I am getting older so I make this appeal, now to young African PNC delegates

Dec 06, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – My hair is grey. In the Kaieteur Radio studio, James Bond looked at me and commented on my grey hair. He said the last time he saw me my hair was black. Well, I have aged since the last time 007 saw me. And I have no intention of wanting to look young again. For other humans that may be a desire. It is not for me.
I know I am old enough to understand Guyanese politics. As someone whose praxis is over 50 years, I know a lot about Guyana and its people. I know the Guyanese people before the 21st century voted race but the young generation is losing that unwanted habit.
I have seen too much bad traits in people who begged for our support, then became power-drunk. I go so far to say, outside of Forbes Burnham and one other, no one in the main political parties, including PPP and PNC, since the 1960 was more power-drunk than the AFC.
The AFC is dead but the PNC is still alive. The PNC is in the heat of a battle for the leader-role. I believe none of the three candidates will get substantial commitment from the Guyanese population after they would have won. I believe Guyanese want a new face without baggage.
However, of the three contenders, PNC delegates must ask Joseph Harmon volcanic questions, not mild enquiries but tempestuous ones because Harmon was the second in charge of Guyana and in episodic moments, he ran Guyana as de facto president. State power is the most formidable instrument in Guyana. The person who possessed it for five years must face the heat because too many wrong things were committed.
Aubrey Norton and Dr. Richard Van-West Charles are at an advantage to oust Harmon because they were not part of policy-making for the entire five-year period of PNC rule. Young PNC delegates who want to see their party have a future should not vote for someone who used state power in unproductive ways.
One caveat is in order as I continue. I believe the three WPA leaders – Drs. Rupert Roopnaraine, Clive Thomas and Maurice Odle must answer questions. Thomas must stop writing irrelevancies in his weekly column and tell us about his role, if any, in the retrenchment of 7000 sugar workers because he was GuySuCo’s chairman and explain his stint at SARA. Persons remaining in the AFC must demand answers from AFC ministers who did terrible things with state power.
Harmon should answer if he knew about the quick sale of state lands which netted the local James Bond one million American dollars. Countless souls who put the PNC and AFC in office would not have that money if they live 200 years.
Harmon must tell the nation who in the PNC leadership was responsible for employing JJ&B consulting firm in the United States that used the Michael Granger dossier during the election drama to persuade the American political establishment that APNU+AFC had won the March 2020 election.
The dossier listed President Granger as a US citizen. Mr. Granger immediately disassociated himself from both JJ&B and Michael Granger and informed the country that he did not know about the employment of JJ&B and the dossier. Harmon spoke publicly about the employment of JJ&B. In no other country would Harmon have remained in government.
How can a ruling party hire an American firm to lobby for it in Washington, DC, and the very leader of the party did not know about it? PNC delegates should not let Harmon escape answers in this context then. The delegates should also ask Norton and Dr. Van West Charles what they knew about the employment of JJ&B since they sat in the central committee of the PNC at the time.
It would take several columns to enumerate the interrogations that Harmon must face in front of the delegates so I will try to return to these in another column before the PNC’s congress. For now, the following is bitingly relevant. He described Moses Nagamootoo as royalty in August 2019 at a Cabinet outreach in Bartica.
On the platform, Nagamootoo donned the colours of the PNC’s flag and not the AFC’s which Nagamootoo belonged to. At the time there was an internecine war between Nagamootoo and Ramjattan for the PM candidate for the March 2020 election. The question to Harmon is why he used that language to describe one of the largest failures in Guyanese politics – Moses Nagamootoo – at a time when Nagamootoo’s own party did not feel so? Does Harmon have any regrets about mob violence in Region 5 in 2020 against Indians?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)