…and post NCM goings-on
If the PNC in general, and their leader David Granger in particular, are to be believed, it’s clear that we Guyanese people really don’t appreciate the lengths they’ve gone to defend our democracy during 2019 and 2020. To all those who so unfairly maligned them during that time (including your Eyewitness), they’d better ponder over the statement the party just issued for the New Year: “We believe that the measures we took fortified democracy. The Coalition acted correctly and lawfully throughout the year 2019 to ensure that credible elections could be held in the year 2020 and it will continue its vigorous defence of its election petition in the New Year, 2021.”
Fortified democracy! So the refusal to accept the No Confidence Motion (NCM) – which has been a standard of EVERY constitution in the Commonwealth and has operated to remove Governments from India to the UK (which doesn’t even have a written constitution!) – was “fortifying” our democracy. That it’s routinely accepted as a matter of democratic representative Governments that MPs have a higher duty to their constituents than to their Party Whip – and can vote their conscience – doesn’t matter. Charrandas is a Judas!! And we were too backward to recognise the yeoman (and yeowoman?) efforts of the PNC to save us from the perils of dictatorship! Thank you, PNC, and hopefully the CCJ should now reverse their ruling on PNC’s challenge that 33 isn’t a majority of 65!
That Granger unilaterally appointed the 84-year-old James Patterson to Chair GECOM was also meant to test and fortify the framework of our democracy. The decision of the CCJ that later decided he violated the clear dictate of the Constitution and that the Opposition Leader must be in agreement with the choice was obviously ultra vires. What do they know? They’re only the body that the PNC accept as the final arbiter of our Constitution.
The two-year delay in holding elections – even after the CCJ’s decision – was absolutely the fault of GECOM. The insistence of the PNC Commissioners that GECOM must have a completely new Voters List from House-to-House Registration – which would take a year – even though the CEO of the Secretariat had affirmed that the C&O could satisfactorily sanitise the existent Voters List that had been used for the LGE, was only meant to toughen the sinews of our democracy.
And we won’t even go into the sterling efforts of Mingo &Co to divine – ahead of time and the recount – that there were thousands and thousands of anomalies in the voting across the country.
Forced to improvise and take corrective action using that dirty bedsheet in the GECOM yard, Mingo was fortifying democracy!
…in the year ahead
Granger hasn’t disappointed your Eyewitness: he’s playing true to form. A disciple of Burnham, he tries to imitate his master…but doesn’t realise that the times aren’t just “a changin’ “: they’ve CHANGED. His last act – to think he could get away with rigging the elections in front of the Americans and Brits – was right out of Burnham’s playbook. But this ain’t 1968…and even Granger should’ve known that from the absence of mini-skirts in the streets of Georgetown!
So what will he be up to this year? Think of Burnham in 1957 after his faction of the PPP lost the elections and he’s out in the cold. Granger will be plotting to recreate the PNC in his image. He’s going to try to have the PNC jump at his beck and call. He thinks by throwing out Volda Lawrence and the old guard he’s home free.
He forgets that Burnham joined up with people who had followings like Carter and Kendall!
While he just has Harmon!
…and the Courts
Granger declared in his message the PNC “will continue its vigorous defence of its election petition in the New Year, 2021”. The court will be hearing the petitions in less than two weeks.
This will be his last hurrah!
