David Granger betrays Forbes Burnham

Jun 07, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News– The living ideologues inside the PNC who are in their sixties and seventies, have accepted as gospel, that Premier Cheddi Jagan did not support the West Indian Federation because he believed it would have swamped the Indian majority in British Guiana.
Jagan’s explanation as contained in many of his writings was that, it was a capitalist invention that served the purpose of the colonialism. Prime Minister Burnham went on to champion Caribbean integration through a resurrection of the West Indian Federation named CARIFTA, later CARICOM.
In 1972, the English-speaking Caribbean nations became closer when their leaders signed into being the Caribbean Examination Council. It was under a PPP government led by President Jagdeo that continued Burnham’s legacy of integration when it agreed for the establishment of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as the final court for the CARICOM nations.
In what has to be a tremendous boost to colonial-minded politicians in Trinidad, Jamaica and some of the smaller islands that have preferred to continue with the Privy Council in London as the region’s final court, David Granger, is now questioning the existence of the CCJ.
Sadly, efforts to get the CCJ to be the final appeals court will suffer a setback in those countries that do not want it. When the issue comes up in their parliaments they will point to Granger’s words. They will say a former president is now rethinking the status of the CCJ in his own country.
Mr. Granger of course has an atrocious record as a thinking politician. In fact, Mr. Granger knows very little about politics and in agreeing to lead the PNC he has destroyed it. When the CCJ stopped Mr. Jagdeo from becoming president for a third term, upholding the two-term limit in the constitution, Mr. Granger did not denounce the CCJ.
This gentleman turns his back on many institutions embedded in the legal structure of Guyana that the PNC has benefitted from. It was fear of a no-confidence vote that caused President Ramotar to prorogue Parliament.
Mr. Granger and the PNC picketed the Office of the President each week demanding the opening of parliament so the no-confidence motion (NCM) could be tabled and in a 33 versus 32 vote (since the PPP was a minority government at the time), the Ramotar presidency would have been toppled.
At the final campaign rally in 2020, Granger told the audience that he would seek to have the no-confidence article in the constitution removed. Why? For the same reason he wants the CCJ out of the jurisdiction of hearing election cases. When he wins, it is alright. When he loses, the institution in question should be dissolved.
Granger was too limited intellectually to understand that he became president in 2015 because of the antecedents that can be traced back to President Ramotar’s fear of the NCM. Granger was too arid in his understanding of politics to comprehend the disastrous mistake he made at that rally.
Those who voted for the AFC in 2011 that caused the PPP to become a minority government and those who voted for the AFC in 2015 that resulted in the removal of the PPP were seeing for themselves the narrow mind and ungrateful attitude of Granger. He was prepared to turn his back on legal nuances that worked smoothly and brought about stability.
Mr. Granger could not win the 2020 election because those that voted for the AFC in 2011 and 2015 wanted to see the APNU+AFC government fall based on Mr. Granger’s horrible mediocrity. The Carter/Price formula that GECOM used since 1992 worked smoothly until Granger went into a political rampage.
He refused 18 selections from the Opposition Leader for the GECOM chairmanship and broke in a nasty fashion with the Carter/Price tradition; he named his own chairman, a judge even though the court ruled that the constitution does not stipulate that the person must be a former or sitting judge.
Only the New York PNC group has been able to muster the courage to tell PNC supporters that one of the factors that contributed to the 2020 PNC defeat was the personality of the leader.
It is foolish for any human to deny that in elections, the personality of the contenders is of crucial value. Ralph Ramkarran and other PPP leaders stood a better chance of being accepted by Berbicians in 2011 than Donald Ramotar.
The PPP lost in 2015 by less than 5000 votes. The personality of Ramotar again was crucial. Granger held three press conferences in five years. It showed he lacked courage and self-confidence. He lost in 2020 and to hide his role in the defeat he will go on to say, the PPP rigged the election.
(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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