While the poll was an open invitation for all who read the post, the response count became an ultra targeted signal about the sentiments of those who chose to vote.
The overall poll premise was clear. The questions, intended to solicit opinions on the premise, were surgical. We confined the poll to platforms that were less likely to be one-sided or garner responses intended to be more malicious than productive. We, specifically, highlighted that the poll was private – published only Answers, no Names.
Though a larger number of participants would have been appreciated, the structure of the questions and its focus on the reason for the poll would have, only, shown higher answer-volume in this poll design and not a difference in options to get to our goal.
The questions that were answered showed a clear preference for how to achieve our proposed mission, our goal– ‘Saving the PNC’.
And, it is this high- conviction road map that we will move forward with to keep the focus on the consistent debilitation of the Party.
We hear their professions of change.
But nothing can change if they apply the same impotent remedies to cure the same virulent ills.
What this poll reveals is a definite preference for the retention of the PARTY – proved by the 12% who voted to remove it from the Political Landscape and the 88% who did not.
Of that 88%, 48% voted for the Central Executive Committee to remove Aubrey Norton, with 40 % calling on him to resign.
This shows a preference for order, for the Constitutional mechanism to assert its power and do its job. Additionally, it runs contrary to dissenting opinion which peddles polling as polarizing.
When incumbent leaders face devastating data or widespread dissatisfaction, framing democratic exercises—like polling, debates, or internal challenges—as “contentious”, are anticipated defenses. It’s one of those time-tested strategies resorted to by straggling leaders looking for one last lap.
In this case, it speaks to the character of the leader who ignores public distaste for his presence and demonstrates an unabashed willingness to break the institution before or as he leaves.
It’s the mix of spite and resentment that courses through the veins of operational losers. Supplanting oneself above the purpose of the organization is a hostile take over. And hostility and organization are antithetical to each other
This poll both exposes and exonerates.
It’s combined 88%, in the categories that pose the leader’s removal, is a crushing super majority that completely strips away the argument that the Opposition to Norton’s Leadership is just a fringe group of “malicious” actors.
And this brings us to why Norton, the Leader who led the Party to its historic loss, has taken over the role of the Central Executive Committee – independent by its Constitution–and has announced, on its behalf, that it has postponed Biennial Congress to another year –2027.
It’s not even a hostile take over. It’s a run up and surrender.
The Election to Leadership of Norton is for a set term. Extraneous circumstances, like his unequivocal rejection by a national electorate, demands an urgent meeting to evaluate his national rejection in the context of how effective he would be as the face of the Party.
The Party, we’re thinking, still functions as a political vehicle to provide ideological choice in the nation’s political democracy.
If he represents himself as the spokesperson of its independent administrative entity, with no push back from CEC members, then he’s asserting more ownership than leadership.
And with the apparent acquiescence of his MP’s, whose presence in Parliament is now overshadowed by their replacement in rank and reduction in sitting order, the ability of the Party to be an able representative of its electorate becomes the question.
That there is a crisis in leadership is established. That the Party’s presence in parliament has been reduced to a marginalized after-thought is a result of public servants not serving their contracts. There is talk that the leader has control over them because he appoints them to their salaried positions.
And this activates the terms patronage and leverage …making them more than just a rhyming pattern. Patronage provides the resources,
leverage converts those resources into absolute control.
There’s a basket of formal terms, complete with psychological reactions, to describe Norton’s take over. But who needs the sophistication of ‘clientelism‘ and ‘co-optation‘ to describe the purchase of loyalty with government money?
In a run up and surrender, you know you took the loan shark’s money at a specified premium. Here, it is compromised civil service in exchange for personal employment. The integrity of the institution has been traded for your spot on the payroll.
Are we accusing anyone of this? Surely not.
But appearance is good grounds for imputation of guilt. The standard for public trust is, ‘avoid, even the appearance of impropriety’, let alone a brazen take over of functions.
And, it’s not even camouflaged desperation. It’s the gracelessness of function where refinement is standard thinking. There was a time when institutional manners would have prevailed, some intellectual rigor would have preceded any action with propensity to smear the institution.
But the Party’s decimation at the polls ushered in the collapse of internal deterrence and the subversion of pride in civil service, for a pay check.
Are we accusing anyone of this? Surely not.
But the structural evidence leaves no room for alternative explanations…given the combined academic scholarship of those who seem to have surrendered to this political marauder.
There are professionals of all types in the PNC; levels of experience that have spanned decades of politicking under several ideologies. Surely, they don’t want to be remembered as the victims of politics’ worst loser in the nation – not for prestige and a paycheck, when history is an unbiased scribe of political activities.
Not to belabor the point.
But, there is this reading on the vulnerability of legacy. And, though legacy seems distant, it is writing itself every day. History, goes the saying, doesn’t grade on a curve. It captures what the individual does and measures him with the length and breadth of his deeds.
The leader’s chapters have already been written. His members don’t have to tether their history to his down fall. They are endowed enough to see that his claim of reconstituting what he pounded to dust, is his signature blabber…not substance.
The featured poll says, in greater number, that it wants the Party to be saved. It, also, says, in not so small a number, that it wants Norton gone.
This is public opinion.
The Agency of the Party’s seasoned professionals has been summoned. The transition from passive compliance to active reform is what the voters want.
Hopefully, the capture of this storied institution is not complete and the scholarship within answers the public call.
