GANESH Mahipal was speaking on behalf of his party when he described seven PNC personalities that crossed over to the PPP last week as persons who were not core members of APNU. This is a bewildering, confusing, contradictory and may even be a comical explanation.
Let’s quote Mahipal: “None of the defects there were really tried and tested APNU members. So, they are not exposed to any of our internal decisions… They’re not exposed to any of our how we’re moving forward, our strategy and those kinds of things.” This is confusing, misleading and bordering on mediocrity. In fact when the analysis is applied, it is nonsense.
One of the Gang of 7 that walked over to the PPP is Shurwayne Holder who left the PNC when he was chairman. APNU is a coalition of political parties, so an APNU executive has to belong to one of the constituents. Holder belonged to the PNC. When a party has an official leader, then the Chairman is the deputy as is the case with most political parties.
Holder then was the deputy leader of the PNC. How could he not have been a core member of APNU? By what logic is a deputy leader not one of the pillars of an organisation? Mahipal said that the defectors “were not exposed to any of our (APNU or PNC) internal decisions. That major makes no sense.
One of the crucial decision makers in a political party is the chairman who is always part of the machinery that makes policy. When it comes to Holder, Mahipal is absolutely wrong. It must be noted that Holder grew up in the PNC because his father himself grew up in the PNC.
Another member of the gang of 7 is Berbician Hindu pandit, Dinesh Jaiprashad. He represented the PNC for five years in Parliament. He had to be a core member of APNU or PNC after spending five years in parliament. He also was one of the faces of the PNC in Berbice for more than ten years. By any stretch of the imagination such an organisational man has to be a core member of his party.
Mahipal is on stronger ground if he has certain defectors in mind. The obvious name is Ricky Ramsaroop. This gentleman was part of the gang of 3, including Sherod Duncan and Juretha Fernandes who departed from the AFC to the PNC in August last year during the heat of the elections campaign. But if he was not a core member of APNU then so are Duncan and Fernandes.
Now why would APNU take two non-core members (Duncan and Fernandes) and put them in parliament over and above stalwarts? This is what happened and it triggered the resignation of two stalwarts – Holder himself and long serving Amerindian, Mervin Wiliams who sat as a PNC parliamentarian for five years and was in the PNC’s General Council for over 20 years?
Ganesh Mahipal is sailing on troubled waters when he refers to persons as non-core people. For emphasis, let’s quote him once more to prove that non-core members are given preferences to stalwarts including Mahipal himself: “None of the defects there were really tried and tested APNU members. So, they are not exposed to any of our internal decisions… They’re not exposed to any of our how we’re moving forward, our strategy and those kinds of things.”
Was Terrence Campbell tried and tested? Up to August 2025, a month before the elections, Campbell was part of the AFC’s effort to get a consensus figure from outside the PNC to be APNU+AFC‘s consensus candidate for the 2025 elections. Demerara Waves (DW) reported on November 25, 2025, that Campbell said in an interview with it that he cannot remember when he became a member of the PNC.
In that November 25, 2025 reporting titled, “APNU parliamentary leader secretive about PNC membership,” DW also reported Campbell as saying that he joined the Albertown PNC group, but DW says that the group told it that it has not met (at the time) to consider Campbell’s application. Looked at from any angle, at the time he was made parliamentary head of the PNC, Campbell was not a core member of the PNC.
After Campbell was made parliamentary head of the PNC, political observers, including this columnist, opined that Mahipal was overlooked. What this means is that given Mahipal’s emphasis on core-versus stalwarts or newcomer versus stalwart, he should explain why two non-core members of APNU were given parliamentary seats and why non-core member Campbell was promoted over Mahipal himself. It would be nice if Mahipal could offer an explanation but as night follows day, there will be none.
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.
