IS THE PARTY OF FORBES BURNHAM STILL AROUND?
May 10, 2013, By KNews, Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
APNU is going to hold solid for some time yet. The fractures that have developed in the wake of the deferral of the award by the South African government to Forbes Burnham are not serious enough to undermine the partnership, if that is what it can be called.
APNU remains quintessentially the PNC cobbled with the remnants of the WPA and a few relatively unknown political groupings. None of these groupings were ever able over the past ten years to win a seat, contesting individually, at general elections.
In fact, the once formidable WPA had resorted to acting like a political leech, surviving by attaching itself to other parties, as it did firstly with GAP and now with the PNCR.
With APNU having such weak partners, the PNCR the main party in the partnership, is likely to remain the most dominant political force in APNU and whatever fallout exists over the issue of the deferred award to Forbes Burnham would be inconsequential, because the WPA has reduced itself to a party of little consequence.
That is a sad indictment of what can happen to a party which, in trying to reorganize after the Burnham regime’s murderous forays, abandoned its traditional militancy which had so distinguished it during the period of The Great Civil Rebellion of 1978-1980.
The WPA is now rebelling against itself. But that is a story for another day. For now, it has sufficed itself in sucking egg from off the table of APNU which is dominated by the PNCR. At least in name, that is, because one has to seriously question what has happened to the R in the PNCR and whether what we have now is even the PNC.
The R in the PNCR came about because of Desmond Hoyte’s attempt to remake the party into a more business-friendly outlook. After the PNC lost power, it needed the support of rich businessmen in order to finance itself and its campaigns. The support that the PNC previously enjoyed from the business community quickly evaporated after it lost power.
It still got its envelopes from the usual sources during the campaign period, but it knew that what it received in campaign donations in those envelopes was tokenism. The bigger envelopes were being now being given to the PPP.
In fact, one well-known member of the Committee for the Reelection of the President (CREEP) immediately jumped ship when the PPP came to power. The member has been handsomely rewarded by his PPP friends and continues to be so rewarded. Another member of CREEP maneuvered his way very high up the political ladder. Such is the fickleness of political loyalties in Guyana.
Because of this, Hoyte was forced to become more dependent on a handful of business supporters who essentially bankrolled his party especially during election campaigning.
The working class likes to delude itself into believing that it is important to the survival of political parties. The working class, however, contributes very little to election coffers of political parties. On the other hand it is the powerful business interests that help finance election campaigns and without finances, political parties would stagnate.
As a result of this dependence on these business interests, Hoyte decided that he had to incorporate the business elements within the leadership of his party. This was done through the incorporation of the Reform into the PNC which officially became the PNC Reform, abbreviated PNCR.
The problem that now arises is that the PNCR is about Reform only in name. The Reform that rallied to the side of Hoyte and later around Robert Corbin is no longer around and therefore what we have in essence is really the PNC and not PNCR.
But there are other changes that have taken place within the PNC, which beg the question whether the PNC has not also disappeared and been replaced by a new configuration of veterans.
In fact there is growing speculation that what we have is a completely new party, dominated by new forces who were not part of either the membership or leadership of the pre-2011 PNCR.
Questions are thus likely to eventually be asked as to whether we are witnessing the final days of the PNC and whether, like many associations that exist in Guyana, the once vanguard party of Guyana has not been completely overrun by forces which are not fully familiar with its history and ideological development.
Only time will tell whether the old PNC will resurface, but by the tell-tale signs it looks like APNU is here to stay and once it stays, the WPA may yet find enough oxygen for a rebirth and who knows, even one day end up leading the PNC.