IT is not only Aubrey Norton that is destroying the PNRC; it is the PNCR itself. In which country on Planet Earth can a leader be ignominiously humiliated in a national election, and his party just goes about its business as if nothing happened and the disgraced leader continues as the head of the organisation?

I am telling the PNCR leadership that there is no such party in the world that would tolerate a leader like Norton after what Azruddin Mohamed did to him. This just does not happen in the real world.

At the time of writing this column, it seemed that no one among the PNCR’s parliamentary grouping and in the PNCR’s general council had the commonsense, intellectual capacity or possessed basic political knowledge to tell Norton that within his citation of Forbes Burnham asking his supporters to spend one more hour with him, lies the very reason why Norton has to hand-over the leader position.

Norton cited Burnham’s imploration to his supporters at Bourda Green when he barely lost the 1961 elections to spend another hour with him. As I stated above, the fact that Norton can cite that event is a case for the PNCR’s war room to remove him.

Two factors of the 1961 plea compel the PNCR to dethrone Norton. One is the margin of defeat. Burnham got 89, 501 votes, the PPP got 93, 085 votes. Secondly, The PPP obtained 42. 63 per cent of the votes and the PNCR received 40.99. So, let’s express it in bold and graphic ways. Burnham lost by 4,000 votes and 1.63 per cent. The margin of defeat made Burnham emotionally uncontrollable.

But there was still a consoling factor for Burnham. He lost to a man that the people of colonial world saw as a hero and a man the international world of politics respected. Norton is staying on as leader even though the PNCR as a party knows the magnitude of the disgrace.

Let’s enumerate the horrible nightmare Norton endured at midnight on September 2.
1- The PNCR lost 16 seats from the 31 it had in 2020.
2- The PNCR lost all the regional government it had before 2025.
3- The PNCR lost the Office of Leader of the Opposition
4- The Statements of Poll showed in all parts of Guyana where African Guyanese voted for the PNCR since 1957, Azruddin ate into those votes and did so handsomely rather than just pipping the PNCR.
5- The WIN party of Mohamed at the time of the election was just three months old.
6 – At the time of the election, WIN had no party structure, no executive committee, no central committee, no bureaucratic order of priority in leadership, no established party head office, no established first and second tier of leadership.
7 – WIN’s leader displayed no understanding and knowledge of politics and could hardly field questions from the media. And it has a terrible past.
Against this ghost-like background, there isn’t one person in the hierarchy of the PNCR that has the courage to say to Norton that against such a horror story, leaders like him must be compelled to do the decent, morally right, logical, rational thing and resign or be forced out.

It becomes an incredible thing seen in Guyana only that the leader of such a party that suffered such an unspeakable electoral devastation could brazenly say that he is staying on to mould the PNCR and build it. No one in the PNCR leadership is yet to do the decent thing and tell Norton that at age 70, he should not be the person to build anything and to leave the building to others.

No one in the PNCR hierarchy has the courage to tell Norton it is a comical arrangement for a party leader not to be in parliament when that is the strategic place for a party leader to be. No one at the top of the PNCR’s pyramid has the courage to ask Norton who in this nascent youthful party that Norton is building is going to look up to him when his skills were nowhere to be seen on September I and to question whether Norton is left with any skills whatsoever.

No one in the PNCR’s hierarchy is capable of telling Norton that if he could only muster 12 seats in a country where he demonised the president and twice refused to shake his hand, what makes him think he will get even two seats in 2030. If the 12 PNCR parliamentarians are going to live with Norton as their leader at age 70 and when he will be 75 in 2030, then the PNCR may disintegrate long before 2030.

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.