R.H.O.C. WILL BE THE MAN

Apr 01, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Mr. Robert Herman Orlando Corbin will be the PNCR presidential candidate for the 2011 general and regional elections. While it was recently announced that he will not be running as the party’s candidate for those polls, it is inevitable, and a prediction of this column, that the party will be forced to reconsider its position and ask the veteran and evergreen politician to lead the party into those elections.
Mr. Corbin has been the subject of criticisms over his leadership of the party. But this is always a reaction whenever a party loses an election. When Mr. Hoyte lost the 1992 elections, he too came under some criticisms.
In fact after the PNC expelled Mr. Hamilton Green- he has since been readmitted into the ranks of the membership- he contested against the PNC in the 1994 municipal elections and won the largest number of seats, thereby being able to secure the Mayorship of Georgetown.
This was blow for Mr. Hoyte but it never undermined his position within the party and Hoyte regained ground quickly and led the party again into the 1997 elections.
After those elections, there were calls for Hoyte to step aside. He played to the gallery when he suggested that he too would not lead the party into the 2001 elections. There was even talk about a mechanism to find a new leader but in the end it was Hoyte who led the party into the 2001 elections and who if he had not died would have most likely led the party into the 2006 elections.
An announcement that the party will seek a consensus candidate for the 2011 polls should therefore not generate too much excitement. In the end, the party will have to consider its options and decide on the best person and inevitably the best person to command the leadership of the party will be someone who have paid his dues to the party, has served faithfully, has waited his turn and who is politically experienced enough to understand changing global and local realities and can unite the party as its approaches the next polls. Robert Herman Orlando Corbin will be that man.
The PNCR will have no choice as the months proceed to approach Mr. Corbin and ask him to reconsider his position. The PNCR would have seen what has happened within the PPP. Mr. Corbin is not ceding the leadership of the party and therefore it would be incongruent to have someone other than the leader of the party contest the presidency of Guyana.
The PPP has since 1999 demonstrated adequately the pitfalls of that position.
The ruling party is not ruling today. It is a spectator while the presidency dominates the governance of Guyana. The presidency is too powerful a position for any political party to cede to someone who is not its leader.
There is a great and grave risk that the ruling party in such circumstances will be left on the sidelines and it will have a leader who will have little influence on the work of the government.
If the PNCR therefore wishes to adopt the position that someone other than Mr. Corbin should be that party’s presidential candidate, it would have to ask that the person chosen to lead the party into the next elections be given the position of leadership of the party.
It makes no sense for the party to have a presidential candidate for the elections and then have someone else as leader of the party.
The PNCR will inevitably hand over the party, if and when Mr. Corbin decides to call it a day to a member of the old guard. This is traditional third world politics. The leadership is not going to be handed to anyone. It will most likely be returned to one of the stalwarts of the party, if that persons so desires.
Mr. Richard Van West Charles is a possibility because he is a member of the old vanguard class that was part of the party’s leadership under Forbes Burnham.
Those who are therefore seeing in this recent announcement, the possibility of a young vibrant leader assuming the helm of the party or for that matter leading the party into the next elections ought to reconsider the history of Third World parties formed by charismatic and maximum leaders.
It is never easy for the old guard to be swept away.
But the PNCR will not have a contest for leadership or for that matter to decide who will lead the party into the next elections. In the end, the party will have no other option but to plead to its leader to become its presidential candidate for the 2011 elections while it begins the transitioning of the leadership to someone else from the old guard.

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R.H.O.C. WILL BE THE MAN

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