Jagdeo is breathing new life into the PNCR

May 28, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – The PNCR has a new savior. And it is from an unexpected quarter: the PPPC. The PNCR is getting a little help. And it is not from a friend but from Bharrat Jagdeo.

The PNCR owes much to Bharrat Jagdeo. It should publicly thank him for what he has been doing in granting the PNCR a political revival.

The PNCR is the major and only substantive force within the APNU. It attempted to benefit from rigged elections and then shamefacedly tried to pretend that it has won the 2020 general and regional elections. When that attempt failed, it claimed that the dead and migrant voted and later claim that the Americans installed the PPPC regime.

In previous elections, the PNCR was able to escape sanction for its political gymnastics. But in the 2020 elections, the world was present in the form of observers and exposed the barefaced attempt to benefit from rigged elections.

As is evident from the recent defections, it has suffered to the PPPC, the PNCR did suffer that fallout is now being mitigated by of all persons the General Secretary of the PPPC, Bharrat Jagdeo.

Since the elections, the PNCR has been wracked by internal divisions. The subsequent exposure of massive wrongdoing while in government has further weakened the PNCR to the point where it appeared that it may not have been able to field candidates for next month’s local government elections.

But guess who has come to the rescue of the PNCR? None other than Bharrat Jagdeo! Over the past few weeks, the PNCR has been given a new lease of life because of the obsession that Jagdeo has with the PNCR’s leader, Aubrey Norton.

The PNCR was an utterly discredited party as local government elections approached. It did not appear to be keen on contesting the local government polls and in fact has done things which suggest it would rather these elections were not held. The party’s credibility further nose-dived following its role in a raucous within the National Assembly.

The PPPC appeared to be cruising to an overwhelming victory. But the PPPC was also coming under fire for its mismanagement of the oil and gas sector and its return to the methods and schemes which had been responsible for its electoral demise in 2015.

Unable to keep its critics under wraps, the PPPC launched a massive public relations (PR) counter-offensive. It has wooed and recruited a number of persons to be part of this PR blitz. But the truth has proven to the PPPC greatest nemesis and it has been unsuccessful in its counteroffensive.

The PPPC since 1997 has always been thin-skinned to criticism. And when the APNU opted to host weekly press conferences, the PPPC’s General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo, opted to host a weekly press conference to respond to everything said by the APNU at its press conference.

The local media is being obsequious to these weekly shenanigans. They allow themselves to have to sit for a few hours every Thursday from 2 PM to listen to Jagdeo rant and rave at everything and anything said at the APNU’s earlier press conference.

Jagdeo is so politically inept that he does not realize that by holding a presser, in response to one hosted a few hours earlier by the Aubrey Norton that he is unwittingly giving more attention and publicity to the PNCR than is deserving.

Jagdeo by his obsession with Norton is granting a new lease of life to the PNCR. He attacks everything and anything that the PNCR leader says and in so doing he is making the PNCR leader appear more important than is necessary.

In the meantime, while Jagdeo is fixated on Norton, the latter has outfoxed him. Jagdeo was hoping to humiliate the PNCR at the local government elections. In 2018, the PPPC secured more than 60% of the total votes cast at the local government polls. Jagdeo may have been hoping to increase this to 70% this year.

But that is not going to happen because the PNCR has decided to not compete in almost 300 unwinnable constituencies. This decision hands these seats to the PPPC but at the same it will decrease the total votes for the PPPC since there will be no voting in these PPPC strongholds. The PPPC will have to look at another metric to showcase its dominance on the 12^th. It can no longer expect to win 60 plus percentage of the total votes cast.

Norton outfoxed Jagdeo again last Thursday. The PPPC General Secretary was readying himself to throw another tantrum at whatever Norton said at the APNU’s press conference. But Norton went to Mahdia and left Jagdeo scrambling for material at his press conference.