AS  internal campaigning continues in the PNCR for a change in leadership at the party’s upcoming congress, APNU’s chairman David Granger is increasingly revealing muddled political thinking.
The  latest indication of this from the retired Brigadier of the GDF, whose primary challenger for the PNCR leadership is a former Finance Minister, Carl Greenidge, has to do,  he said, with “bad advice” being given to President Donald Ramotar on the new electricity rate for Linden consumers.
Has Granger given serious thought to the kind of advice he is personally receiving, as APNU chairman, on the slippery political path of  favouring rank discrimination for Linden electricity consumers in Region 10 over and above ALL other consumers across this nation?
Is it that he is so anxious to counter the political jeering he had earlier received from APNU’s coalition partner, the AFC, this past April about “betrayal” of Lindeners,  that Granger is now striving hard to show militancy at the expense of logic and mature political thinking?
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, as well as Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon, have separately taken time to provide details of the varying circumstances that led to the decision to introduce MINIMAL changes in what Lindeners  would now have to pay for electricity that was SUBSIDISED, at taxpayers’  expense, at a cost of $2.576 billion last year.
Guyanese taxpayers, irrespective of ethnicity and/or political affiliation, would rightly want to know why one section of the Region 10 community must be favoured with further special arrangements for electricity consumed when their fellow citizens, across this nation, have to cope with rising charges and other social and economic challenges?
Is it that Granger, currently APNU’s chairman and likely new PNCR leader, still feels so politically chastened by the AFC’s “betrayal” of Lindeners jeering  when he first agreed with President Ramotar on the new electricity rate issue, that he is now struggling to be quite militant with even threats to create  disorder?
As Opposition Leader, Granger cannot forget that the agreement reached with President Ramotar and himself on the new dispensation for Lindeners  in relation to the proposed  new electricity charges was read out in the National Assembly by Prime Minister Hinds and is a record of parliament.
The truth is that rather than pointing accusing fingers about “bad advice” at President Ramotar and the government he heads, APNU’s Granger needs to make a critical assessment of the quality of advice HE is receiving – whoever his advisors may be.
An objective assessment of the APNU leader’s flip-flop on the new electricity rate for Lindeners would quickly reveal a disturbing social/political dimension that runs counter to the expedient, self-serving “national unity” talk in which Granger, his PNCR/APNU colleagues and “allies” in the AFC like to indulge.
But ALL are not deceived and such narrow and dangerous politicking could prove quite costly when the right time comes.