Untergang: Granger in a crowd

Sep 04, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Today, I continue where I left off yesterday, in looking at the factors that caused the APNU+AFC to lose the election. Yesterday, I argued that a crucial factor in the defeat was that a needed percentage of votes the PNC failed to get were from African Guyanese who in 2011 and 2015 voted for APNU because of the presence of the WPA. These were African Guyanese who felt the WPA would make a difference in power.
After seeing how morally bankrupt the WPA became after its long wait for power, a few thousand African Guyanese enchanted with Walter Rodney either stayed home or took their ballots elsewhere. A few more thousands of African Guyanese also were not impressed with the style and nature of the PNC leader – David Granger.
Granger is attempting to lose himself among the increasing protests by African Guyanese. He spoke with the demonstrators outside State House when the CCJ ruled against APNU+AFC in the recount and this week he was in the crowd when the protesters were outside the court during the election petition hearing. But it is too little too late.
Granger can be partially blamed for the unexpected low turnout among Georgetowners and African Guyanese in general. They see him as an aloof leader incapable of grounding and mixing. They do not see him as a man of the people. The war room felt Granger was a winner in the 2015 poll because his character of cleanness would put him far ahead of his rival, Donald Ramotar.
When he won, they milked that feature thinking it would be productive again in the 2020 campaign. But the incompetent PNC hierarchy knew nothing about West Indian politics. That is why they lost in 2020. Granger was seen as an honest alternative to Ramotar when Granger was the opposition leader. Granger as president generated different expectations. Granger as president was clean alright but Guyanese people did not identify with him.
It is silly to think in a poor, underdeveloped economy with lack of modern infrastructure and services, people will vote for a president’s second term if they think all he has in him is integrity of character. They are looking for deliverance and with each day when they didn’t see that deliverance, more and more Granger’s lack of leadership qualities appeared boldly in front of them.
For the five years he spent in office, Granger appeared as a distant president to Guyanese but more so African Guyanese. He did and said things that lacerated their expectations as the years went by. So banal and arid was the leadership of Granger that the PNC had to know that African Guyanese voters would now come out in tsunamic waves.
He barefacedly scuttled the amendment to Guyana’s draconian drug law. He birthed commission after commission that directly concerned African Guyanese but no fruits appeared. African public servants wanted an elevation in retirement age. Granger held a commission of inquiry into the public service which recommended such an elevation. He did not implement it.
Another commission into land holding held against the backdrop of immense clamouring for ancestral lands. Nothing was implemented. Another commission took place into the Lindo Creek massacre. Today, despite that inquiry, the killings remain a mystery. Guyanese like to boast insanely. A drunk fellow said a man paid him to kill Granger, and suddenly there was another commission; this time into the police force.
African Guyanese, poor East Indians and especially the Indigenous folks have the ideology that the state will be their source of comfort because the state will find work for them. Granger boldly told Guyanese that they must not expect the state to provide employment. It was the neo-liberal expression of a president who didn’t understand anything about Third World economics and how the capitalist system operates in the industrial, developed world.
Sadly, Granger’s two economists – Carl Greenidge and Winston Jordan – did not inform him that in highly capitalist economies the state provides employment and also bankroll their farmers with subsidies.
As the years wore on, Granger appeared in the eyes of the Guyanese nation as the most defined failure of all the previous presidents and definitely the most lackluster and the only president Guyana ever had that was unsure of himself. He took this uncertainty about who he should be to paranoid lengths. He was scared of the press. He avoided journalists and in interactions with them was curt and abrasive. He chalked up a record that will last forever – the only president to have held three press conferences during his five year tenure. David Granger was one of the reasons, the PNC lost in 2020.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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