FORBES Burnham’s death anniversary coincided with the 2025 general election. The diluted PNC leadership did not have time to plan any national and regional celebrations.
The weakened PNC leadership was occupied with saving itself from extinction so the death anniversary was not on the mind of the PNC’s collective leadership.
It is intense curiosity facing almost all Guyanese in and out of the land as to what Burnham is saying in his grave when he sees what the PNC has become.

Even Mr. Burnham’s son-in-law and a person whose presence in the PNC’s leadership Mr. Burnham deliberately maximised has endorsed the PPP for re-election.
What is Burnham saying in his grave about the way Amna Ali, whom he helped protégé in the PNC, has been treated? Ms. Ali died without putting pen on paper but if she had, she would have written of Mr. Burnham’s special treatment of her through her father and grandfather.

The former head of the army, Mr. Edward Collins, who became an adviser to President Granger, in a letter yesterday tried in a poor attempt to deny that he has some distance between him and the current PNC leadership. Mr. Collins must be unaware of how the Freudian mind works.

I will quote him to show him that he made a Freudian revelation in his letter. He wrote: “I took a deliberate decision not to run for any positions of leadership at the Biennial Congress. Notwithstanding that decision, I wish to categorically state that I remained and still am an active member of the People’s National Congress Reform.”

There are hundreds of educated people who still retain their PNC membership card but are either silent or invisible with 2025 PNC leadership. Mr. Collins is not alone in removing himself from the PNC leadership; so are some large names. The list includes former President David Granger, former Minister of the Presidency Joseph Harmon, and Mark Archer, former Communication Director in the Office of the President.

What must be disturbing Burnham at a very deep level that may cause him to rise from the grave is the continuous exodus of leaders in the PNC whose talent the PNC cannot do without and will have to do without. There has never been a time in the 70 years of PNC’s existence that so much turmoil has occurred in its leadership.

There were three episodes in which the PNC had undergone severe internal stress. One is the period where the PNC was divided over what to do with the food ban. It was hurting the PNC’s hold on power but Burnham’s hegemony erased any dissent. The second moment was the threat of Walter Rodney. Again, Burnham’s larger-than-life presence rallied the PNC’s leadership.
The third scenario was when he assumed the presidency; Desmond Hoyte felt he had to remove the presence in state power of the type of PNC leadership that he inherited because that leadership belonged to an ideological period that had passed. But there is a gargantuan but. But what Hoyte did was to remove the presence of the Burnhamite PNC from state power, not from the PNC leadership.

The PNC, as the ruling party from 1985 to 1992, did not witness relentless in-fighting and mass exodus. The reason being that the PNC head on those three occasions cited above was president of the country. Presidential power preserved the PNC’s leadership. As soon as Hoyte lost the presidency, there was a huge outbreak of guerrilla warfare inside the PNC leadership led by Raphael Trotman and Deborah Backer.

Guerrilla warfare diluted the leadership of the PNC under Robert Corbin, with Vincent Alexander and Aubrey Norton attempting episodic coups. This dissension in the PNC leadership so weakened Corbin that he lost five parliamentary seats in the 2006 general election.

The PNC experienced stable leadership because in 2015 it reverted to the atavism of presidential power inside the party. In 2015, the leader of the PNC was the president of Guyana. After Granger lost the presidency in 2020, the Corbin tragedy reemerged inside the PNC’s leadership. The PNC got a new leader, but unlike Burnham, Hoyte, and Granger, he was not the president of Guyana at the time of securing the leader role.

So what Norton did to Corbin, others were prepared to do to Norton, with the lowest points being (1) an allegation against Norton for allegedly demanding checks from the then treasurer without the purpose of specific spending, (2) Roysdale Forde’s allegation of an improper and unaccountable congress, and (3) Vanessa Kissoon’s allegation of a sexual nature against Norton. By 2025, the year of a general election, by the time Norton looked over his shoulder, his army had gone and on Burnham’s death anniversary, the PNC is facing its own death.

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.