IN OUR yesterday’s edition, we highlighted two stories of much significance in relation to the national security and economic progress of Guyana:

One report focused on President Donald Ramotar’s call at a press conference on Friday for People’s National Congress Leader, David Granger, to use his influence for securing the return to the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) of 155 weapons listed as having been issued to that party during the turbulent political period when Dr. Walter Rodney was murdered by an assassin’s bomb in June 1980. The weapons were never returned.
The President’s call followed reports on the current independent Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the circumstances of the death of the Guyanese patriot and internationally celebrated historian. As Guyanese are aware, evidence presented to the COI have already resulted in a call for former PNC Leader, Robert Corbin, to also be summoned as a witness since he was in the party’s leadership structure at the time the weapons were delivered.
Coincidentally, ex-Brigadier David Granger was then a very senior officer in the GDF which, like the Guyana Police Force, had felt compelled to embrace the doctrine of “party paramountcy” of the ruling PNC, as decreed by then maximum leader, the late President Forbes Burnham.
It is doubtful that Mr. Granger, currently functioning as chairman of APNU and leader of the PNC, would offer a positive response to help in the recovery of the GDF’s 155 weapons that were delivered to the PNC. He, however, has the opportunity to help rescue Guyana from the destructive path the PNC had taken, in partnership with the minority Alliance For Change, by torpedoing the massive $1.3 billion Amaila Fallls Hydropower Project when they callously voted in the National Assembly against the required legislation.
Well, neither the PNC nor the AFC can pretend unawareness of the reaffirmation given just this past week by the Inter-American Development Bank of its commitment to help make this historic economic transformation project a reality.
It is not childish parliamentary politicking with a no-confidence motion against the Government that Guyanese need but serious commitment for economic transformation and a secure national environment in which the weapons and personnel of our army and police force are in NO WAY contaminated by divisive politics that include illegal deliveries of state-owned weapons and the undermining of public confidence of our law enforcing agencies.
The choice, Mr. Granger is quite clear: You and the party you lead either become a credible partner for national unity and national government or just keep making politics with changing slogans amid increasing signals of a snap general election.