ONE of the theories in current Guyanese political sociology is whether the PNC could have survived after the death of Burnham. Could such a theory be outlined and an argument put on the table with plausible content? An older political theory that preceded the one under discussion here is that the WPA could not have survived after the assassination of Walter Rodney.

That perspective proved to be correct. From the 1980s onwards WPA drifted from one form of coalition to another. The list included Ravi Dev’s Roar Party to the paper organisation, Guyana Action Party. There was one small period in the 1980s when the WPA sought to be relevant and that was during an all-party unity talks with a consensus candidate to contest the 1992 elections. But even in these circumstances, the WPA was less effective in the confabulation than the PPP and GUARD.
The PPP won the 1992 election, offered the WPA a lifeline with Clive Thomas as the Minister of Finance; the WPA rejected it and from there on the WPA moved on with existential threats hanging over its head, and that threat finally killed off the WPA when it secured power in a coalition with the PNC.

It was the final moment in 2015. The WPA was literally humiliated in government between 2015 and 2020 ending its life with the ignominious acceptance that permanent power is a better alternative to free and fair elections, a precious value that it fought for from 1974 when it was born to 1992.

Is Guyana seeing the end of the PNC because Burnham is gone, and since he was the PNC and the PNC was him, there can never be the PNC without him? That theory could be plausibly argued. Robert Corbin shared the sentiment that for the PNC to survive it will need to sink its identity under a new formation.
Before we come to Corbin, note on Desmond Hoyte. His presidency was doomed from the beginning because he faced two insurmountable hurdles. He rigged the 1985 elections and that galvanised the world against him. To save the PNC he had to rebirth it. He was not interested in that. He was interested in saving Guyana using the presidency.

This brings us to the second insurmountable pathway. To save Guyana, he had to rely on foreign government and multi-lateral global agencies whose economic agenda was anti-people. The creation of the World Bank, the IMF and GATT (later WTO) was never to propel the former colonies into independent economic models but to subordinate them to neo-liberal capitalism.

So these entities imposed The New Economic Recovery on Hoyte. He accepted it and the result was the devastation of the poorer sections of the society, the African population and the PNC as the ruling party. Tyrone Ferguson’s book, “Structural Adjustment and Good Governance: The Case of Guyana” remains the scholarly authority on how Hoyte and Carl Greenidge almost derailed the future of the PNC. Ironically, the same Greenidge contested the leader position of the PNC.
Hoyte died. Corbin succeeded him. But Corbin never enjoyed the support of the African majority in Guyana who were historically PNC supporters. His tenure was riveted with guerrilla warfare to the point where he arrogated to himself the authority to change the face of the PNC without consultation with his peers. The infighting under Corbin was so intense that Corbin under the undue influence of Rupert Roopnaraine subsumed the PNC under the formation named APNU.
The PNC under its new leader, David Granger, was a disaster when in government. Granger knew absolutely nothing about politics, didn’t know how to run a government and ran the government underground. When the PNC lost government in 2020, no former PNC bigwig in the APNU Government wanted to show their face in PNC constituencies.

PNC supporters were so depressed that they stayed away from the congress, giving Norton leadership without a majority vote. In no period of the PNC’s existence has the PNC stood so close to the precipice as under Norton’s leadership. One disaster after another has visited the PNC under Norton to the point where the disasters have merged into one tsunami that has drowned Norton.

The end will come if Norton contests the 2025 election as PNC leader and as the PNC’s presidential candidate. There will be electoral devastation waiting for Norton. But he will proceed with his candidacy anyway. After the election, by the first few months in 2026, he will either leave or be pushed out. By then, it will be too late to save the PNC. Ironically, the man who fought so long in the streets to keep the PNC alive would have been the one to kill it.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.