Questions continue to be raised about Mr. Granger’s military service

Apr 30, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
Mr. David Granger has been elected the PNCR’s presidential candidate for the approaching elections. While he continues to make a good impression in many ways, some of the statements attributed to him would at best be described as strange. Two of them follow:
(a) “I never killed anyone and I never rigged an election. I was at Atkinson Base at the time.” (b) “l don’t have evidence that the elections were rigged.”
Mr. Granger must have made the second statement with tongue in cheek because I cannot see how a man of his intellect could be unaware of the evidence of massive rigging of the elections and the 1978 referendum.
A parliamentary team of observers from the UK described the referendum as being “as crooked as a piece of wire”.
On arriving at my polling station to vote in a past election, I was calmly told by one of the officials there that “somebody vote for you”.
When my mother protested to party activists at her workplace that I had been unable to vote in what was to have been my first election, they expressed regret and said that based on the broad instructions given to them I should still have been allowed to vote even if I had already “voted”.
They were so certain that she was in their camp. There must have been literally thousands of similar events at those elections.
If Mr. Granger was a top member of the security forces, then how could he have been unaware of these happenings even if we want to pretend that no rigging took place at Camp Ayanganna.
If he is serious about cutting into the PPP’s support base and attracting votes from persons who are not hard core PNCR supporters, then I would suggest that Mr. Granger stage comedy in the privacy of his home and not in front of media operatives.
It has been stated in the media that Mr. David Granger was the chief political officer in the army at the time of the 1973 elections and also an aide to Burnham.
This information is attributed to Dr. Chetram Singh, who was a Second Lieutenant at the time. So far I have not heard any indignant denial so I am forced to conclude that the assertion is accurate.
Given this, I am at a loss to know how Mr. Granger could claim that he never rigged an election. He did not have to physically high-jack ballot boxes at gunpoint or stuff them to be guilty of rigging. Mr. Granger’s proficiency as a planner is well known.
Mr. Granger’s eloquence and intelligence have impressed many. Equal parts of honesty, truthfulness and decency into the mix will not do any harm.
Questions continue to be raised about Mr. Granger’s military service. Some of the officers who served with him would be deserving of some sort of blame over what they might have done, failed to do or turned a blind eye to.
It seems as though Mr. Granger must have gone overboard in terms of his past conduct, because while he was always considered to be ‘too political’ as an army officer, the same was not and is not being said about his contemporaries like Maj. General Joe Singh, Col. Carl Morgan and Col. Ulric Pilgrim.
Whatever these men might have felt forced to do to preserve their careers and survive under Burnham seemingly pales into insignificance when compared to Mr. Granger’s conduct.
They have always commanded great respect within and without military circles. The same has to be said for some of the former GDF officers who had previously served in the British Guyana Volunteer Force.
In spite of the contempt that Mr. Granger appears to have had for them, not one of them was ever branded “political” even though the sympathies of some might have beep with the PNC.
Mr. Granger is still being haunted by his past in spite of his recent successes. There is no way he can be comfortable with the way he is viewed by many.
This should serve as a lesson to present day GDF officers (police officers too).
They should not prostrate themselves before politicians or kowtow to them. Be professional or it can come back to haunt you in years or even decades to come
Claude Vernon

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Questions continue to be raised about Mr. Granger’s military service

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