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FM
Former Member

Fmr PM says new PNCR executive needs to proclaim an end to rigging

https://i1.wp.com/www.inewsguyana.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/pjimage-17-1.jpg?resize=696%2C392&ssl=1Former Prime Minister Samuel Hinds and former President and current PNC Leader David Granger

Letter to the Editor Issued by former Prime Minister Samuel Hinds

I write this letter as an alternative to, and prompted by the Demerara Waves article of September 27, entitled “New PNCR executive needs to get rid of maximum leader approach”, written by my former Cabinet colleague and still friend, Dr. Henry Jeffrey.

I differ comprehensively and totally with him. I wish he had seen the occasion and opportunity here for getting on to what he has been calling for, getting on the road of “a historical narrative to which we could all subscribe”.

Neither the “decision making” nor the “who is the leader, leader” question is the PNC/R executive’s major problem: it is the question of “what is their business plan, their winning plan?” It ought to be a plan to win elections fairly and squarely: proclaiming an end to rigging: regretting the historical fact that Forbes Burnham and most leaders and supporters of the PNC and latterly, the PNC/R/APNU, succumbed to the argument that rigging was the only way for the PNC/R/APNU to win, and that there could be nothing in the world worse than losing to the PPP/C.

A “Proclamation to End Rigging” would open many wonderful doors for all our people, our country, and most of all those who, for understandably good reasons, support the PNCR/APNU. What a great relief for all of us, some relieved from having to deny and others from being angered in hearing the denials of what are well known.

And take it from me, the PPP/C is not all that bad.

There have been, recently in our newspapers and other media, so many allusions to, explicit references to, and even seeming justifications of the PNC’s historically rigged elections and the rigging narrowly averted last year that the admission inherent in a “Proclamation to End Rigging” would not be an admission to something secret, not known, should not take any skin off of anyone’s nose. It would take a great burden off all of us Guyanese chests, particularly so, I say again as an Afro-Guyanese, the chests of so many of my Afro-Guyanese parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters – who earnestly believed and wanted an opportunity to demonstrate that the PNC/APNU would be good for Guyana.

Our hopes and aspirations may have been noble: we all know and the whole world saw the behaviour of Mr. Mingo, the Region 4 RO. He was a man knowingly facing a subsequent life of ridicule which many would consider worse than death – we must put aside and leave behind us the world view that would have motivated him so.

Our hopes and aspirations were noble, but turning from our Christian foundations of truth and honesty to rigging has been our doom, initiating a slide to group and national disaster. It is timely to deliberately and firmly turn that page – avert the need for our younger people of great potential for our Guyana nation, like Amanza Walton-Desir and James Bond, to go down that same road of make believe on which we have been so long stuck.

It is time to extend new hands of fellowship to our fellow comrades in Guyana, and in the much wider world that is much more one, and in which we must fraternise.

If the story of about twenty years ago has any truth, my former fellow MP Raphael Trotman, then a rising star in the PNC, had the right inclination in his suggestion to former President Hoyte that the PNC/R apologise to our country (and to many of its own supporters). There could and must be a PNC/R/APNU that could and would be good for all Guyanese and Guyana. The new Executive must work at getting there.

Yes, the arguments for rigging did seem so strong to us Afro-Guyanese, to do a little wrong, a little rigging, to avert a greater wrong – the stealing of our entitled birthright of succeeding the departing British colonial masters under whom we had suffered so much, endured so much, and learnt so much. We were ready to take over. Not that we did not recognise Cheddi and his PPP supporters as brothers in the anticolonial fight, but they were younger brothers, recently come, whose time had not yet come – they should wait their turn. And when those sentiments were aligned with the instigations of the Cold War against ungodly atheistic communism, they were irresistible and so deep, given that they also aligned with our self-interest – they are still deep in the bones of many of us, our organizations, and are being transmitted to our new young generation– we must work at dissipating them.

A “Proclamation of an End to Rigging” by the new Executive of the PNC/R would open the door to us all becoming Guyanese first, One People, One Nation with One Common Destiny. One independent nation of less than a million people altogether getting on amongst ourselves, and getting on with the more than seven thousand millions of other peoples in nearly two hundred other nations.

Sincerely,
Samuel AA Hinds
Former Prime Minister
Former President

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New PNCR executive needs to get rid of maximum leader approach

in News, Politics Wednesday, 22 September 2021, 12:30 2 Comments, Last Updated on Wednesday, 22 September 2021, 12:30 by Denis Chabrol, Source - https://demerarawaves.com/2021...mum-leader-approach/

https://demerarawaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/henry_jeffrey-218x300.jpg

Political Analyst, Dr. Henry Jeffrey.

The new People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) executive that would be elected at that party’s next congress slated to be held before year-end should embrace a collective or rotational leadership model instead of the decades-old maximum leadership style, Political Analyst Henry Jeffrey said Wednesday.

Reasoning that the PNCR’s “major problem” has been its decision-making rather than who is the leader, Dr. Jeffrey said it is time to reform its own constitution to get rid of the maximum leader system. Instead, he said the system should be structured to reflect Guyana’s ethnic makeup and  have a collective leadership system. “You can focus on a collective leadership in various ways, still having your maximum leader or you can have a collective leadership in terms of the rotation of leaders over a period of time,” he said on News-Talk Radio Guyana 103.1 FM’s ‘Beat The Clock’ morning programme.

The PNCR’s long-overdue congress is scheduled for late November but no later than December 13, 2021.

Dr. Jeffrey, who had been previously associated with the PNCR, said the leader of that party has always had a history of making decisions with little or no consultation as well as which parties it should coalesce with. Incumbent leader David Granger has been accused of this posture by a number of current executive members, particularly since entertaining two unknown parties under the banner of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU).  “You are definitely setting a process for undermining the party’s strength even as an individual,” he added.

Leader hopefuls Aubrey Norton and Dr Richard Vanwest Charles have said they would like to bring back the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) into the APNU.

He brushed aside the replacement of Mr. Joseph Harmon as Opposition Leader as a priority for the PNCR, instead insisting that the decision-making apparatus has to be first fixed. “If you get that right, well then whosoever turns up to be the Opposition Leader having the cooperation with the entire party behind them, as a party the leadership of which represents the broad make-up of Guyana,” he said.

Mr. Harmon, who had been parachuted rather than elected to the PNCR’s executive, had won the nod by the APNU and Alliance For Change to the post of Opposition Leader. During his recent absence, Attorney-at-Law Roysdale Forde had been performing the duties of Opposition Leader.

The former University of Guyana Political Science Lecturer said a strong and broad-based PNCR Executive is required to reach out to masses and other fora. “What the PNC needs now is to have a process that would put on the ground people to do work that has the backing of the entire country,” he said.

Concerning the importance and relevance of ‘back-channel’ informal communication between the PNCR and the governing People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Dr. Jeffrey said that mode could be used to address log-jams such as the non-recognition of the Irfaan Ali-led administration by the APNU+AFC. “That is useful even at this point in time but, as a consistent political process, ‘back-channel’ would not work because politics have to have levels of transparency, participation; it has to come upfront to make political sense in our times,” he said.

With the PNCR Leader on leave-of-absence, its Chairman Volda Lawrence is performing the functions of leader. Mr. Granger has still been maintaining a quasi public presence through his weekly Public Interest programme.

FM

I am suggesting Sam try to convince the PPP that there be a joint proclamation to end rigging

Editor,

I am penning this short response not because the content of his missive is of much interest but to avoid being disrespectful to my friend, former Prime Minister Samuel Hinds.

Sam said he differs with me because rather than answering the question I was asked by the host in relation to the leadership of the PNC, I should have instead, or  in tandem, taken the opportunity to repeat a contention I have that Guyana needs ‘a historical narrative to which we could all (ethnicities) subscribe’ (SN:29/09/2021).  He claimed that an important element of such a narrative ‘ought to be a plan to win elections fairly and squarely: proclaiming an end to rigging’. Let me suggest that there are many more controversial issues in PPP/PNC historical relations than elections rigging. However, I have also been insisting that both the PNC and PPP should refrain from manipulating elections, and given the fiasco of the 2020 elections, I am suggesting that Sam could try to convince the PPP for there to be a joint ‘Proclamation to End Rigging’.

Second, and more importantly, Sam does appear to have a difficulty with the concept of elections manipulation and/or Guyanese history. The British colonial authority and its international and local supporters were manipulating elections against the PPP long before Forbes Burnham joined their ranks. They were wantonly gerrymandering constituencies, unilaterally changing the electoral system to suit themselves, bribing voters, etc. Remember the PPP’s response to its 1964 elections defeat; ‘cheated not defeated?’

As in 2020, elections are best rigged long before elections day, and this is one of the most important issues the new leadership of the PNC will have to address. Sam is Guyana’s ambassador to the United States and I expect him to use the access that position allows to help to counter all undemocratic and unfair elections maneuvers by any political party in Guyana.

Sincerely,

Henry Jeffrey

Django

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