IN OUR editorial of last July 10, focus was on the political opposition’s ‘credibility factor’ for the coming general elections.
Well, since the nomination of candidates for the November 28 poll, the desperation of both APNU (the rebranded PNCR) and AFC appears more acute, and further underscores the declining credibility of their leadership teams.
Take for example APNU’s presidential candidate, ex-GDF Brigadier David Granger, “rejecting charges that the PNCR had ever been involved in criminal activity.” (Stabroek News report of November 1)
In that same edition of the Stabroek News, ex-Commissioner of Police, Winston Felix, now a candidate for APNU, and clearly on the defensive about his competence and impartial handling of the criminal epidemic during his tenure, was complaining that the Guyana Police Force was “starved” of financial resources.
The Minister of Home Affairs, Clement Rohee, has already dismissed Felix’s claim by pointing to the increasing annual allocations made to the GPF while he was Commissioner.
It is, therefore, reasonable to expect the ex-Top Cop to now respond to the challenge from the PPPC’s presidential candidate, Donald Ramotar, about his reported involvement in a tape-recorded telephone conversation with a then PNCR parliamentarian who is also on the current APNU list of candidates.
That conversation, with PNCR’s Basil Williams at the other end, had occurred during a pretty ‘dark time’ of criminal rampage involving armed gangs operating in rural and urban communities.
So far as ex-GDF Brigadier Granger’s pious rejection of the PNCR’s involvement in ‘criminal activity’ is concerned, it is a poor reflection on his own professional commitment to research, as a stated historian that, for election purposes, he would now clear that party from EVER BEING INVOLVED IN CRIMINAL ACTIVITY (our emphasis). Perhaps its APNU partner, the WPA, should be summoned as a witness, having itself been a major political victim.
On the other hand, from the AFC has come the fulminations of a wannabe-presidential candidate, Moses Nagamootoo, about the ‘fears’ of Guyanese with the PPP/C in government and contending that such fears are greater than under successive regimes of the PNC. What a gross insult to ALL thinking Guyanese, irrespective of political affiliations.
Frustrated by his own politicking, but desperately anxious to whip up emotions in the election campaign, this now very bitter former stalwart of the PPP has made the astonishing but unsupported claim that the late President Cheddi Jagan, the party’s patriarch, had promised him to be a presidential candidate.
Anyone familiar with the integrity of Dr. Jagan and the functioning of the governance system of the PPP would clearly dismiss with contempt this claim by Nagamootoo. It seems that as his bargaining chip for a top spot, within the first four or five on the AFC’s list of candidates, Nagamootoo had to commit himself to engaging in as many distortions and abuse, and as much slander as possible against the PPP.
At least, he has already been identified for a vice-presidency in an AFC government! Talking about the counting of chickens before they are hatched? Then, welcome to the AFC for the November 28 poll.
Further, when compared with the shabby exposure this party has been giving to Richard Van West Charles, formerly of the PNCR, it must make more than a few wonder whether the ex-Health Minister and a son-in-law of the late President Forbes Burnham should have bothered to become so involved with the AFC in the first place?
Nevertheless, while both APNU and AFC share common enmity for the PPP/C, they are still sparring over their respective claims of ‘ground support’, the electoral base they think they have, as Guyana moves closer to voting day on November 28.