I’ve made up my mind about David Granger
There is no question in my mind; David Granger is going to end his first term without any serious confrontation with at least one of the many Sisyphean stumbling blocks that impede our progress to development and which have eluded most previous presidents.
There is no question in my mind that David Granger is not the politician that is going to transform this country’s troubled sociology, weak economy and dispirited political culture.
I believe he is going to end his first term without even the remotest of suspicions of financial wrong-doing.
His approach to money is beyond reproach. He is not a corrupt politician; he is financially honest. But I don’t think he is politically straightforward. It may be too harsh to say he is politically dishonest but if that is said about him I don’t think it would be completely untrue.
There are three incidents by which I have judged David Granger. There are others but for me these three stand out of which one is personal. If it is personal, then I am writing about the way I feel because I was involved. Before I elaborate on the three negatives, I should clear the air by asserting my position on the June 2015 back-pay.
I will not blame him for that. It is possible the APNU+AFC teamed up on that conspiracy and he felt that it was a decision of 99 percent of his Coalition partners so strategically he could not have abrogated the increase.
Of the three I will begin with his approach to the words, “and any other fit and proper person.” What he did there was a serious retrograde step that has tremendous negative consequences for the consolidation of constitutional accountability by the presidency.
If Mr. Granger can reject one of the simplest meanings of some words in the constitution, then there is no guarantee that Mr. Granger will uphold constitutional delineations.
Even when the Chief Justice promulgated the meaning of those words, he responded by saying that it’s her interpretation. That reaction in itself is a rejection of the acceptance that judges’ pronouncements have to be obeyed whether from the first stage of High Court up to the CCJ.
If a judge ruled that all road signs must be light in colour and pink is not a light colour, if the decision is upheld by the final court of appeal, then the country must accept that pink cannot be used on signs.
The second error was his approach to the WPA. It did not look good for one of your partners in government telling the nation the president did not consult them on two issues and the president saying he did. I am referring to the selection and removal of Dr. Roopnaraine as Education Minister.
Strategy should have compelled Mr. Granger to act differently because the thinking naturally to come out of the AFC is if he can treat the WPA like that, why he wouldn’t do the same to us; after all the WPA was a priceless role in the formation of APNU. I think on both of these misdirected pathways, Mr. Granger did not care about the political fallout.
Finally, the personal one which has left the bitter taste of chagrin in my mouth because I feel Mr. Granger was personally insulting to me. His refusal to even deal with the issue in a subtle and diplomatic way tells me a lot about the politics of this man. I have referred to this impasse several times in my columns. I am not promising this entry here will be the last. I expect Mr. Granger to address the situation of his accusatory press release against me.
At an official AFC press conference, Raphael Trotman was taped telling the media that Mr. Granger, personally, in his capacity as President, appointed three ministers on his own outside of the stipulations of the Cummingsburg Accord. Mr. Trotman was unambiguous in his semantic descriptions.
Trotman said all three choices came from within the hierarchy of the AFC without the AFC’s input. He named the President’s son-in-law as one. Mr. Trotman is on tape telling the media; “We are the three extras.”
Any commentator would have picked up on that revelation. I did. The Office of the President reacted by issuing a press release accusing me of creating mischief in the relevant column and completely leaving out any mention of Trotman. I think that was deliberate and dishonest. All I did was to transmit to my column the words of Trotman. It was reckless to accuse me of mischief because some lunatic supporter of Mr. Granger could have harmed me.
