THE People’s National Congress (PNC), throughout its history, has always been a sore loser. Never taking no for an answer when rejected by the majority of voting Guyanese, it has always found ways to claim it was “cheated.”

This behaviour by the only party in Guyana with a long history of allegations of stealing elections was, again, shamelessly patented in 1992 when the PNC claimed it lost.

After 28 unbroken years in government, the party conjured up that it lost not because the majority of voters had decided they had had enough elections stolen, but because of some imagined international conspiracy in favour of Dr Cheddi Jagan and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).

After President Jagan’s death in 1997, the PPP/Civic fielded its next-best candidate, Mrs Janet Jagan. But after Mrs Jagan won fair and square, the defeated PNC refused to accept her ascent to the presidency because she was “not born in Guyana…”

Never mind Mrs Jagan was the longest-serving re-elected member of the National Assembly. After her life-long political partner died, the PNC’s lawyers invented the most ridiculous legal challenges to try to reverse the expressed will of the majority. And when that failed, the party embarked on a scorched-earth policy of daily and violent street protests.

The PPP and PNC agreed to allow CARICOM leaders to mediate, leading to the Herdmanston Accord that proposed a ‘Term Limit’ scheme, whereby future elected presidents could serve only two consecutive terms.

The PPP/C then replaced the aged President Mrs Jagan with the youngest presidential candidate in Guyana’s history, Mr Bharrat Jagdeo, who brought home the elections bacon twice in succession.

Resulting from the ‘term limit’ provision, Mr Donald Ramotar was selected by the PPP to lead the party into the 2011 general and regional elections. Mr Ramotar won the presidency in 2011 and succeeded Mr Jagdeo as President. The PNC-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) held an unprecedented one-seat parliamentary majority from the opposition side of the House.

President Ramotar survived his five-year term. The PNC-dominated APNU+AFC would win the general and regional elections in 2015 without complaints from the PPP/C.

The PNC-led APNU+AFC’s internal combustions and the David Granger administration’s failure to offer Guyanese any positive hope for the future (despite oil being discovered under their watch) made victory for the coalition in 2020 unlikely.

But when the expected happened, the sore losers refused to accept the electorate’s rejection, claiming the PPP/C (in opposition) had conspired with the Elections Commission to ‘steal’ its victory.

During the five long months they attempted to cling to the offices they lost, PNC spokespersons claimed they had copies of official Statements of Poll (SOPs), indicating where and how they had been cheated. But to this day (all of two years later), the SOPs have remained concealed from the public’s eye — likely elements of the PNC leadership’s wild imagination.

Unable to provide one scintilla of evidence to support its latest laughable claims of being cheated out of office, the PNC again resorted to the usual griping, while latching on to any and every availed or created opportunity to repeat and replay its never-ending 2020 electoral last post.

Another such opportunity came in the recent unfortunate events at Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara (ECD) where a genuine cause was hijacked by the PNC and turned into a ‘race’ issue that involved looting and clear racial attacks on bystanders, largely because of perceptions of political persuasion—so designated by PNC henchmen because of the texture of their hair.

The PNC continues scraping its ever-dwindling barrel of support by touting the usual allegations of racial discrimination. But such continuing incitement by always-sore losers will not achieve the PNC’s objective of dividing Guyanese at a time when racial harmony has never been as clearly demonstrated such as now under yet another PPP/C administration.

This is particularly at a time when President Irfaan Ali’s government is delivering, every day, the most goods to most Guyanese than at any time in the nation’s history.