Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 07, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Kaieteur News – I once wrote on this page that as soon as you completed your analysis and get ready to send it to the newspaper, the item goes on the backburner because some controversial intrusion is always coming up.
I cannot count the number of times I had to relegate to a later date completed articles because of intervening factors. Today’s intended article was on the pantomime in the AFC with the press getting it badly wrong by concluding David Patterson is challenging Khemraj Ramjattan for the leader position.
Anyway, that column will have to give way to today’s piece – Aubrey Norton’s disastrous refusal to initially shake the hand of the President of the Republic. But something may come up after today that may further delay the description of the pantomime.
There is no precedent in Guyana for what took place last Thursday at the residence of the British High Commissioner, the occasion being the Queen’s birthday. The video clip has gone global. Countless numbers have seen it. Mr. Norton ignore the outstretch hand of the President. The video shows the persistence of the President, and the subsequent change of mind by Norton.
The President told the Stabroek News that Norton refused to shake his hand and that he told Norton to shake his hand because both of them are mature people. But who says Norton is mature? What Norton did was puerile, contemptuous, indecent and unethical.
From Forbes Burnham to Desmond Hoyte to Robert Corbin to David Granger, none of them in their capacity as Opposition Leader would have stooped as low as Norton did. None of the large figures in the PNC hierarchy would have done that. Top politicians do not do that. I could see an ordinary member of parliament refusing to shake the hand of a minister but not the President.
I have known Vincent Alexander all my life – we were born a block away from each other in Wortmanville. I can say with monumental definitiveness – Vincent Alexander would not have embarrassed himself so stupidly. What is the analysis?
First, Norton is proving his detractors right both inside and outside the PNC. He was elected by minority voting. Half the delegates did not cheer for him. A vastly popular leader would have attracted more votes than Norton got last December when he beat Joseph Harmon.
Secondly, like Robert Corbin, Norton has spent too long a period as street agitator. He cannot make the transformation easily. Norton, Alexander and many others did not greet Corbin’s triumph with enthusiasm. There were always perceptions before Corbin became leader that he was seen as the PNC’s street fighter. A fate that destroyed society’s acceptance of Hamilton Green.
Norton has become the object of that same perception. Of course, victimhood is justified in this context because growing up in politics seeing how Norton operated that image is not without validity. Thirdly, Norton is playing to a constituency he knows best – the streets. He knows that he will not be accepted by the usual suspects (TUS), the Creole middle class (CMC) and the political nouveau lumpen (PNL).
Those strata embraced and respected Granger. This explains their psychological devastation when he lost the 2020 election their constant refusal to condemn and debate Granger’s attitude to the 2018 no-confidence vote and the five month election scandal and their shameless, relentless vendetta against the Ali presidency even targeting his wife (see my two columns on this targeting: Wednesday, May 18, 2022, “Peeping Tom on the Stabroek News” and Friday, May 27, 2022, “Can replacement theory circulating in the US be applied to Guyana?”).
For the reaction of how these strata will deal with Norton see my column of Friday, December 24, 2021, “PNC election results 2021, Part 2: Norton faces colour and class.” Norton knows there is no embrace coming from TUS, CMC and PNL. Norton’s main planks are the lunatic fringe (TLF) and the urban and rural street people.
In refusing to shake the President’s hand, Norton is playing to those galleries. He knows TLF and the street people will cheer him on shouting: “dat is we boy, show Granger how fuh deal with de PPP.” But that is a self-destructive mistake. Norton and the PNC cannot survive through their collaboration with two dimensions of society only. What about the different tiers of the Black middle class, the educated Black youths, the business communities among the mixed race and the Afro-business people?
Norton has survived the post-Granger criticism of Dr. Richard Van West Charles because PNC die-hards thinks Dr. Van West Charles belong to the Burnham era that has long gone. But as Norton drifts from one mistake to another, the long knives in the PNC will get him; certainly after 2025.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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