THE Peoples National Congress Reform (PNCR)  has a very hard row to hoe in the months ahead for the coming national elections in marketing the credibility of its 65-year-old presidential candidate, David Granger, with the promise of an imaginative alternative development strategy for Guyana’s future. Anyone familiar  with the legacy of the PNCR and who have read the appeal for “support” from Granger, the ex-GDF commander now officially wearing a ‘political cap’ as his party’s presidential candidate, would have no difficulties in quickly spotting the dilemma facing the party’s campaign for electoral victory against the incumbent People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).
For a presidential candidate who got the nod at the PNCR’s special convention with  279 votes (a plurality of  15) from a pool of 666 ballots cast, Granger needs to display a measure of  humility when seeking to draw the line against governance by the PPP.
Instead, in a letter pleading for “support for change” with him in the “power saddle”, Granger has displayed a most arrogant attitude as if he has already parted company with the social, political and economic realities of Guyana over the past 18 years of democratic governance by the PPP.
Take this laughable example: “Today, our beloved country is facing a crisis of astounding proportion. The criminal element is routinely terrorizing  citizens and our police force lacks the equipment  and training to adequately deal with this situation…Our current leaders seem unable to handle  the existing challenges…Our citizens are tired of the burden of living in a society where the wealthy prevail while the mass must continue to struggle to make ends meet…”
Even supporters of the PNCR, from the days of Forbes Burnham and  Desmond Hoyte’s leadership in government to the years of leadership provided by Robert Corbin as Opposition Leader must be wondering whether this is the low level quality of election campaigning they would have to contend with as Granger seeks to mock reality by ignoring facts and  our political history of 28 years of misrule under the party he hopes to lead to victory at the coming elections.
Surely Granger is old and experienced enough to know how the PNC had corrupted and destroyed a quality of life in Guyana during its 28 years of maximum leadership rule based on fraudulent elections and gross abuse of state power.
It included that notorious period when President Burnham decreed and terrorized into submission the PNC’s most dangerous doctrine of “party paramountcy” that subjected ALL state institutions and agencies to the demands of that party. Not even the judiciary was spared, while the party’s flag flew from atop the then Court of Appeal building in Kingston.

SHAMEFUL PAST
Both the Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force had to pledge allegiance to the ruling party as Guyanese moved away in a continuing exodus to seek a better life in other countries.
When free and fair elections were restored in 1992 with the return to government by the PPP, the enormity of the challenges of social decay, economic bankruptcy, joblessness, corruption and an entrenched criminal enterprise had to be faced with courage and humility to heal wounds and foster unity
The members of the police force and  army themselves know of the freedom from party political control and the respect they have come to appreciate under administrations of the PPP,  while functioning professionally to beat back a lingering criminal enterprise and ensure Guyana’s national security.
Surely neither Granger nor the PNCR’s leader, Robert Corbin, can really forget how the disciplined forces were shamelessly misused to fulfill the political and social agendas of the party’s 28 years in government. That era is over.
It was a period of organized  communal-oriented violence and political assassinations with victims including the renowned Walter Rodney. The “kick-down-the-door” bandits contributed to the murders and cases of rapes and robberies as they terrorized communities in villages, towns and in Georgetown
To this day .Guyana continues to suffer from that rotten political culture spawned by PNC rule, and manifestations of which had so frighteningly resurfaced during recent years across our village communities.
Surely the PNCR’s Granger, who also markets himself as a ‘historian’, cannot forget all of these developments or want the Guyanese people to believe that he is really ignorant of repeated acts of political subversion of the nation’s security forces with the GDF being a specific target.
The harsh reality is that without the offer of a sincere apology to the Guyanese people for what the PNC did to this country during 24 years of blatantly stolen power, its presidential candidate for the 2011 elections, and the party as a whole, should understand that no amount of “sweet talk”; nor opportunistic promises and repeated  falsehoods by those now pretending to have an alternative model of development for this nation can hope to succeed.
The PEOPLE will decide based on  the FACTS  of the widespread progress that has fundamentally transformed Guyana’s social and economic landscape.