Should the PNC leader recall this man from GECOM?

Apr 13, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News –At the beginning of March this year, the WPA issued a statement carried in the Guyana Standard in relation to the controversy over who should be the leader of the Opposition. In that statement, the WPA referred to the APNU as non-existent. When I read it, I thought maybe, it was a misquote. So I read it again. Here are the words: “The APNU is a non-working organisation. The APNU exists in name only, and so the issue before us is not an APNU issue, the issue before us is a PNC issue and the PNC has to solve it… for all intents and purposes, the APNU is dead.”
The WPA’s statement came at a time when there were and are burning questions about the actual existence of many entities that refer to themselves as national organisations. If the APNU is a non-existent body, then what makes it such and can the criteria you use to explain its lack of life be applied to other social and political organisms in this land? One must start with the organisation itself that makes that claim against the APNU, that is, the WPA.
Can the sociologist that studies Guyana describe the WPA as a functioning entity? What makes a political party a real thriving entity? First, it has to have a structure. This is fundamental to every living group. There must be a leadership in which roles are clearly demarcated. The traditional pattern is leader, deputy leader; chairman and deputy; general secretary and deputy; treasurer and public relations functionary; an executive body ranging from 10 or 15 to 30 or 40; office with a secretariat, etc.
This infrastructure is guaranteed a future through membership which maintains the leadership’s functionalism through elections. The election is done through periodic congresses. The stronger a party becomes its infrastructure undergoes extension. Added would be party sub-offices in different parts of the country.
For over 40 years, the WPA has not held a congress and back then those who were referred to as party leaders were simply just described as such. Not one journalist, not one politician in the major parties, not one police officer in Guyana knows who the formal leader of the WPA is and the names of its executives. This state of affairs has been going on for over 40 years.
Just who are these people? How many are they? Where can they be located? Two names crop up all the time whenever letters are sent to the press in the name of the WPA – Tacuma Ogunseye and David Hinds. No political party in any country has a leader that lives outside the country. In fairness to David Hinds, he has never once referred to himself as the leader of the WPA. We can safely say then that Hinds is not the leader. Who is the leader of the WPA and if there isn’t one, what is the shape of its hierarchy?
How many persons are inside the hierarchy? There is no point prolonging this discussion. The WPA like APNU exists in name only. But the WPA has trapped itself. Here is what the WPA told Guyana Standard: “Now that Mr. Granger is no longer the PNC Leader, the logic is: the PNC has the right to name somebody else in the position of Leader of the Opposition and the PNC will have to decide whether it will name Mr. Harmon or Mr. Norton or whomever else…That is the PNC’s business.”
Now if Mr. Granger is gone and there is a new leader who has to make choices, then the WPA has to give Mr. Norton a chance to select who he wants to be GECOM commissioner because it was Mr. Granger that selected Desmond Trotman. And Trotman’s party, the WPA is living with the same curse as the APNU – non existence.
Society should debate Mr. Trotman’s fate based on the logic of the WPA. If Granger is no longer leader, if APNU does not exist, if because Granger is no longer head of the PNC and APNU, the new PNC leader must have latitude and jurisdiction to make choices, then what about Mr. Granger’s appointment of Mr. Trotman to GECOM? You cannot argue that Harmon’s fate should have been decided by the new leader of the PNC and not Trotman’s. Both were appointed by the former PNC leader.
Finally, if APNU no longer exists, the WPA is dead and AFC is dying then surely the state of affairs in the opposition is woeful. This explains why some non-existent groups calling themselves national organisations are thinking of filling the void. But if they do so, we are back to square one – they too are non-existent. So who is alive in Guyana?
(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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