WHATEVER THE FACTOR or factors that led him to commit his most surprising faux pas, Carl Greenidge, a long-serving and quite experienced public official can hardly be excused for the self-inflicted damage he has done to himself by his recent unprovoked and totally unwarranted vicious attack on the Government of Guyana. When news started circulating about Greenidge being one of the likely nominees as Presidential candidate for the opposition People’s National Congress (PNC) next year, the surprise was much greater than the earlier disclosure that David Granger, of Guyana Defence Force (GDF) fame, was among those being supported by the party’s leader, Robert Corbin, for such a prized nomination.
Granger, after all, had long been suspected as having strong political ambitions, even before the passing of President Hoyte. On the other hand, Greenidge had served as Hoyte’s Finance Minister and was quite defensive of PNC governments’ policies and programmes.
A former Deputy Secretary-General of the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc of states, he later became one of the senior officials of what previously existed as the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) and now known as Office of Trade Negotiations (OTN), directly accountable as one of the major agencies of the CARICOM Secretariat here in Guyana.
During his years as an international and regional official, there is not known to have been ANY public personal criticism against Greenidge by the Guyana Government.
It, therefore, came like a shot in the dark when Greenidge chose to make a most reckless verbal attack on the Guyana Government while still in the employ of the OTN, an agency of the CARICOM Secretariat, currently involved in sensitive trade negotiations with foreign governments.
According to the media reports, Granger was busy seeking support in the USA to win the PNC’s Presidential nomination, while Greenidge was at home eulogising the passing of the laudable Winston Murray.
In the process, and seemingly anxious to impress his backers within the divided PNC camp over the choice of a Presidential candidate, Greenidge decided to launch a verbal broadside against the Guyana Government that could well have also shocked professional colleagues with whom he once worked.

Nonsensical outburst
Greenidge, who was involved with the PNC administration of Hoyte until I992, when the People’s Progressive Party returned to power at the first free and fair elections after twenty-four years, came forward with the following outburst:
“Guyana can, and with visionary leadership, be lifted from the nightmare in which it finds itself…:”
Guyana a nightmare? What kind of thinking, what sane, objective assessment could have resulted in such a nonsensical claim from one who surely must know differently.
We started out by charitably equating Greenidge’s quite unscientific, vicious verbal swipe as a ‘faux pas’. on reflection, he may yet come to realise how very wrong he has been; how untidy and absurd his thinking to have engaged in such vituperation.
Expectedly, the government reacted by questioning, in correspondence forwarded to the CARICOM Secretariat, Greenidge’s ‘offensive’ statement but, quite wisely, steered away from calling for sanctions against him.
The Secretary-General of CARICOM, Edwin Carrington, was to quickly offer a response to media questions, by stating: “I don’t know that there is any sanctionable action that one would necessarily be taking in a contract which ends in another week…”
Carrington, who himself demits office at yearend after I8 years as Secretary-General, has pointed out that Greenidge’s contract was one of several that would terminate this month-end.
The question, then, is whether Carl Greenidge deliberately chose to engage in a foolish political exercise by his unwarranted and unprovoked attack on the Government of Guyana?   
Is this sort of immature, emotional campaigning the Guyanese people are to expect from the PNC in its search for a suitable Presidential candidate for next year’s general election?