THE political bug bit Robert Herman Orlando Corbin as a teenager in the teeming industrial town of Mackenzie where he was born and grew up. A church going lad, he would nevertheless have been influenced, on the one hand, by the proletarian militancy of the bauxite workers and, on the other hand, by the possibility of upward mobility then being experienced by young African Guyanese in the bauxite industry, of whom Sam Hinds is the best known example. His early and formative years in the 1960s, bearing these contradictory impulses, were marked by the raging struggle against the PPP when a coalition of violent local political forces, with outside help, had gathered together to remove the PPP from office.
On May 25, 1964, events in Robert Corbin’s hometown and its sister communities of Wismar and Christianburg, enshrined them into the annals of Guyanese history at the point when Mr. Corbin was just old enough to learn their lessons. Always a good student, he would have learnt well. His contradictory impulses found a perfect expression in politics where militancy could and did lead to rapid advancement.
Combining social work and political activism in the PNC’s youth arm, the Young Socialist Movement, Mr. Corbin rose rapidly. He was elected to the Executive of the PNC when still in his early 20s. He became a Government Minister and served in a variety of ministerial positions while still in his 30s, including the important Ministry of National Development which worked closely with the PNC to realize its political ambitions, while purporting to serve the nation without bias.
He served as a Deputy Prime Minister for several years. During this time, to those of us in the opposition, Mr. Corbin became a brooding presence, lurking in the corridors of power, hatching schemes to deflect the growing impact of the opposition, bent on intensifying authoritarian rule through a combination of muscle and more inventive forms of elections management. He was an important member of the PNC power structure when the Ballot Box Martyrs, the WPA Martyrs and Walter Rodney were assassinated, when Arnold Rampersaud was falsely charged. Our sense of foreboding intensified when an accusation was made against him. He rode these storms.
It was in 2001 that I first met Mr. Corbin. I joined him as a member of the Elections Commission. The other members expected us to speak for our Parties as we were both leading members. Many times we did not. I had served on the Elections Commission for the 1992 and 1997 elections and thus had some experience. Mr. Corbin’s ‘experience’ of elections – managing or helping to manage PNC campaigns and returning percentages of victory for the PNC in the 70s and 80s – were of a different kind. Little is publicly known about the extent to which the positions of the political parties on election matters are sometimes impossible to argue or to implement. Little is known about the extent to which some Commissioners had to agree to decisions which they knew their Parties had already objected to or were going to object to. Mr. Corbin did so courageously more than once.

I next encountered Mr. Corbin as a Member of the National Assembly. I had the opportunity to observe him at close range for ten years while I was Speaker. He was an able parliamentarian and a skilled debater. Apart from these qualities he was unfailingly courteous. This made it quite difficult for me to limit him or disagree with his arguments. Whenever I did, though sometimes bristling at my decision, he would graciously accept my ruling, not always the case with other members of the House. He always remained privately affable. Of his relations with his colleagues and his internal political conduct and strategies, I know nothing, but have heard a lot in confidence.
Not being endowed with the intellectual powers of his predecessors, or anything close, or similar middle class credentials, and operating from the shadowy corners of the PNC in its traditional conspiratorial whispers, Mr. Corbin could not sustain the PNC’s middle class support which he lost to the AFC in 2006, a devastating blow.
He was accused of abandoning the militancy of the Hoyte years and of letting President Jagdeo and the PPP off the hook. Neither was true. The Hoyte years of street politics had run their course because of his failure to give his supporters a creative vision for the future. Also unable to mobilise the PNCR’s street troops around a positive agenda, the accusations flared against Mr. Corbin. Internecine warfare erupted. Mr. Corbin won because his roots in the PNC’s working class support, where the delegates to Congresses came from, were deep. But he was weakened. He lost the support of several popular and committed cadres.
He was on the way down but only he seemed not to know it. He felt that he had merely to pause and step back in order to recover his lost ground. His brilliant maneouvre of encouraging David Granger forward in order to keep his own career or influence alive is not likely to work though. Mr. Granger is feeling the warm glow from heading a successful campaign and is now testing the waters for a run for Leader of the PNC. He is not Mr. Corbin’s choice.
Was I wrong to believe that Mr. Corbin had political acumen? I ask because if you read the tea leaves when Mr. Granger burst on the scene, it was certainly not the intention that Mr. Corbin be consigned to a back seat or to have no seat. But Mr. Corbin gave up the candidacy. He then gave up a seat in Parliament where the action will be. Now he is giving up the position of Leader of the PNC. He has stepped so far back that, come the PNC’s Congress when he is no longer Leader, he will tumble over backwards, into political oblivion having, on balance, contributed nothing permanent to Guyana’s political culture or development. (www.conversationtree.gy).