When you run an Olympian loser you lose in Olympian proportions.
We were accused of “dragging” the candidate when we sounded well founded warning.
And it’s not that we’re prophetic. It was really not that complicated.
The unspoken mandate to support the current iteration of the PNC, whose historic import retains our endorsement, is, sadly, to vote color and blind.
Our sentiment emphatically rejects that.
We are guided by the history of its formation and are of the opinion that, unless it is restructured with the ethos and academic underpinning of its original framers, it will die the torturous death it is currently enduring, as it loses its rightful place in the nation’s history.
And we are confident that it will be as inclusive of the spectrum of membership it enjoyed back then, when the founders contemplated the Party’s structure and its interplay with the demographic that supported it.
We say this as celebrators of the dialects of our Six Peoples and support their retention as deeply as we acknowledge English as our colonial inheritance, our nation’s official language, which is the common communicator with the international community.
The combination of effective communication, analytical skills and strategic thinking that established the original chassis of the Party, was a direct result of the formal and higher education which the founders infused UNAPOLOGETICALLY …and did so using every dialect, as was necessary.
It was these traits that branded the Party one of quality and its Founding Father, Forbes Burnham, as an “effective Prime Minister” with a “first class brain”… “very ambitious for his country”, per Sir W. Teeling Uk Hansard, during the Debate for British Guiana’s Independence, as recorded in UK Hansard, May 1966, lines 1143 thru 1162.
Educated and sophisticated shaped the persona of the Peoples National Congress- PNC- and were never seen as ‘uppity’ or ‘condescending’, to favor some loose interpretation of ‘down to earth’.
From its establishment in 1957 thru its absorption of the United Democratic Party (UDP) in 1959, which had been founded by John Carter, Lawyer and Diplomat, there is a through-line to education and political pedigree.
Effective contribution was a calculation- not a byproduct or happenstance.
And this UDP had previously absorbed the National Democratic Party (NDP), inclusive of William Oscar Rudyard Kendall and Eugene Francis Correia – prominent servants in the political sphere, labeled socially as Middle Class.
Selecting people of distinction to form leadership, in PNC hierarchy, was as deliberate as was its choosing from a mix of gender, social standing and diversity of race.
This is the nucleus of the PNC, its significant, unerasable, ingrained standard- is our view.
And anything that falls short of this DNA of excellence makes a mockery of this framework and is a
disavowment of this fundamental structure that was conceived with the foresight of having the best individuals– representative of all classes, ethnicities and genders- in positions of leadership; making sound decisions to benefit the multi -layered operatives and membership of a political machine fit for purpose.
Falling short will, also, demonstrate an ignorance of the pertinence of history in the context of ‘past shaping present’, if its founding traits of excellence are replaced by the abandonment of rigor and the adoption of ease, as some contrived construct for “all to feel welcome”.
Hansard history records the effective PNC interaction with rival Peter D’Aguiar, whose expertise revealed the PPP’s failure to pay Civil Servants for up to three years at a time and the financial mess that was British Guiana’s balance sheet.
Fortunately, the primitive view of the ‘Opposition as the Oppressor’ was overruled by Burnham’s education, civility and understanding of the vital interaction of Ruling Party and Opposition, to fulfill obligations they were elected to execute.
And this collaboration and show of interest in nation building was enough to identify the PNC, under Forbes Burnham and the UF under Peter D’Aguiar, as the preferable alternative and counter actor to “the twisted mentality” of a mistrusted Cheddi Jagan, by those who would relinquish colonial power to the Peoples National Congress.
The arduous deliberation by the UK Parliament on Forbes Burnham as the top end of a Coalition with Peter D’Aguiar, and its meticulous assessment of the PNC as the Party to have received the parchments of Independence on behalf of the nation, is the one fact that can never be erased by history or diluted through erroneous entries by opposing sources.
But this irrevocable history can recede into oblivion, with the combination of a poor steward of the PNC Party’s archives, borne out of mangled Administration and an opposing force, dedicated to smearing the PNC’s reputation through self- authored, self- policed, ‘research resources’, like Wikipedia.
And this massive 2025 election loss takes that one step closer… to political extinction.
This un-distilled word assembly of lies, which are easily proven false by the Hansard’s documentation, is a prime example of the structures that have been crafted to erase Guyana’s African Leadership truth.
To that, add a low end Psychological Operation – Psy Ops- project.
How? With the tacit approval of the Ruling Party, specify those to be smeared. Exclude them from sociopolitical benefits by disenfranchising their participation in Parliament, in the name of greater number of seats. Deploy social media vandals. Validate name- calling of prominent Opposition Party members, by allowing its occurrence under the Ruling Party’s banner- a few peripheral weapons and though small, are optimally effective in the ‘smaller’ listening spaces.
And all this becomes exponentially easier if the PNC is impoverished by a substandard leader and a member-body wandering in an intra-party political maze.
Social media signage and loud commentary claiming ‘greatness and imminent victory’ tended to project a longing for what was not there.
If any diagnosis can be made, it is that these people were screaming for the benefit of viability; anything but the one -person political marauding, making decisions in hindsight, manufacturing policy on the stump and calling that politicking.
Saluting failure and praising incompetence became strategy for a public showing of unity – and embracing the Leader’s lack of overall acumen was adopted as campaign religion.
The candidate was irreparable. The fall out was severe and has damaged the institution of the PNC immeasurably, if not irreparably.
And everyone and everything that contributed to this disrobing of the People’s National Congress, its history in securing Suffrage Rights for the African Electorate that was doomed to political minority should be both, impetus and incentive to restore the CORE FUNCTION of the Party as a Democratic carriage for all Guyanese, not the least of whom are Black.
Prophesy is optional folly – some say – but it offers as much opportunity for reflection / evaluation, as it does for prediction.
Reflection/ Evaluation is assessing Burnham’s Vanguard approach to the ballot with Proportional Representation as the solution to inclusive, fairer opportunity, in electing government. Getting there, through the PNC, took the Party to Avant-Garde strata, making it the nation’s historical vehicle through which that change was accomplished.
Of specific note is that the PNC, which -because of Forbes Burnham- was considered the better choice by colonial leadership for post-colonial governance; irrespective of the fact-free, counter programming disinformation found in places like this and their biased University dissertations, graded more for format than fact.
And of greater and more historic import is that it was the efforts of Forbes Burnham which won Guyana
Proportional Representation (PR) …the electoral system that awards seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for that seat – that still exists to this day. To the Colonial Masters who were handing over stewardship of the colony, it represented a fairer shot for every voter to have their vote counted.
Jagan’s request for voting age to be lowered to 18 was seen for the numbers game it was. With his demographic being the largest of the voting population, he was guaranteed victory in a First Past the Post system, which he would have won because he had the ethnic population to deliver the greater number of votes.
It’s this rich history that makes the PNC the political icon it will always be when the chronicle of its existence is read in records that remain in posterity, like the UK Hansard… where its odyssey to prominence cannot be violated by the cheap assassins of Guyana’s history, with their Wikipedia, Original Research, Self Published Sourcing, entries and biased records penned ‘Under Seige’, to demonize a Founding Father of the nation and the vehicle that began the journey to nationhood.
The Party’s Blue Print is its foundation. Building anywhere off of its pillars guarantees the slow- rolling collapse of the original PNC, whose seemingly haphazard appending of ‘R’, has never quite demonstrated what the ‘Reform ‘ initiative is, what the reform goals were.
It’s like the other major Party that has added a ‘C’ to convey ‘Civic’ in its brand; when it’s record of disparities in community affairs, citizenry, citizenship, run diametrically opposite to the meaning of ‘Civic’. To allay doubt, any and all of these attached reports will bear us out.
With this re-set opportunity available for the PNC, it has to be undertaken as the serious endeavor the original branding was, by its founding members.
Though retrieving the brand is not the mission, salvaging its intent is.
Conclusions that length of service are the equivalent to overall knowledge will have to be exorcised. Expertise more than effort will be critical, here. Leadership is a discipline and is not synonymous with ‘down to earth’.
Neither one is the domain of a single person but is proficiency- generated, when administrative systems are in place and optimized.
And to knit all this together, the medieval practice of a unilateral selector of Members of Parliament, from
THE LIST by a single person, through a method that has no known measurements or guidelines of determination…other than whim and fancy… should be revamped and replaced.
Maybe, it’s time for a system that reflects the choice of Regional Leaders, in conjunction with achieving the pledges of a manifesto and the overall mission of the Party…instead of some dark- room political king maker controlling this key element of democracy, after an Opposition or Government Leader would have been ELECTED.
This generational reboot may be the final straw.
Economic hardship, per studies, invites vote- buying through gifting by politicians. Too many voters see the vote as a bargaining chip for their immediate and most transient needs.
‘Because we Care’ slogans become seasonal currency to cajole the monetary-disadvantaged.
PNC, the Party that was founded to ensure the political prosperity of those in this bracket, has been absent as a robust and LEGITIMATE OPPOSITION for too long. It’s history of cultivating malleable minds, within its youth arm, YSM, seems abandoned for a cliquism that is as fatal as its Opposition.
The current strategy of not openly sharing an agenda for “fear of it being stolen by the PPP”, confirms a shallowness of mind and an absence of objectivity.
And Party members cannot make educated choices if they are not being informed properly….not when the members are being anesthetized between unconfident retail politicians with meandering messages and rambunctious peddlers with airy portfolios and acquired designations, which never translate to effective and leadership.
Look.
There was always going to be a winner in this 2025 election.
It was never going to be PNC because of its compromised interpretation of leadership and the surrender to its substandard.
And, this spectacular loss of seats and standing is a threat to its existence that history, so far, has scantily preserved in spite of willful institutional neglect.
In order to reestablish any measure of viability, the PNC is now faced with a single option.
Reboot or Perish.