HERE is a theory why highly placed political leaders in Guyana failed to endure in their parties because of their street-fighting deportment. When one theorises as to why hierarchical leaders in Guyanese political parties never made it to the top, and when they do, they ended up as ignominious failures, surprisingly the analysis does not begin with Hamilton Green, but with Robert Jordan.
It was Jordan more than any other PNC leader who was involved in the ethnic cleansing of Indians in MacKenzie in 1964. The PNC leader saw him as fit for the violent role. After a stint as Minister of Agriculture, Burnham got rid of Jordan. Hamilton Green succeeded Jordan as the street fighter of the PNC.
Green’s massive contribution as a bully boy catapulted him into the apex of the PNC, but Green was devoid of intellectual ability. He could not and did not understand his own leader Forbes Burnham. Burnham may have ousted the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) after he became executive president, but he did that out of realpolitik instincts and not class preferences.
Burnham was essentially an MCC personality schooled in MCC values. Burnham chose two middle-class leaders – Dr. Ptolemy Reid and Desmond Hoyte – over Green. In a published Kaieteur News interview with me, Green admitted that the middle class in the PNC frowned on him. The same fate Robert Corbin endured after Hoyte died.
Corbin, like Jordan and Green before him, was the street fighter in the PNC’s leadership earning that title because of his violent deportment as a YSM youth. The middle class in Guyana was sadistic in their scorn of Corbin. They did not want to even talk to him. Under his leadership the MCC gave not a cent to the PNC. Corbin thought that by becoming a lawyer the perception would change.
It didn’t. He was seen as a street fighter. So exhausted was Corbin that when Rupert Roopnaraine told him to step aside for the creation of a new PNC under another name, Corbin was relieved. The MCC embraced their own MCC personality, David Granger, with zest. And stuck with Granger (the exception being Dominic Gaskin) during the attempted election rigging in 2020).
When the PNC collapsed after the loss of the 2020 elections, another bully boy, Aubrey Norton, became head of the PNC. The MCC despised Norton with more venom than they did with Corbin. Today, he exists as a pathetic failure because the MCC in Guyana wants their leaders to be from their class. The quintessential MCC political party was the WPA. The street fighter in the WPA was Tacuma Ogunseye.
The MCC tolerated Ogunseye because he was brave and devoted and fought hard in the streets, but it was impossible genetically and culturally for the MCC to accept Ogunseye. Roopnaraine, a man that was the true custodian of MCC values, stayed away from socialising with Ogunseye and the two had no intimate camaraderie among them. Roopnaraine never invited Ogunseye to his bourgeois lunches and dinners at the plantation home at Tranquility Hall.
Ogunseye resented Roopnaraine for his MCC politics and remains the only WPA executive to have publicly criticised Roopnaraine before and after 2015. Ogunseye’s Stabroek News letter criticising Roopnaraine for refusing to discuss WPA’s policy positions in the APNU+AFC government at WPA executive meetings, seriously dented the credibility of Roopnaraine.
Enters Sherod Duncan. To his credit, Sherod as General-Secretary kept the AFC alive after 2020. The MCC personalities had become dormant. Nigel Hughes had retired from politics. But Hughes woke up one day and decided he had a plan for the AFC in the forthcoming 2025 elections and thus wanted to be the head of the AFC.
Hughes’ announcement brought the MCC in both Guyana and the AFC alive. Duncan had to lose out because he was seen long before 2015 as the AFC’s version of Robert Corbin and Aubrey Norton. He was the AFC’s street fighter. He was facetiously nicknamed in certain circles “the bell man” for his outlandish social media gymnastics. The MCC was indignant that Duncan did not know his place.
His place was in the streets. How dare he challenge the iconic Nigel Hughes? The MCC put Duncan in his place. But Duncan should have known his place long ago. Like Jordan, Green, Norton, and Ogunseye, Duncan did not know his place. So what theory explains the failure of these street fighters? The answer is in human nature. Humans want to be led by educated and intellectual achievers. They feel such can do more for the country than the street fighter.
Enters Terrence Campbell. He is the exception. He is an MCC personality, and he feels his street-fighting vulgarities will not turn off the MCC. He will get a rude awakening in the coming years.
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.
