AFTER his address at the funeral of two Lindeners shot by the police, Nigel Hughes has clearly signalled to PNC leaders that he is targeting PNC constituencies.
The speech came straight from the PNC’s songbook. First, he called for $100 million each in compensation for the two bereaved families. This is the kind of language usually associated with PNC platform rhetoric.
Secondly, he revisited the murder of two cousins in Cotton Tree in September 2020. Again, this return to racial incitement mirrors traditional PNC methodology.
Thirdly, he rejected Caribbean input into the inquiry—yet another classic PNC approach to these kinds of situations.
So why would Hughes want to come across like an extremist PNC speaker? There is only one answer: he has no choice.

Hughes has drifted so far into Afro-centric political spaces that he knows he will not attract Indo-Guyanese votes. He knows his votes will have to come from parties that have extremist messages and use extremist vocabulary. Since the AFC will be contesting on its own, then that is the only game in town.
But it is a game that will bring clashes and it will bring the spilling of bad blood because Aubrey Norton is not stupid.
I will repeat what I have written in these columns before: one may not like Aubrey Norton’s politics, but that’s no reason to think he cannot comprehend political trends. He can and he will as Hughes continues to utilise Afro-centric themes.
One of those themes is the Cotton Tree double murder.

Hughes’ invocation of that scenario is designed to appeal to Afro-Guyanese people. The extremist version—best adumbrated by the PNC, the lunatic fringe (Burke, Benschop, Hinds, Ogunseye, and company) and ironically, the Guyana Human Rights Association—frames the murders as racially motivated, a supposed retaliation after the PPP’s electoral victory in August 2020.
The story unfolded in another direction. It was a drug thing gone wrong. But Hughes has fired the first election salvo – he is targeting PNC constituencies.
If you are a PNC supporter do not fool yourself – that funeral speech was an electioneering act.
The other dimension of Hughes’s return to Cotton Tree is that it is an admission that he knows the AFC will not get Indo-Guyanese votes. Hughes resurrected the Cotton Tree double murder because it has racial capital for him but Indians have terrible memories of the anti-Indian violence that followed the murder.

Why would Indo-Guyanese people vote for a politician that invokes the fiction of PPP supporters killing two Afo-Guyanese youths out of election joy?
One can conclude that Hughes’ election politics will be based on themes that appeal to Afo-Guyanese people. The intention is to have a credible showing after the election results.
It is a survival game. If Hughes doesn’t play the race card, then where are his votes going to come from?
It is for this reason we can expect Hughes on the campaign trail to become a personality that will remind the nation of Rickford Burke and David Hinds. Hughes will continue where he left off in Linden because the object is to show that Aubrey Norton lacks fire and he, Hughes, has it.
It is for this reason I think bad blood is coming. I think Norton is going to retaliate and when he does, it will not look good for Hughes—especially if the Sherod Duncan factor comes into play.
I have been around politics for too long not to know about subliminal instincts.

I have written it before and I am writing it again. From what I know over the long years, Aubrey Norton has never been enamoured with Nigel Hughes and Raphael Trotman.
Now those very two men —Hughes as leader and Trotman as Chairman of the AFC—are trying to dethrone Norton.
They do not want him as the presidential candidate in a joint slate with AFC and the PNC and they do not think that as PNC leader he will fare well in the election.
Then the AFC threw gasoline on fire. They asked Norton to let Hughes run as the consensus candidate. More gasoline was thrown when Hughes offered as an alternative the close friend of Hughes and Trotman – Terrence Campbell.

In case you did not know – Aubrey Norton was opposed to the PNC conceding a 70/30 formula with the AFC for the 2020 election. I can tell readers that Norton was no way in support of that particular covenant and wanted a much smaller ratio.
Now that Norton is leader of the PNC, why would anyone out there believe he would be chummy with the AFC.
The die is cast. From here on, it’s Hughes versus Norton.

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.