REPOST of previously published file Jan.20th 2022 lost during site migration and to suggest that the Representative of the List, a position currently contained by a framework that defers to an honor system, could be legally challenged in a court of law as it remains under the irreverend thumb of David Granger.
The assertion that David Granger remains the Representative of the List under Guyanese Law
…as one news organ carries it ….
supposes that David Granger became the Representative of the List by following the Law and this is where paths to legitimacy diverge.
But before we take any path, we’ll glance back at Guyana’s political history, how its national identity was created by a ruling class of foreigners, who consciously constructed their imagined Guiana by extending to us their institutions and methods and social structure.
And their creation, in the image of their society did not only come with clones of their systems and procedures but brought, also, the caustic behaviors of competition and rivalry that took advantage of procedural loop holes by predators on the Administration as the norms of honorable conduct.
One of the ladders in the social structure led to military enrollment at leadership levels with implied classism where honor and intellectual prowess were ascribed by proxy to those who ascended to this pinnacle of prestige.
Those of us who found ourselves amongst this group of people, soon learned the power of political influence could manufacture merit and how the pregnable minds of teenagers, filled only with national pride and ambitions to lead their country onward and upward, could be conditioned into seeing bloviating blowhards as leaders and the aloof and antisocial as superior thinkers….
which brings us back to the divergent paths we mentioned initially, along which David Granger, in his role as President, was perpetually visible in a posture of prayer.
Hell is empty… all the devils are here …Shakespearean quotes rush to mind…
PNC Parliamentarians serve at the pleasure of Granger, who does not seem pleased.
Inter related complexities might be the diagnosis but we won’t pretend to dive into to that sphere of science.
If dignity concerned him, he would resign but if it did, he wouldn’t be squatting in the office from which he needs to resign.
We say this as we look at a law passed in 2007 allowing for the recall of Parliamentarians in whom confidence is lost and the current ‘List’ which Granger heads, reportedly, through a connivance of misrepresenting, at critical points, that he was selected by his Party to be the Head of its List and that the names thereon were agreed to by executive members.
We’re still unsure that this law is not subjectively unleashed, especially when we recount the multiplicity of incidents ranging from fraud, through physical encounter, through verbal abuse through slander of Donald Ramotar and overall conduct unbecoming that was not only the definition of Charrandass, but the manifest incompetence of a leadership collective that remained steadfast in its decision to not govern beyond its political perimeter.
The Party with the longest record of rule and responsibility for concomitant losses to corruption, social division and national stagnation, Jagdeo’s PPP, is back at the helm of the Ship of State, this time with the Foreign Community as part of its crew and an Opposition, the Coalition, that has not taken its constitutional obligation beyond, again, its political circumference.
Its election- the Coalition’s– for new leadership and its resounding rejection of David Granger and by extension, his ‘List’ of Representatives, seemed like it would breathe life into a deficient Opposition. But, victory that assaults Granger must meet his malice – that will defend his personal insecurities, even it is to the peril of country and the democracy it pledges.
The legal haze of Party and National Constitution continue to play out in his rejection of the rejection of his leadership…to which his appointees have attached.
It is the same conniption, the state of not knowing the functions of the Party and their relation to the national Constitution, that encourages wily politicians to prey upon their constituents, seizing upon their lack of knowledge to run the kind of theft of their rights that Granger has, reportedly, executed.
It was the APNU press-release dated January 7th 2022 that “had no reason to question the abilities of Granger/Harmon”
–questioned and answered by their electoral defeat at Party Elections-
which inferred its allegiance to the Granger/Harmon with an implied indifference to the trouncing they had suffered at their Party elections with Norton’s overwhelming victory
that sent us to the Representation of the People Act (ROPA) 12.1 pg28/209 to clarify a couple of things…specifically Representative of the List and the Deputy.
A few things have been made clear.
Party members have received no Official document informing them that Dr. Lutchman is no longer their Representative of the List.
If either Party or national Constitution, or ROPA, says that this is not mandated practice, they would like to be advised accordingly by Granger, under whom Dr. Lutchman would have demitted his post.
If Mr. Granger is an official squatting in place and the investigation- which they’re calling for– into whether he is a self -appointed Representative concludes that he is, then the appointment of Ramjattan by him, unilaterally, as Deputy Representative of the List is equally as void and would require a Coalition vote for their Deputy.
It is members’ Opinion that no part of ROPA 12 has been executed, singly or in total.
We also looked at the Appointment of the Party’s Opposition Leader to Parliament by combing through the Party’s Constitution and its Amendment- mind you, as mere lay readers of documents bound by law.
Finding nothing specifically directive about making such an appointment in either, we used the synopsis of the brokering by Ptolemy Reid in 1992, which conjoined the positions of Party and Opposition Leader to heal the fracture caused when, in retaliation to Desmond Hoyte not sending him back to Parliament in 1992, Hamilton Green created his Good and Green Party by luring PNC members loyal to him in an act of bad faith, it is said .
This caught our attention because it has elements that resemble the current situation in PNCR Leadership, with the defeated leader Granger, trying to remain in office, despite being the first incumbent Leader in party history not to receive even a single nomination to do so.
And it extends to Granger’s appointee, Harmon, in whom PNC Constituents have shown a lack of preference.
Yes, that vote was for Party Leadership but if one were called for his Parliamentary Opposition Leadership that too would be a vote of no, is the collective response.
Now here’s what we deduced from the national and Party laws and procedures that govern these practices.
The Hoyte/Green grudge match needed a decision that was both immediate and final. The provisions for mediation and discipline in the ROPA and Party constitution, though well meaning, were/are too process- oriented for immediacy.
The ROPA Laws 12, address the submission of the List and a nomination of Representative and Deputy – not contemplating that the submission could be hijacked by a self-serving politician.
The Laws of Guyana 156-Tenure of seats of the National Assembly-offer resignation as one option to vacate a seat in Parliament but is also process oriented contingent upon other provisions.
See, these blind spots in well-meaning guidelines are only discovered when they fail as a consequence of dishonorable men preying upon loopholes with a treachery they label genius.
They were written for people who appreciate the honor system, who wouldn’t need to be nudged by laws and policy when they declare love of country and duty to protect couched in biblical passages with exultations like rejoice. Hell is empty ….
The symmetries between the past exploited by those who feigned better leadership and their reprehensible present are striking.
Unable to dispute the enviable margins of victory that PNC constituents have given to their preferred leader, Aubrey Norton, the soundly defeated propose to ignore it.
It’s the kind of vandalism of constitution and all of its related parts, that is committed by men whose political power has eroded gradually and then suddenly.
Granger, who spent most of his adult life fashioning an image of erudition and quiet decency seems ready to settle for a more exciting retirement as a mutineer, a bandana- ed insurgent fighting to the death to hold on to that power that fashioned him a leader.
Political Office is not private enterprise. Those who go to the polls do so in search of a specific leader and in support of a specific purpose.
And here the stakes are exponentially greater. The political Opposition is a constitutional arm of Government. Being constantly shut out of government decisions says how alarmingly inviable it is and how its absence forges a one Party State which the resident foreign community seems quite comfortable with.
Mr. Norton has been elected and must now do everything necessary to rest the reins of leadership from the insurgents effecting a personal and not national agenda.