The PNC leader is wrong, dead wrong

Mar 15, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – The PNC leader is in the US and uttered some curious things. Three of the emanations are a gold mine for political analysts. I will look at each on different occasions because one column will not suffice.
They are: (1) – the PNC could have done better at the last election but its campaign was poor. (2) – the PNC has to get back to the glorious days when it was led by Forbes Burnham. (3) – The PNC welcomes coalition partners but it will not be held to ransom.
In March 2020, the PNC ran an effective campaign, did well and lost the election by two parliamentary seats. Here is the vote difference in the election: PPP – 233,336, PNC – 217,920, combined non-PPP opposition – 6,783. The APNU+AFC lost the election by 22,199 votes.
It is embarrassing for a political analyst who does not know why those 22,000 votes were lost. Those votes came in 2011 and 2015 from Indians who voted for the AFC. In 2020, those voters went back to the PPP because those 22,000 people believed in their hearts that the AFC was the worst political party Guyana produced even worse than the PNC.
In March 2020, if you had showed an India person two vendors selling mangoes – one for the AFC and the other for the PNC – and asked him/her which one of the two he/she would buy from, he would have selected the PNC’s.
It was an act of complete, absolute confusion, bordering on insanity for the then head of the APNU, David Granger, in September 2020 to award the AFC nine seats in parliament. Politics and science are not connected but it is a scientific fact that the AFC did not get more than 3,000 votes in March 2020.
I think I know Aubrey Norton a little bit, and I am telling the Guyanese people that if the AFC stays with the PNC for the 2025 contest, Mr. Norton is not going to agree to a specific number of seats for the AFC. If the Coalition loses the 2025 election, the new PNC leadership will not give more than one seat to the AFC.
Whether you like or dislike Mr. Norton, you have to admit he has an analytical mind. Mr. Norton knows that the AFC’s vote-catching talent is a thing of the past. One of the moral unfairness Mr. Norton inherited from his predecessor is the numerical burden of the AFC.
The PNC leadership will not want to do it but they should ask the leader of the APNU+AFC list to withdraw six parliamentarians from the AFC and replace them with PNC names. It is unconscionable for the AFC to have six seats at the expense of the PNC.
One does not know where the PNC leader got the theory from that the PNC could have done better in March 2020 if its campaign was not that poor. The shape of the PNC’s bandwagon had nothing to do with the results. The PNC got the votes it would have received even if it did not hold meetings and rallies.
The APNU+AFC lost a fair and free election because of policies and lack of performance, not lack of campaign brilliance. Voters after five years rejected the APNU+AFC for a number of reasons, which cannot be elaborated on in one column but here are some brief notes.
First, the school of ministers did not meet the nation’s expectations. The president, his finance minister, his attorney-general were not stellar performers. Secondly, the big names from the WPA that Guyanese thought were great men, who did so much in the 1970s, did not perform either. I dealt with the AFC’s morbid mediocrity above so no need to repeat that.
Thirdly, some policy directions were so horrible; they drove fear into people. How could you have put 42,000 people in economic ruin by dismissing 7,000 workers without finding alternative employment for them? Fourthly, African Guyanese became livid at the betrayal. The marijuana amendment was scuttled. The elevation of the retirement age for public servants was ignored. Wages and salary increases were never a priority.
Fifthly, UG deteriorated under APNU+AFC rule, the state media remained a football, the Sport Ministry was abolished, the Labour Ministry was abolished, all of which contributed to the strengthening of the deep and expanding chagrin of the nation that 2015 did not bring the expected transformation.
The PPP did not have to campaign to win the March 2020 election. The failure of the APNU+AFC provided victory for the PPP. The PNC leader needs to be more analytical. He can do better.
(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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The PNC leader is wrong, dead wrong

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