An attempted satisfaction of the curiosity of David Granger
January 11, 2012 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Brigadier (ret’d) David Granger, expressed a curiosity about the results of the recent national elections. While accepting that APNU did well, he said he was curious about the 130,000 voters who were absent. This article is an attempt at an argument that should satisfy the Opposition Leader’s curiosity.
First, I don’t think Mr. Granger played any role in the non-show of those voters. On the contrary, I think Granger’s presence in the election helped APNU to attract more voters than the PNC did in 2006.
So where did these 130,000 citizens go? From that number, we have to subtract the small percentage who do not normally vote and the 2000-plus Jehovah’s Witnesses. The absentees then can be divided into three categories – PPP, PNC (not APNU) and AFC voters. Each group stayed away for different reasons that have to do with the negative way they perceived each party. We start with the AFC.
It is a miracle how the AFC pulled in seven seats. Maybe it could have got more if over the past five years it had showed its face in Regions Two and Three. It hardly had a presence in those Regions during the election campaign, concentrating more on Berbice. From 2006, AFC failed to capitalize on the declining PNC and the madness that took over the PNC. The AFC simply was not interested in becoming a powerful force in the national consciousness of Guyanese.
Obsessed with thinking that Guyanese love to see their Parliamentarians debate in the House, the AFC saw Parliament as a ticket to a fruitful existence. There were two tragic mistakes in that belief. One is that the Guyanese people long knew that the ruling party had reduced Parliament to a farce. The other was that a dictator was in power that would not have allowed Parliament to get him angry.
In 2011, people who admired the multi-racial womb and the third force’s nature of the AFC felt that the AFC didn’t deserve their vote; that the party might go back in Parliament and do just what it loves to do –get involved in armchair politics. Few AFC leaders are inclined to hold a picket on the street.
This writer is wearing his academic hat at the time of composing this column. When I complete this essay, I will become a political activist again. Against this statement, I make the pronouncement that APNU is the PNC. I do not think that there is any living entity named the Civic Component. The PPP/C is the PPP. APNU is the PNC.
Other analysts who want to fool themselves can do so. APNU as the official organization that contested the election got just over forty percent of the vote. But it could have got much more.
I told Deborah Backer that the President’s libel case helped to galvanize urban African-Guyanese to go out and vote. Still a sizeable percentage of urban Demerara didn’t turn up to ballot for APNU.
The reason is because these absentees knew that APNU was the PNC and were still in their bad mood about what the PNC had become under Robert Corbin. There was no James McAllister. There was no Vincent Alexander. There were others like them who were pushed out of the PNC. Many of the Reform giants did not return to contest the elections like Stanley Ming.
A large group of African-Guyanese punished Mr. Corbin and the PNC for what it had become since 2006. For all the insanities that accompanied the depraved rule of the PPP under Mr. Jagdeo, had there been no David Granger, no new name, no libel case, the party known as the PNC if it had contested the election under that name, would have been devastated, perhaps wiped out.
Mr. Granger needs to know that a not-so-small number of Georgetowners are still annoyed with the old-styled PNC. Now, look at what the PNC did to Aubrey Norton.
There hardly needs to be any discussion on why PPP supporters, among those 130,000 absentees, stayed away. They have broken with a party that they were psychically attached to under Cheddi Jagan. For them, the PPP as they knew it under Dr. Jagan was dead.
Moses Nagamootoo did not have to tell them so. They knew it. But also they saw the death everywhere they went. Corruption had killed Jagan’s PPP. So corrupt had the Guyana Government become that even if a baby was asked what it is about the PPP Government he/she disliked, the baby would have said in baby language - corruption.
January 11, 2012 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Brigadier (ret’d) David Granger, expressed a curiosity about the results of the recent national elections. While accepting that APNU did well, he said he was curious about the 130,000 voters who were absent. This article is an attempt at an argument that should satisfy the Opposition Leader’s curiosity.
First, I don’t think Mr. Granger played any role in the non-show of those voters. On the contrary, I think Granger’s presence in the election helped APNU to attract more voters than the PNC did in 2006.
So where did these 130,000 citizens go? From that number, we have to subtract the small percentage who do not normally vote and the 2000-plus Jehovah’s Witnesses. The absentees then can be divided into three categories – PPP, PNC (not APNU) and AFC voters. Each group stayed away for different reasons that have to do with the negative way they perceived each party. We start with the AFC.
It is a miracle how the AFC pulled in seven seats. Maybe it could have got more if over the past five years it had showed its face in Regions Two and Three. It hardly had a presence in those Regions during the election campaign, concentrating more on Berbice. From 2006, AFC failed to capitalize on the declining PNC and the madness that took over the PNC. The AFC simply was not interested in becoming a powerful force in the national consciousness of Guyanese.
Obsessed with thinking that Guyanese love to see their Parliamentarians debate in the House, the AFC saw Parliament as a ticket to a fruitful existence. There were two tragic mistakes in that belief. One is that the Guyanese people long knew that the ruling party had reduced Parliament to a farce. The other was that a dictator was in power that would not have allowed Parliament to get him angry.
In 2011, people who admired the multi-racial womb and the third force’s nature of the AFC felt that the AFC didn’t deserve their vote; that the party might go back in Parliament and do just what it loves to do –get involved in armchair politics. Few AFC leaders are inclined to hold a picket on the street.
This writer is wearing his academic hat at the time of composing this column. When I complete this essay, I will become a political activist again. Against this statement, I make the pronouncement that APNU is the PNC. I do not think that there is any living entity named the Civic Component. The PPP/C is the PPP. APNU is the PNC.
Other analysts who want to fool themselves can do so. APNU as the official organization that contested the election got just over forty percent of the vote. But it could have got much more.
I told Deborah Backer that the President’s libel case helped to galvanize urban African-Guyanese to go out and vote. Still a sizeable percentage of urban Demerara didn’t turn up to ballot for APNU.
The reason is because these absentees knew that APNU was the PNC and were still in their bad mood about what the PNC had become under Robert Corbin. There was no James McAllister. There was no Vincent Alexander. There were others like them who were pushed out of the PNC. Many of the Reform giants did not return to contest the elections like Stanley Ming.
A large group of African-Guyanese punished Mr. Corbin and the PNC for what it had become since 2006. For all the insanities that accompanied the depraved rule of the PPP under Mr. Jagdeo, had there been no David Granger, no new name, no libel case, the party known as the PNC if it had contested the election under that name, would have been devastated, perhaps wiped out.
Mr. Granger needs to know that a not-so-small number of Georgetowners are still annoyed with the old-styled PNC. Now, look at what the PNC did to Aubrey Norton.
There hardly needs to be any discussion on why PPP supporters, among those 130,000 absentees, stayed away. They have broken with a party that they were psychically attached to under Cheddi Jagan. For them, the PPP as they knew it under Dr. Jagan was dead.
Moses Nagamootoo did not have to tell them so. They knew it. But also they saw the death everywhere they went. Corruption had killed Jagan’s PPP. So corrupt had the Guyana Government become that even if a baby was asked what it is about the PPP Government he/she disliked, the baby would have said in baby language - corruption.
