THE story of the ignominious existence of the WPA and AFC in power between the years 2015-2020 may have no parallel in 20th century politics and in recent memory. Both of these parties were crucial to the acquisition of power by the PNC, but simply accepted their diminution of influence in state power.

It is one of the most tragic stories of politics anywhere in the world. Today, the long, admirable legacy of Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine and Dr. Clive Thomas lies in tatters. Prior to 2015, these two men from the golden age of the 1970s were seen in absolutely positive terms by anyone from around the world who was familiar with the politics of Guyana. The tale of the self-destruction of Roopnaraine and Thomas is one that will make for lugubrious reading because it is so sad.
Few people know it, but Roopnaraine and Thomas were instrumental in forming APNU. It was Roopnaraine that coined the acronym APNU. My friend Leonard Craig was way off mark when in his Tuesday (October 22) column in the Chronicle wrote the following: “He (Granger) is credited with forming APNU.”

I don’t know where Craig got that information from and obviously it was told to him. But it is incorrect. David Granger played no role in the formation of APNU. Granger was involved in the prolonged discussion on a merger with AFC. If space permits, I will touch briefly on that.
The birth of APNU was the work of Robert Corbin, Roopnaraine, and Thomas but Roopnaraine was the major player in the eventual realisation of the PNC joining with smaller parties to form APNU. Minette Bacchus the wife of Lincoln Lewis was the most vocal PNC player that rejected the change of the name PNC, into APNU. Bacchus knew that the idea was the brainchild of Roopnaraine and she severely criticised Roopnaraine for the name changing.
What Ms. Bacchus did not know was that from the 1980s onwards, Roopnaraine had a very close relationship with the PNC.

In 1994, Dr. Josh Ramsammy told me that it was a mystery why Roopnaraine was so close to the PNC. The breakdown of talks behind the opposition parties to form a rainbow coalition and contest the 2011 election as a united party was attributed to Roopnaraine, as explained by Ravi Dev.
Dev asserted that Roopnaraine sabotaged the rainbow coalition (which was to include the AFC also) and instead formed APNU. For more on this, see my column of September 3, 2023, titled “Returning to the political suicide of the MCC in 2023.” Much to his credit, Corbin was prepared to go into the

multi-party formation with all the small parties, including the AFC. But Roopnaraine felt threatened by the eventual outcome and persuaded Corbin to go with the WPA and a few paper parties, which became known as APNU.
Mr. Granger was nowhere in the picture at that time. Mr. Corbin came under the undue influence of Roopnaraine, and maybe the reason for this was the almost invisible relationship Roopnaraine had with the PNC over the decades. The motive for forming APNU was to save the PNC from slow dissolution, with AFC being the Sword of Damocles over the head of Corbin.

Corbin had lost five seats to Raphael Trotman in 2006 and the conclusion was that he was not electable and he should give way to another candidate. With the formation of APNU, the PNC decided to hold a leadership contest. It was Roopnaraine that suggested Granger’s name to Corbin.
Roopnaraine, the quintessential Mulatto/Creole personality in Guyanese society, had a long friendship with Granger, as Roopnaraine explained in an interview with Dr. Dhanpaul Narine in the newspaper, “The West Indian” of September 2017. Here is what Roopnaraine told Dr. Narine: “The President and I go back a long way. We were in the same House in school….” Whenever I think about that quote, my mind flashed back to Walter Rodney’s assassination in June 1980. Mr. Granger was the head of the army at the time.

Mr. Granger was favoured by Corbin, and therefore his fate was settled. He became the head of the PNC and as Opposition leader shared the Office of the Opposition at the junction of Hadfield Street and Avenue of the Republic with Roopnaraine.
This, then, is the story of how APNU was born and the key players involved. Mr. Granger was not part of the planning. Mr. Granger later became intimately involved in preparing talks for a coalition with AFC through constant dialogue with Raphael Trotman the seeds of which were planted at the airport in Nassau, thus the telephone call of Granger to Trotman after APNU+AFC won in 2015: “Raphael, this is Nassau?”