Untergang: The story of David Granger

May 03, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I like the word untergang the first time I saw it. I don’t know why. I think it was because I believe that the German movie with that title is perhaps the best film on Adolph Hitler ever made. Untergang means downfall.
To trace the untergang of David Granger will take several columns and those columns have already been done on this page through several articles spread over a six-year period. So why do another one? This analysis here centres on some of the things he did since he lost power in August 2020 that made Mr. Granger an interesting study for researchers.
Two facts are there to support the argument that Mr. Granger was pressured to leave the PNC’s leader position. During the leadership contest between Harmon and Norton, there was (1) – no resignation letter. (2) – he did not put on paper that he was retiring or stepping down. The way Mr. Granger left office needs researching. In which part of the world, there is a party congress going on to choose a new leader and there is no statement from the current head that he is stepping down or retiring?
The way Mr. Granger exited the hierarchy of the PNC is one of the most controversial developments in party politics in this country. The five months of election drama was a series of incredible moments. Here were sown the seeds of untergang. We can cite just one example. You are the president of the country and the leader of your party.
An American firm was hired by your party to lobby the American political establishment to convert them to the belief that you won the general election. But you as president and party leader did not know about the arrangement. At that point as the leader of the PNC, the untergang began to take shape. Why?
Two reasons were at work. One is that you lose respect from your membership when you admit you did not know because they feel you are not in control. The other reason is you show you do not have leadership qualities because you failed to discipline the men and women that made that transaction without your knowledge.
As leader of the PNC in opposition, the untergang began to deepen. A leader cannot keep contradicting himself the way Mr. Granger did. As president of the country and head of the PNC, he did this continuously. Let’s stick to his role in opposition.
Mr. Granger justified his exclusion of small party leaders in parliament because he referred to them as paper entities. It had to be a terrible mistake when in the face of that brutal realism, he ignored that very realism and awarded the AFC nine seats equivalent to almost 50,000 votes.
When Mr. Granger made that award, immediately among his executives, there were disappointing voices. The PNC in the 2020 elections had soldiers who were in the trenches for months during the election campaign. When it was over, they didn’t make it to parliament but saw their leader gave nine seats to the AFC.
Any analyst worthy of respect would know that it is doubtful that in that combative campaign, the AFC brought in 10,000 votes much less 50,000. The number of seats to assign the AFC was a matter of intense confabulations in the PNC hierarchy. The consensus including some names close to Mr. Granger was not to give them nine. So why did the AFC get nine? It came out of an intense tete-a-tete with Raphael Trotman.
PNC big wigs were saying that they cannot persuade their leader but someone from another party could do it. The parliamentary choices of Granger for the PNC and his award of nine seats to the AFC was the final act of Granger’s untergang.
Anger had broken out in the PNC’s hierarchy because for the entire year of 2019, the feeling inside the war room of the PNC was that the AFC had become dead meat and its existence would not matter in the final votes of the general election.
It was for this reason in August 2019 during the campaign in Bartica, Harmon knocked the AFC, when on the platform, he embraced Moses Nagamootoo and called him royalty. At the event, Mr. Nagamootoo wore the colours of the PNC and not those of the AFC. This was to send a signal to Ramjattan that the PNC preferred Nagamootoo as the PM candidate.
Long before the PNC and AFC renewed the Cummingsburg Accord in February 2020, the PNC had settled on the rejection of Ramjattan as PM candidate. In September 2020, the AFC got nine seats. It brought about Granger’s untergang.
(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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Untergang: The story of David Granger

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