– if he is not presidential candidate
PEOPLE’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) leader, Robert Corbin, who announced a few days ago that he will not be the PNCR candidate for next year’s presidential race, issued a statement later that he has not stepped down as party leader, and will retain that office until his elected term limit ends.

Oscar Ramjeet is an attorney at law who practices extensively throughout the
wider Caribbean.
However, some party supporters feel that Corbin may still run as presidential candidate, because in 2006 he also announced that he will not contest the election, but he eventually did and lost to PPP/C leader, Bharrat Jagdeo.

Corbin’s decision not to run for the highest office of the land, if he is serious, will no doubt make it difficult for the PNCR to find a suitable candidate, and it is somewhat ironic that Corbin is the one who caused a serious rift in the hierarchy of the opposition party, forcing challengers, Vincent Alexander, and Aubrey Norton, to quit and Richard Van West Charles, son-in-law of Forbes Burnham, who also served as Minister of Health, to lose interest in competing for leadership of the party which his father-in-law founded in the mid-fifties.

Four party stalwarts, Joseph Hamilton, Hamley Case, Andrew Hicks and Ivor Alleye, who supported Alexander for leadership were also brought up for disciplinary action by the party leadership.

Corbin also forced another challenger, Winston Murray, to quit as party chairman after Murray, representing the PNCR in the absence of Corbin, took a decision on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union, with which Corbin disagreed and later reversed Murray’s undertaking.

Another leadership challenger, Aubrey Norton, also quit the party.

Stalwarts Oscar Clarke, who served the movement since he was a youth, and chairman Cammie Ramsaroop are in their seventies, and might not want to run for the top office, and looking around I cannot pinpoint a suitable candidate other than Winston Murray, who contested the leadership at the last Congress, but was defeated by Corbin. It is regrettable that the opposition party cannot find persons close to former leaders Burnham, Ptolomey Reid, Hamilton Green, Desmond Hoyte, Kenneth King, Rashleigh Jackson, et al.

Corbin said that he stepped aside as it relates to the presidential candidacy so as to allow the party to find a candidate that would have the confidence of not only the PNCR members, but the majority of Guyanese, “given our plan to form a broad alliance with all interested parties who believe in a shared governance approach.”

The PNCR leader pointed out that that the party’s constitution does not require that the party leader must be the presidential candidate. He added, “It is just a matter of history that the past two leaders of the PNCR were presidential candidates… I, too, was eventual presidential candidate in 2006, but it was not mandatory as per the PNCR constitution.”

He called on the party members to unite in order to direct all their energies toward ridding the country of the corrupt and incompetent regime, which he said is “shamelessly discriminating against non-PPP supporters and communities.”

If Corbin really wants to remove the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) from office, he should resign as opposition leader and Head of the PNCR and allow the new leader to concentrate on winning the upcoming local government elections and prepare for the general elections.