Norton will lose sleep over what he’s done to Burnham’s party – Jagdeo

With the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) – which comprises largely of the Peoples National Congress (PNC) – falling to the third-ranked political force in the country under the leadership of Aubrey Norton, the party will now have a lot of introspection to do.

This is according to General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, who has long maintained that his party is the only multiethnic and national party in the country.

The PNC was formed in 1957 by Forbes Burnham, who was later elected leader – a position he would retain until his death in 1985. It later rebranded itself as PNC/Reform and then again as the APNU after coalescing with other smaller political parties.

Since its inception, the party (under the umbrella of APNU) has since been a strong political force – forming the government as recent as the 2015-2020 period, in a coalition with the Alliance For Change (AFC).

In the last parliament, the APNU and AFC occupied 31 seats in the National Assembly, forming the main parliamentary opposition. Of these, the AFC itself occupied 9 of those seats, while the remaining 22 were held by APNU politicians.

But based on the results of Monday’s General and Regional Elections, the APNU’s influence in the next parliament would weaken.

The main parliamentary opposition will now comprise the We Invest Nationhood (WIN) party headed by US-sanctioned businessman Azruddin Mohamed.

In this regard, Jagdeo contended that Norton will have “many sleepless nights” knowing that he took “Burnham’s party and reduce it to what it is today”.

“You’ll need long, long hours and days of introspection” to rebuild, Jagdeo further noted.

He also pointed out that Norton, who likes to talk about his career of teaching political science at the University of Guyana, “and he didn’t understand the first basic thing is to make sure that you don’t enable someone to cannibalise your support“.

“It’s a very sad day for the PNC,” Jagdeo added.

Meanwhile, the AFC – once the country’s third political force – has not secured enough votes to earn a seat in the next parliament.

2025 Elections: AFC kicked from parliamentary opposition; APNU’s grip weakens