APNU AND THE REINVENTION OF THE PNCR

Dec 08, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The change of name of the PNC to the PNCR represented an attempt at reinventing the party of Forbes Burnham. As part of that process, the later leader of the party, Desmond Hoyte, cultivated a personality cult and aligned himself and the party with prominent, but by no means representative, persons from within the private sector.

This alignment was done for the purposes of image. Hoyte knew that after years of depressing economic circumstances, the Guyanese people wanted change, even if a significant number of them were not keen on that change taking the form of the PPP.

Hoyte understood the need for change and so he projected himself as that change. The PNC moved from asking the Guyanese electorate to “light up your life with Desmond Hoyte” to Hoyte portraying himself as “I am the change.”

In the end, he did not manage to hold on to power and his party lost the elections in 1992 after scores of his supporters accustomed to the PNC gaining a majority without popular support, failed to register to vote. Despite this fact, the PNC gained more votes in percentage terms in 1992 than APNU did in 2011, effectively parodying the idea that APNU did well in the 2011 elections.

After the 1992 elections, Hoyte attempted another reinvention of his party by entering into an alliance with a Reform component of mainly business people and professionals, similar to what the PPP had done with the Civic.

That alliance eventually was formally incorporated in the party which re-titled itself as the PNCR. The REFORM component had pulled off a major coup by catapulting itself into the old PNC structure.

There were many persons within the leadership of the PNC who were not comfortable with Hoyte surrounding himself with persons who were not traditionally card-bearing members of the PNC. But Hoyte had his own internal problems and needed to create a party machinery that would be loyal to him. He more or less was able to do this.

Over time however, and especially after his death, many of the business class members who can come on board began to go their separate ways and so the PNCR more or less entered the 2006 elections without a strong Reform component.

However, the showing of the PNCR in those elections had little to do with the weakened Reform and more to do with the attitude of the traditional supporters of the PNC to the leadership of the party and what they perceived as the party’s general ineffectiveness.

By the time the 2011 elections came around, the party again saw the need to reinvent itself and it did so under the umbrella of APNU, which is supposed to be an open partnership but which has failed, like the Reform component did, to attract any grouping or party with significant electoral support.

The partnership was in effect seen more as another reinventing of the PNCR. It did create that aura of a different party with the partnership having its own colours. Today the green shirts and jerseys, without the logos, are still popping up at demonstrations which indicate that people still identify with the reinvented grouping.

The constant reinventing of the former PNC is however bound to undermine the traditional values and beliefs of the former self-professed vanguard party. How is the present PNCR, different from what existed under Hoyte or for that matter under Burnham? And how can the PNCR avoid undermining its traditional values and beliefs when at each election it has to reinvent itself.

The PNCR needs to redefine itself not reinvent itself. It needs to state where it stands ideologically and the nature of its relationship with the business class. There is a view that the business class has been able to peddle a disproportionate degree of influence both with the PPPC and the PNCR. The PNCR may be better advised to return to begin PNC, restore its identity as a working class party and refuse to accept massive donations from the bourgeois class.

The constant need to reinvent itself increases the risk of the PNCR losing its political identity. This is the real danger that APNU presents to the PNCR. And after what happened after the 2020 general and regional elections, there is bound to be major fallout from both the PNCR and the PPPC.

There is therefore only one way in which the PNCR can redefine itself. It should restore itself as a socialist party, fighting to replace legally and democratically a PPPC government which is neo-liberal in orientation and which is tied to the bourgeois class.

That appears the only hope which the PNCR has to redeeming itself after the debacle of Marcy – August 2020.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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