WHEN WE editorialised in last Sunday’s edition on “APNU’s leadership problem”, we did not realise how really acute, and for Guyana’s future, quite dangerous this ‘problem’ really is under the watch of retired GDF Brigadier David Granger.

For a politician driven by a seeming obsession for control of state power, Granger must surely be aware of the folly by previous PNC leaders in not appreciating that such power must appropriately, democratically and constitutionally be derived from the Guyanese people at verified free and fair elections in the interest of stimulate national cohesion and economic progress in a stable environment.
Mr. Granger should realise that the Guyanese people are not prepared to continue being used as political fodder whenever the PNC, by whatever new name, chooses to engage in race-based and extra- parliamentary politics that also reflect contempt for key state institutions and agencies. 
No, sir, Guyanese have simply come too far since October 1992 under the governance banner of the PPP/C, much too far in laying a solid foundation for continued social advancement and economic growth to go recklessly backward rather than refreshingly forward.
When the bell rings for what now increasingly seems inevitable—new general elections—Mr. Granger and his fellow opportunistic power dreamers in the AFC, are destined to find out the folly of their current dangerous obsession to get President Donald Ramotar to remove Mr. Clement Rohee as Minister of Home Affairs.
APNU, under Granger, and AFC under Khemraj Ramjattan, lost their joint battles against Rohee in various fora, not the least being the court and parliament, as well as before the independent high-level Commission of Inquiry into the Linden political crisis that was spawned by the two parties.
Yet, in the absence of ANY serious alternative approaches for democratic governance with documented social and economic progress in a stable climate, APNU’s Granger and Ramjattan’s AFC on Friday chose to engage in unprecedented, childish and dangerous behaviour in parliament by voting AGAINST a most significant piece of legislation designed to combat trafficking in arms being used by criminals to kill, rob and generally create instability and fear.
Having misused their combined votes in the parliament, where they share a majority of ONE, to deny passage of this much needed legislation to better enable the battle by the security forces against rampaging criminality, APNU’s Granger was to make this pathetic boast:
“Whatever the merit of this legislation”, he said, “it would not be approved by the parliament as long as it is piloted by this Minister of Home Affairs…We took this action to demonstrate to the Executive, (read President Ramotar), that he (Rohee) is not going to remain there (in that cabinet post).”
What shameless abuse of the votes they had earned from the electorate with expectations of matured political behaviour to help improve governance! How more confusing and politically clumsy could the APNU/AFC anti-government coalition get?
What kind of political experience and learning could have led to that boastful, childish threat by Granger against Rohee?
Surely even a neophyte of our governance system politics would be aware that there is NOT a chance of the Executive President of Guyana EVER removing Rohee, his appointed Minister of Home Affairs, simply to facilitate the destructive politics of an opposition currently immersed in bacchanal behaviour that’s making Guyana a laughing stock among its CARICOM partners and beyond.
But there is more political hilarity. Even as Granger was bragging about his political game plan, his erstwhile on-and-off partner, Ramjattan, was signaling to the media the likely unfolding of a strategy by his own AFC initiating a bill similar to what Minister Rohee had presented and which the opposition voted against.
As reported by another segment of the local media, Ramjattan has indicated that the AFC “may very well bring back this bill to parliament for approval. It is,” he concurred, “a good bill, but the wrong minister who we have no confidence in…”
Question for independent and right-thinking observers must be: Are these guys (APNU’s Granger and AFC’s Ramjattan) for real…can they be really serious in thinking that having voted against the bill to combat gun-trafficking, they can now return to parliament with similar legislation, approve it and have it assented to by the President for enactment into law? What a horrible exercise in political farce!
On the one hand, APNU’s Granger cannot get Ramjattan’s AFC to support political chastisement of Speaker Raphael Trotman (former AFC leader) for his recent historic ruling that endorsed Minister Rohee’s constitutional right to speak and be heard in parliament.
On the other hand, Ramjattan, acting like an equal ‘joker in the pack’, thinks he would be clever in seeking to present similar legislation as Rohee did, as a legitimate and quite experienced cabinet minister, with the intention, as also envisaged by APNU’s Granger, of securing assent by President Ramotar.
If this is not political clowning, not only at the expense of a democratically elected government committed to the consultative process, but the Guyanese nation as a whole, then perhaps it’s high time for preparations to be advanced for already anticipated snap general elections.
The Guyanese nation should not have to suffer much longer the unpredictable behaviour of what’s being offered as “leadership” by APNU’s Granger and AFC’s Ramjattan.