IN Party politics, as the saying goes, all things are possible. Even so, it appears that ahead of the coming May 11 national elections, leader of the main PNCR and chairman of APNU, Mr. David Granger, may have lost his political compass. Consequently, he is now fumbling along, seemingly with dwindling influence, to rescue a floundering APNU, launched for the 2011 elections and which remains stuck with largely the same “leadership” elements, among them today’s miniscule WPA leader, Dr. Rupert Roopnarine.
In the face failed efforts by APNU, of which Granger is chairman and Khemraj Ramjattan’s minority Alliance For Change to forge a pre-election anti-PPP front for the May 11 elections, the retired GDF Brigadier has now come up with the curious idea of launching his party’s election campaign on February 20 to coincide with the birth anniversary of the late President Forbes Burnham.
Whatever the personal or political discomfort for the WPA’s Roopnarine, against the backdrop of the ongoing Commission of Inquiry into the assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney, there must also be consternation among once solid PNC activists and advocates for change that APNU’s Granger thinks it politically correct in 2015 to link the official launch of the party’s elections campaign with the late President Burnham’s birth anniversary.
Let’s face it, while there were sharply contrasting personal and political qualities to their leadership and achievements, both late Presidents Burnham and Dr. Cheddi Jagan would forever be recalled as national heroes of Guyana.
However, considering the various documented national, regional and international reports on successive crooked national elections that sustained approximately 25 years of one-party rule by the PNC, most of it under Burnham’s leadership, and including the period when David Granger was comfortably settled in the top ranks of the GDF, why has he chosen to recall the ghost of electoral riggings by launching APNU’s 2015 elections campaign with the birthday of the late first Executive President of Guyana?
Incidentally, was this one of the decisions floated at the recent meeting at which the APNU leadership was “empowered,” as reported, to dialogue with Ramjattan’s dwindling AFC for an anti-PPP coalition front in time for the May 11 elections? How amusing; how pathetic!