Delusions of grandeur became the entrapment where all were lured and consumed

Sep 21, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

Ever since the days of Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan, Guyanese politicians are known for their capacity and tenacity to ‘fight tooth and nail’ to fend off political adversaries, exploit and seek to widen cracks in the ranks of their political opponents and deny them oxygen to survive politically. Also, they are known to win friends and influence people. But their actions, save and except the anti-democratic and perilous episodes, were and continues to be done within the meaning of the Constitution and the laws of Guyana.

Experienced Guyanese politicians know that occasionally, they had to pay keen attention to, and address rifts at the top that had the potential to become politically and organizationally divisive. Their fundamental task was, and has always been to keep the membership united behind settled policies and goals, keeping the base intact, mobilized physically and psychologically; and to have the party machinery always well-oiled and in a state of readiness to successfully contest and to win political power.

Recent political developments in Guyana have shown that long before the September 1, general and regional elections, serious political and tactical differences had emerged at the leadership level of the PNC, the APNU and AFC. The differences had become so untenable, if not irreconcilable, that at a certain point in time, ‘all hell broke loose’. Leading party members began stabbing one of their own in the back risking being stabbed in their own back by the more ambitious ones.

The political fallout seemed temporary, it was a period that could be characterized the Hobbesian way as, ‘nasty, brutish and short’, but as we have seen, it proved unstoppable and far-reaching.

The victims who could bear no more, scattered in different directions within the extant body politick, they sought refuge where they were accepted and felt comforted; while those who wanted to ‘save their skins’ politically, either sat on the fence or faded into irrelevance or nothingness.

The PNC, AFC and WPA instead of being realistic and magnanimous towards each other as erstwhile political allies, chose to spit on each other thus jettisoning any prospect for embracing each other in an electoral alliance. Consequently, egomaniacal hubris, and a narcissistical convictions took over and, as it turned out, it was only a matter of time before the masks fell revealing the pretentiousness and shallow political astuteness of all involved resulting in their disastrous showing at the last election.

With the unprecedented loss of seats in parliament, a mood of disbelief and anger coupled with somatic reactions was felt. Nausea and giddiness accompanied by the pain and apparent insult by WIN to the status of the PNC as a major political force left the party pondering at the crossroads which path it should take to redemption.

Hughes’ resignation was clearly an extension of the fall out. The AFC’s refusal to enter into an electoral alliance with the APNU was at least foolish. Thus, in recompense to the party’s membership Hughes resigned as party leader.

But Norton was himself equally foolish to believe that as helmsman of the APNU, his rickety alliance would be victorious at the polls, more so, since the WPA was more baggage than anything helpful to his party’s cause.

Both Norton’s and Hughes’ unwillingness to meet each other half-way was due to one of two causes, either they hubristically overestimated each other’s own worth or their winnable capacity. By mistakenly unwilling to accept the mutuality in their weaknesses whether due to hubris or to existential repudiation, they both ended up badly beaten, humiliated and shaken in the eyes of their own supporters. At least the WPA was clever enough to hold on to the already tattered skirt of the PNC giving them a seat in parliament.

Like the spider’s invitation to the fly to come into his parlour, delusions of grandeur became the entrapment where all were lured and consumed.

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