Nostalgia from the 1970s made David Granger the head of the PNC

Dec 16, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Every Guyanese in and out of the land was totally surprised when President Granger named Halim Majeed ambassador to Cuba in 2015. With Guyana’s very young population (70 percent under 40), no one knew who Majeed was. He was a close loyalist serving President, Forbes Burnham. Like hundreds of similar PNC servants, they migrated from Guyana after President Desmond Hoyte lost power. Two such persons remained in Guyana and studied law – Robert Corbin and Winston Murray.
By 2015 when Granger became president, the name Halim Majeed would not have been known among even persons in the PNC hierarchy. So how did it happen? Granger worked closely with Majeed during the cultural phase of paramountcy of the party under Burnham.
The army and the National Service had an ideological/education programme, the curriculum of which was shaped by Granger from the army, and Majeed from the Ministry of National Development. Most of the teaching material centered on Marxist and Third World literature. Forty years after they became comrades, Granger became president and Majeed was resurrected from obscurity to be assigned to Cuba.
It was these identical circumstances that brought Granger to the top of the PNC’s pyramid. By the time Hoyte died, the PNC had no living organism that remained in Congress Place during the Burnham era except Oscar Clarke whom Hoyte kept for reasons that may never be known. Robert Corbin was retained by Hoyte because he was grateful to Corbin. Corbin’s vote against Hamilton Green succeeding the deceased Burnham as president was crucial. But Hoyte never liked Corbin.
As president and subsequently, opposition leader, Hoyte with single-handedness extirpated the Burnhamites in the PNC. They were guillotined en mass. The PNC under President Hoyte and under Opposition Leader, Hoyte, was a party that bore no resemblance to the PNC before 1985, the year of Burnham’s death. The hierarchy in the government was not Burnhamite. The hierarchy in the PNC as a party was not Burnhamite.
When Hoyte suddenly passed way in 2002, only one Burnhamite was left in the PNC’s leadership – Robert Corbin. He was therefore the natural choice. It was a troubling time for Corbin, both as Opposition Leader and PNC bossman. An entity named Team Alexander (led by Vincent Alexander) tried to oust Corbin while Aubrey Norton had an internecine fight with Corbin that ended up in court.
Under Corbin, the PNC had its worst electoral showing in the 2006 poll, losing seats even in Georgetown. It was the end of the road for Corbin. But there was no Burnhamite from the seventies to succeed him except Alexander and Norton and both were declared persona non-grata.
Corbin turned to a man whom he knew from the seventies when he was the chairman of the PNC’s youth arm and whom he worked closely with during the ideological indoctrination of the army – David Granger. The brutal fact is that Corbin had no one to turn to. To make things worse, the two persons vying to be party leader – Carl Greenidge and Dr. Faith Harding were unacceptable to Corbin because they left Guyana when the PNC lost power in 1992. Corbin controlled the delegate selection system and out-manoeuvred Greenidge and Harding. The rest is history.
When Granger became PNC leader, then PNC executive member, Clarissa Riehl gave off a reaction that has gone into the history books. She told me at the entrance of the High Court on South Road that she did not know Granger at all and never heard about him in politics. Corbin was gone and the Hoytean degutting of the PNC continued under Granger. But there is a very crucial difference. While Hoyte literally chased away the PNC figures from the seventies, Granger didn’t have to deal with them because they were not around anymore.
Granger turned to his army buddies from the seventies to help him. In the presidency, he began to groom a few ministers to run the government in the event he couldn’t continue. His picks were Joe Harmon and Winston Jordan and maintained a close relation with Ronald Bulkan. All three were newcomers to the PNC. One of the greatest ironies in the history of the PNC is that the man selected to be the leader of the PNC for the future was not even in the PNC’s executive committee. Granger ousted a long-standing PNC stalwart, Volda Lawrence, to make way for Harmon. As president, Granger was a disaster. As PNC leader, Granger was a disaster. He was just not suited for politics. He caused the PNC to lose power in 2020, power that they may never see again either through election or insurrection.

(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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