Often, it’s history that turns the page but this time it’s a fusion of an unshakably smitten Party electorate and the unplumbed depth of what turned out to be a wasp in the political ointment.
November 3rd 2025 seating of the Party that ran the shortest campaign in the nation’s history, in the place of the historic PNC that sat either in Government or its Opposition, registered a shift in balance of power that corresponds with the sting of the loss delivered by the most unqualified Leader to have run as Presidential Candidate for the PNC.
Autopsies of political losses are useful when defeat comes as a surprise.
But, the Party was hijacked by a corpse whose irrelevance and overall lack of capacity to engage past his own members, rendered his tenure powerless and his capacity to expand his voter base de minimis. Add that to his caricature of politicking and the death certificate was delivered long before election day.
The Party’s mortality, was a studied inference during Burnham’s early years – 1957 thru 1961- assessing the battles for Leadership he fought and won contending with former colleagues from his former membership of PPP Party, as he sought to create his own, the PNC, as an entity with a firm dogma and operating philosophy.
Fears of the absence of due diligence meeting knavish ambitions and incompetence, in the proverbial perfect storm, was a deduced warning for Party preservation.
It was this political third rail, the forbidden path, that relegated the Party to literal back-bencher after 68 years of institutional placement as either elected Leader or Opposition, denying what history would have granted with the respect that defeat has no grace for.
Yet, the Peoples National Congress -PNC’s- fortunes, remain hostage to the leadership disabilities of the one man,
Aubrey Norton, who has veered it off course, not only with the recklessness of bad decision making but with the predictability of his overt incompetence, poorly camouflaged by noise and disruptive behavior.
“Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself,” though quoted from America’s Franklin D. Roosevelt, is essentially what Forbes Burnham and the Party’s original members warned against, in their founding policies and Manifesto.
The negative effect of his presence on the Party’s brand continued post- election loss with his request for an election do-over which confirmed the one-man operation that it had degenerated to. If it were still operating as an organization guided by policies, then, the crisis of the defeat would have triggered emergency actions to preserve, for starters, what was left of its brand.
Anything attracting press coverage would have demanded specific message discipline, scrupulous scripting, to protect the disrepair with measured responses.
An election do-over has deep ramifications that extend way past accusations of electoral fraud. It challenges the efficiency of the system and the integrity of the voters as much as it challenges the Treasury, which has to fund a ‘redo’ with no warranted evidence, other than loss and bruised egos.
It is also an affront to democracy, the ideology that affords opportunity to vote for preferred leaders, when it is a fickle request. So, it’s the last thing a disciplined entity would broadcast if it were operating as an organization that understands that its integrity and character are built on its commitment to ethical principles. Everything less diminishes its existence and squanders its reputation… as that ‘do-over’ call did to the Party of Suffrage Rights history.
Sadly, these deeds all speak to character and the Party Office of Leader.
As flawed as it may be, Guyana’s professed Democracy has to be executed by leaders who respect the tenets of the democracy’s existence, like losing and leaving when loss is declared.
And this Leader, Norton, believes in this because he called for Desmond Hoyte’s resignation when Hoyte lost a mere 5 seats to the 10, he lost for the PNC along with the 9 he was unable to secure through coalition, like the previous Opposition Leader, amounting to a whopping 19 seat loss under his, Norton’s, tenure.
And just as a do-over in the absence of evidence, is egregious, loss that breaks the shape of the Party screams for rectification to preserve the entity to protect democracy…through a viable multi -party existence.
His, is a firm record of inflexible and intractable singular ideas, even when proven to be bad, with no propensity for walking back, reconsideration, peer-review, even, to move past internal dissatisfaction or dissent. His claim of his members lack of institutional knowledge as reason for internal turmoil came home to roost through election results in what psychologists would term psychological projection.
These are the traits which have stripped the once formidable Party to its nails and have proven to be of zero value to its growth and appeal.
More recently, he was “engaged” by the President of the CCJ about the stalemate in the Chancellor’s appointment in Guyana’s Judiciary. It was a conversation he teased with the “All I would say to you…” lead in, hinting at undertones of critical matter that led to headlines of him being ‘troubled’ and his juxtaposition to its detail.
Self promotion and craving media attention by politicians tend to spotlight job performance.
That this leader, whose oversight delivered the worst defeat the Party has ever suffered, is still being allowed to lead, is simply contrary to reason.
And the inference that the rules and policies which gave him the loopholes to leadership have to be followed, to eject him from a position he rose to through questionably savory ways, is the kind of counter productivity that kills the organization through looping dysfunction.
This is when members of ‘the Board of Directors’ have to determine whether following the rules would be more self-defeating adherence than corrective action. Saving the Party is paramount. And unguided commentary coming from a leader, best known for steering it to its current ruin, cements the image of loss.
Politics is no place for soft landings, not when a constituency depends on expertise, nor is it a place for easy transitions or gentle exits. The ‘Board of Directors’ is just as answerable to Consumers, in this case, the Electorate.
Analogies aside, those who still support the PNC, especially for what it represents in our national history, know that a revamping is mandatory, if it is to shed the shame of garnishing just 17.79% of voter support as of 2025.
The less public- facing ‘Board of Directors’ is still the recognized and respected element in the Party’s machinery.
We’re hoping that they, too, see the urgency in the need for change of Party Leadership, if it is to retain capacity to contend in future elections.
Pretending that Aubrey Norton’s absence in parliament is of reparative significance is an insult to the electorate that is now victim of the structural damage and long term issues his failed tenure has left for the specific demographic that suffers most in the nation’s economy.
His name is a blemish on the PNC let alone his association, irrespective of how remote. And this will define the MP’s that he, with the ill-fitted label of Leader, has selected, more to boost a sagging image than to support a crumbling Party.
We say this not against the MP’s but to underscore the stranglehold he has on the political party which remains maimed from the assault of his tenure, inflicted through the loopholes of failed administrative upkeep his ambitions drove him through.
Choking on bureaucracy is where the ‘Board of Directors’ slumps right now, finessing through propriety to call a knave a knave.
We feel differently because every microphone and camera that Norton faces, in the name of the PNC, is another tense moment that takes another chip out of what the Party is tenuously wobbling on.
Aubrey Norton has to go is more than a slogan.
It is an imperative…Board Members.