THE REBRANDING OF THE PNCR

Jul 03, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) has surprised many with its strategies and tactics for this year’s elections. It has come up with a very interesting strategy, the full picture of which is only now becoming clearer.
Having convincingly lost the 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2006 general and regional elections, and having been humbled in the 1994 local government elections, the PNCR, formerly the People’s National Congress (PNC), needs to come, and come good, if they are to inspire hope in their constituents and remain a formidable political force in the country.
They have thus emerged with a brand new strategy, one that has left many surprised by its astuteness. The PNCR has made some interesting political calculations, in the hope that it will add to the party’s chances of victory this time around or at least revamp the image of the party and shed its tainted past.
However, the PNCR knows that however good is its strategy, it will simply not be enough to allow the coalition that it has assembled to be emerge victorious.
This new coalition which it has formed is called A Partnership for National Unity, abbreviated APNU, a rather unimaginative name, but one which nonetheless reflects an attempt by the PNCR to re-brand the party by removing the PNC from off the ballot.
This will be the first time in its history that the former ruling party will contest an election without its full initials being on the ballot.
In 2001, the party had re-branded itself the PNCR, attaching a Reform component to the original title of the party in an attempt to change the image of the party and to append, as the PPP had done in 1992, a civic component to the party.
In 2006, the party entered the elections as the PNCR- One Guyana (PNCR-1G). But most people did not take that coalition seriously, knowing that the other partners in the grouping were marginal and that the real power remained with the PNCR.
Having lost those elections, the PNCR saw the writing on the wall. It has therefore seemingly decided that its political survival depends on it dumping its old image – attempting to build a broad-based alliance in which the PNCR would remain the dominant partner.
It did try to attract a joint opposition coalition, but after its advances were spurned by the AFC, the PNCR managed to get the politically desperate Working People’s Alliance, which its founder-leader once nicknamed the Worst Possible Alternative, along with some other small groupings with little or no political standing, to join it in a partnership to contest the elections
In so doing, the party has effectively done away with the PNCR, and is now contesting the elections as A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). Incidentally, one of the parties which forms part of this partnership had once tabled proposals for a government of national unity and reconstruction, and had made it clear that the then PNC could not be part of that arrangement. Oh, how times have changed!
Before announcing this partnership, the PNCR had already begun the re-branding process by distancing itself from its past. It first moved towards a system of electing a presidential candidate and it eventually threw up a candidate that was never known to be politically active within the party in the past. As such, the party has a candidate who was not known to be part its leadership or who has ever held any ministerial position with previous PNC governments. As such, the person, while being ideologically aligned with the PNC, is not tainted by its role in government.
It is a very cunning strategy which has been employed by the PNCR which, even if it loses the elections, is not likely to ever again be called the PNC or the PNCR.
When the split took place within the original PPP, Burnham’s faction was called the Burnhamite PPP. From this, the PNC emerged and ruled Guyana for a long period. Under Desmond Hoyte the party’s name was changed to the PNCR.
The PNCR became the principal player in the PNCR-One Guyana and now it is also the dominant partner in the APNU. The palm tree, long the symbol of the PNCR, is reflected in the logo as a tattoo on the palm of an open hand. Having traveled this road, it is difficult to see how the PNC name can ever be restored to any ballot in the future.
There will always henceforth be either an appendage, as in PNCR, or a complete reassembling of its abbreviation, as in APNU. Who knows, by the time the next elections come by the PNCR may be known as APPP – A Partnership for People’s Power – because now that the WPA has jumped into the PNCR’s camp, it may foist on the PNCR its traditional battle cry “People’s Power, No Dictator”.

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