I am suspicious of Granger’s absence today

Dec 18, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – Mr. Granger will not be at his party’s congress at a time when he is still legally the leader of the party. Mr. Granger’s timing is bound to cause some suspicion by analysis. But one will be deterred from any analysis because the reason is medical treatment.
Still, the wider society needs interpretations of complex occurrences and scholars and the media have to do their work. My position is still the same – I don’t think today’s process will be free and fair. I think Mr. Harmon is going to be declared the winner.
When that happens Granger cannot be blamed; he was not there. The last time the outgoing leader was present at a congress was when Granger had beaten Greenidge by 12 votes even though few persons in Guyana and the PNC in 2012 knew much about Greenidge.
It is interesting to note that Greenidge’s campaign manager was Aubrey Norton. Norton was not too comfortable at how things worked out at the congress. The other candidate, PNC stalwart, Dr. Faith Harding was not as diplomatic as Norton. She attributed bad faith to Corbin. She said the election was not fair.
The 2012 congress will be different this time; the outgoing leader will not be at the event. No one can hurl accusations at Granger as Harding did to Corbin. Granger, unlike Corbin, will have a water-proof alibi. During the anti-electricity hike in Linden in 2012, Norton told me what he saw at the 2012 congress was disheartening.
He described bad-behaved PNC delegates, mostly women throwing nasty abuses at Greenidge. He intoned that the ugliness was witnessed by all the major leaders of the PNC but no one intervened. History is a thing that keeps reoccurring. Could Norton become the victim Greendige was in both in terms of receiving insults and losing to a fixed election?
Here is my scenario. I believe certain PNC personalities have learnt from the wayward, reckless, infantile attempts to rig the 2020 general elections. If Burnham and Hoyte were alive, they would have declared a victory, the night of March 3 when the Region 4 returning officer, Clairmont Mingo (Mingo lived after his name, the rigging was clear) had proclaimed his fictitious numbers.
Burnham was a crude dictator. He would have declared victory on March 3. Had the PNC leaders done so on March 3, the world would still have rejected them. But they kept playing for time until the Chief Election Officer can come up with a phenomenal stratagem. The PNC leaders waited for five months to birth a stratagem so brilliant that it would have caused doubts in the mind of the world. But five months was insane and stupid. Five months allowed the world (except Eusi Kwayana) to see how the rigging was being done.
This isn’t going to happen today. There will be a swift count. Harmon will be declared the winner. Norton and Dr. Van West Charles are going to ask for this and that probe. They are going to produce evidence of irregularities and mis-directions but these would fade away and that will be that – Harmony will be the leader until he is in his eighties if he chooses to.
It is unfortunate that this is how things are done in the PNC but the PNC is what it is. I rather suspect that once Harmon is in the saddle, there will be a more than ordinary role for Granger in the direction of the PNC. Harmon and Granger were very close in the army where Harmon served as head of intelligence. Did they know anything at all about Burnham’s plan for Walter Rodney?
Once in power, Harmon literally shared the presidency with Granger and Granger was happy with that. There is a voluminous body of policy-making decisions that Granger did not know about or was not interested in knowing. This was the extent to which Granger conceded power to Harmon.
There were interchangeable. But they had to fail and fall because they were both very limited in their political astuteness (perhaps they didn’t have any). What we will have after tomorrow is a continuation of the dual authority of Harmon and Granger, only this time it would be out of power.
Mr. Granger is very limited in his political understanding of Guyana. I don’t know what he can teach Harmon. Granger as number two will create a political chaos for the PNC. One thing for sure; Aubrey Norton’s days were over from the time he announced his candidacy. Granger is a Burnhamite fanatic. Norton is not. Granger will not want such a person to lead the PNC. The die is cast. See you later, Aubrey!
(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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