It is puzzling to comprehend  the quantum leap made on Friday by Opposition Leader and chairman of APNU, David Granger,  in his expedient recall of the ‘Son Chapman’ explosion disaster of July 6, 1964, at the launch of a ‘Governance and Democracy Lecture Series’ that was organised by the National Assembly with the cooperation of the History Department of the University of Guyana.
The former Brigadier of the Guyana Defence Force, currently in a contest to be the new leader of the main opposition PNCR, likes to remind all and sundry, that he is also a “historian”.  That’s okay, for the record.
But what’s the relevance of Granger’s recall of  the ‘Son Chapman’ bombing disaster, in which 43 Guyanese of African descent perished during a very dark period of fratricidal warfare in the 1960s?
Further, that this could have been done, as reported, in virtual isolation of the race-hate explosion known as the ‘Wismar massacre’ involving murders, rapes, widespread destruction of properties and the forced dislocation of at least 3,000 Guyanese, primarily of East Indian ethnicity, from what was then better known as the Wismar, Christianburg/Mackenzie area?
Is there a sad fixation by this “historian” – politician for him to note at Friday’s inaugural “lecture series” that the event coincided with the same date of the July 6 ‘Son Chapman’ disaster of 48 years ago?
This question, however painful to raise, is quite relevant. Consider, for instance, that during last year’s general election when he ran as presidential candidate of the newly-created APNU coalition (which includes the minority Working People’s Alliance), Granger had exhibited his interest in the creation of a monument, possibly in the form of a Square, to commemorate the victims of the ‘Son Chapman’ disaster.
This is provocative political posturing, to say the least, when advocated in isolation of what has also been chronicled as the ‘Wismar massacre’ and which  should not escape objectivity of even a part-time historian and full-time politician.
Since it was a collaborator, presumably with the Speaker of the National Assembly (Raphael Trotman), UG’s History Department needs to reflect on this bit of expedient political history-sharing by APNU’s chairman.  Granger  also used the occasion to indulge in an unnecessary self-serving political exercise about there being “no father-of-the-nation” personality in Guyana. More on this  later.
In the circumstances, it is to be hoped that when the next “lecture” in the series occurs, it would  be of an intellectual quality capable of stimulating forwarding thinking, instead of the rather surprising offering that came from APNU’s chairman and potential new PNCR leader, David Granger, last Friday.