I STOPPED off in part 5 on January 31 this year. In that article, I ended it when the PNC under the name APNU secured election victory in 2015. Mr. Granger, as head of the PNC, became the president. Under Granger’s leadership, the PNC’s role in government was diminished. It was the first time since 1992 that the PNC acquired state power.
What happened from 2015 to 2020 was Mr. Granger in power and not the PNC. Granger became the only leader to have acquired the position of a party leader without having a history of functionalism in the party. I remember at the entrance of the High Court, former PNC minister, Clarissa Rheil, telling me, “But Freddie, I don’t know him (Granger) at all.”
PNC stalwarts did not know Granger for one reason only: he was not a visible or even invisible PNC player over the past 40 years prior to 2011. How Granger became leader of the PNC in 2011 (see part 5 for Faith Harding’s complaint against Granger’s election) has to do with the secret life Rupert Roopnaraine lived in Guyana. Space will not permit elaboration and I did a recent series on Roopnaraine, but I believe Roopnaraine may have been involved in Walter Rodney’s assassination.
It was Roopnaraine’s long-hidden relation with Granger and a key PNC player that allowed Corbin to agree to Roopnaraine’s request that Granger become the PNC leader. Corbin told me a few years ago that he was writing his memoir. I hope he is frank in discussing the Roopnaraine’s protagonist role in the formation of APNU.
What Granger did when he became president, he adopted the Desmond Hoyte methodology. Hoyte administered the affairs of Guyana, not as a party leader but only as president. The PNC had little if any role in the government of Guyana under Hoyte’s presidency. Hoyte made sure there was a dormant PNC, so PNC stalwarts could not interfere with his administration.
Granger did exactly that. He wanted the space that Hoyte gave himself to decide policy without PNC interference. Hoyte’s first taste of party intrusion was when he scrapped the PPP/PNC dialogue that Jagan and Burnham started in 1984. Hoyte, in a rage, told the PNC when the PNC wanted the talks to continue, “I am the president.”
What Granger did as president was that he scrapped the physiology and anatomy of APNU. Joe Harmon, as General Secretary of APNU, resigned and concentrated on his position in the Ministry of the Presidency. Granger contemptuously diminished the role of the WPA in government (see Maurice Odle’s autobiography of how powerless he was as head of NICIL.
Granger then bypassed the PNC and replaced the PNC’s presence in government with a school of former GDF officers. These former military men became ubiquitous in the government. The PNC, therefore, had no strategic placements in the government. Harmon was the de facto president and the crucial role of the Ministry of Finance was not in the hands of a PNC stalwart.
If one examines the PNC Government under Burnham from 1964 to 1985, the PPP government from 1957 to 1964, the PPP presidency under Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan, Bharrat Jagdeo, Donald Ramotar and Irfaan Ali, those administrations had a huge and visible presence of cadres that came from the womb of the PNC and PPP, respectively.
Hoyte broke with that tradition because he was more a sycophant of Burnham rather than a party apparatchik. Hoyte was not really a PNC personality. Granger was the identical fit. He was a frenetic admirer of Burnham but not a party apparatchik. What happened to the PNC was that after Burnham died, the PNC leader position was passed in 1985 to a man (Hoyte) who was not dyed in the PNC’s greenness. After Corbin became discredited in 2011, the PNC leader position was passed to a man (Granger) who hardly had any activism with the PNC.
The PNC then, from 1985, began a slow death. After Hoyte lost power, Hamilton Green first tried to bring back the PNC. He failed. A group of young Turks harassed Hoyte to the point he suffered a heart attack. Corbin took over the position, but by then the PNC had become too fragmented to stay functional. When Granger took over, there was hardly any PNC left.
Under Granger’s presidency, the PNC as a party did not grow and there was a complete absence of regeneration. The PNC under Granger produced no young leaders with access to government experience from which they can grow and learn. When the PNC lost power in 2020, the PNC was on its deathbed. Anyone could have become its leader. What happened next was the final nail in the coffin.
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.