–when the PNC hogs over 95% of the parliamentary seats
OLD Kai earnestly believed that with the resignation of Deborah Backer as an APNU Member of Parliament, the leader of APNU, David Granger, would have shown the Guyanese people that this “National Partnership” he boasts about is much more than a front organisation for the PNC/R.I had once described APNU as what you get when the PNC/R puts on its makeup, and Mr. Granger has now proved me right in announcing that he will bypass all those other parties in his “grand coalition of nothing” and select a replacement for Backer from the PNC.
Old Kai was of the opinion that Backer was an APNU Member of Parliament all along, but Granger confirms that it is a PNC thing, and the APNU tag is just a convenient disguise which was effectively used to lure the unsuspecting voters.
In doing so, he inadvertently lets the cat out of the bag and confirms what we have already known, in that from A-PNU, you make a U-turn and you will get A-PNC!
No one can blame them for living up to their name, as they have been trying to get Guyana’s economy to make a U-turn and head right back to the days when Old Kai had to line up eight hours, with a faked PNC party card –- and getting two lashes from a “horseguard”– because I had an exercise book on which I drew two horns on the image of Burnham’s head — just so I can get two “salt-soap”, half-pint coconut oil, and two pints of rice, which I had to pay for, as it did not come free.
Imagine, Old Kai went to jail for a tin of sardine. You can say the PNC really “fish-I-up” back in de days! So, basically, it was APNU that marched on Nomination Day; it was APNU that handed in their Nomination List at City Hall; it was APNU which was on the ballot paper which some misguided people voted for; it is APNU which is represented in Parliament.
However, when it is time to make any decision, in this case replacing an APNU Member of Parliament, this is what the media is reporting: “…while noting that the person would be drawn from the People’s National Congress Reform…Granger added that… ‘we have not identified a replacement as yet; we (PNC) will have a caucus with the party (PNC) leaders, and a replacement will be nominated…We are looking at a list of (APNU)names, and it will be prejudicial to disclose the names, because only one (PNC) can be selected.’”
Further, we are told that Granger himself, and the young lady, Africo Selman, will jointly take over the responsibility of “Shadow Minister of Foreign Relation”.
What these two know about foreign relations? The closest they can come is if they have “relatives overseas”! This man Granger was just recently promulgating measures which would have severely damaged the excellent relations we currently share with neighbouring Venezuela, simply because a handful of their opposition activists in the lead-up to that country’s election wanted some pre-election publicity.
In doing so, we would have lost the main market for our rice industry, and all those farmers who are now smiling all the way to the bank would have been sitting on hundreds of tons of their product and be reduced to financial ruin, as the PNC did to them close to three decades ago.
After wanting to rail up against Venezuela because of a non-existent issue of our border integrity, he then moves full circle and openly announces that they are protecting the interests of Suriname, which has laid claim to the New River Triangle in Guyana’s territory.
In fact, they were so concerned about Suriname that they managed to chase a Brazilian investor out of the country. The company was in the process of doing a survey to map our resources in the area, so we can know exactly what we have there.
Then Granger puts on “one big crying”, because President Ramotar didn’t take him to the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa; and he made one big national issue out of it, to the extent that he almost called for an “independent inquiry” into the matter. This was despite knowing that the Trinidad Prime Minister had chartered a plane and invited regional Heads of State to travel with her.
Granger, as usual, wanted to “pope” the woman’s flight. Can you imagine! President Ramotar turning up in Trinidad and asking Mrs. Bissessar to leave home someone from her official delegation, because he brought Granger, who was crying to come!
But wait just a minute there! Maybe there is something behind Granger’s wanting to become Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister after all! He apparently will use this as justification as to why President Ramotar should tag him along for trips abroad. Maybe this is why they had cut the Office of the President budget in 2012, in an effort to hamper the activities of Uncle Donald. Granger had probably hoped to use this as leverage to force the President to take him on these trips.
Did it work? Well, it wasn’t Old Kai who was crying that he didn’t get to go to South Africa!