. Van West Charles, is quoted in the press yesterday as saying the transparency process leading to congressional voting is questionable.
From his description, the word flawed would be more appropriate. In this light, Mr. Murray’s description of the reporter’s assumption of being wrong looks out of place.
I hope Mr. Murray avoids such peccadilloes in the future.
Finally on the issue of the press, Mr. Murray appeared a little upset (mind you, not discomforted as is the case with many politicians but upset) with some questions at the press conference yesterday. I may be wrong but that is the way it came across to me.
A relationship with the media is a huge priority for any politician. It was something Cheddi Jagan never mastered and it is one of the factors that destroyed the nation’s admiration for the PPP. Mastering the art of dealing with the media is one of the key requirements for political success.
Take Mr. Jagdeo and Roger Luncheon. No reporter understands the sesquipedalian, labyrinthine, esoteric answers of Dr. Luncheon most of the times. If there is ever a ruling politician that the media could avoid dealing with, it is Dr. Luncheon. President Jagdeo is much too hostile to the probing media.
It is unfortunate that his career has been shipwrecked through his relationship with Roger Khan (one hopes he does not go on denying it) but Leslie Ramsammy had the best approach of all PPP leaders and Government Ministers in handling the media in Guyana.
One suspects that he picked that up from his long years in the US. He came across as a guy who would level with journalists and speak his mind in a way that the media would not find insulting.
We come now to the questions Mr. Murray will have to answer given his expanding status in the political movement now taking shape.
All sorts of inquiries will be made of Mr. Murray in his years of being in the leadership of the PNC with Mr. Corbin as leader. The one I am interested in at the moment is the never-ending story of Corbin’s discussion with President Jagdeo of an amendment to the Constitution that would remove the two consecutive terms only for a president in return for power-sharing with the PNC.
I want Mr. Murray to know that this information came to me from someone who is deep inside the leadership of the PNC.
My source told me that Mr. Murray was in favour of such a pathway. If this is so, can Mr. Murray explain how this evolution was shaped? The talk in political circles is that Team Alexander was born out of dissatisfaction with the rate Corbin was going with the third term dialogue with Mr. Jagdeo.
The schism occurred between Corbin on the one hand and the dissenters on the other because the latter, though not rejecting power-sharing under an elected presidency of Bharrat Jagdeo in 2011, wanted an innovative arrangement whereby power-sharing would be more of a constitutional covenant with the PPP rather than by invitation from Mr. Jagdeo.
The thinking in many circles is that Corbin self-destructed when he continued with this third-term thing with Mr. Jagdeo rather than as they say in common parlance, “call it George with Mr. Jagdeo.”
I am not in the least trying to embarrass Mr. Murray but he needs to explain this third term dialogue that the PNC was pursuing with Mr. Jagdeo.

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