The experiences of the People’s National Congress (PNC) since it was founded by Forbes Burnham in 1957, much more than its endurance over the succeeding sixty-seven years, should embolden it to overcome the anxieties about its present-day problems. The Party’s biggest crises have often centered on its congresses, the biennial opportunities for discussion, deliberation and decision-making. The Party’s four principal institutions – the Constitution, Congress, General Council and Central Executive Committee – however, remain functional.
Former President and PNC Leader, David Granger, speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – reminded that the Party’s founder had used the platform of the 1st Biennial Delegates Congress in 1975 to warn: “To be sponsoring and joining factions in the Party is to indulge in anti-Party activity calculated to weaken…the Party. [F]actions and factionalists are wittingly, or unwittingly, instruments of our enemies.”
Mr. Granger recalled that the warning was ignored nearly forty years later when the Party’s arch-enemy contrived the scandalous ‘Shurian conspiracy’ in an attempt to shatter its solidarity. The People’s Progressive Party brazenly financed a dissident faction to overthrow the Constitution and install a new Central Executive Committee in July 2014. Mr. Granger pointed out that the Party defeated that conspiracy and went on to defeat the PPP itself in the 2015 general elections the next year.
The PNC, nevertheless, is still challenged by several serious crises, the first being the question of its ‘credo’. The ideology of ‘Cooperative socialism’ that was promulgated as the Party’s doctrine in the ‘Declaration of Sophia’ in 1974 was meant to champion workers’ interests – wages, welfare and safety – but doctrinaire socialism has been abandoned. The second crisis is the solidarity of the partnership – A Partnership for National Unity. It is a fact that the APNU’s partners – Equal Rights and Justice Party; Guyana Action Party; Guyana Nation Builders and National Front Alliance – met and elected a new leadership in June 2024 in the absence of the PNC. Partners complained that no meeting had been convened since 2022.
Mr. Granger expressed the view that the third and most serious crisis – electoral performance – should be measured by the results of the Local Government Elections in 2023. The PNC-APNU won only 14 of the 80 (17.5 per cent) of the Local Authority Areas. Painful losses were recorded in every town – Anna Regina; Bartica; Corriverton; Georgetown; Lethem; Linden; Mabaruma; Mahdia; New Amsterdam and Rose Hall. In fact, PNC-APNU lost 12,760 votes between the 2016 and 2023 and lost all four hinterland towns that it had won in 2016. The PNC’s priority should now be to examine the challenges it needs to face in the 2025 general and regional elections to assure the nation of its commitment to provide the people with a good life.
The former President was on the view that the PPPC, in office for fifty months, has failed the people in terms of human safety and public security. The high rate of violent crime, low level of human safety on the roadways and industries and ineffective everyday policing; fatal road accidents, narcotics trafficking and wife murders have not diminished. Economic insecurity, also, is not a mirage; it is an everyday problem for households on the coastland and hinterland. Further, the PPP’s ‘victories’ in general elections in 2020 and local elections in 2023 have not improved the administration of municipalities, neighbourhoods and villages.
The People’s National Congress has strong popular support. The PNC-led coalition won 31 parliamentary seats and nearly 218,000 votes in general elections in 2020. The Party’s experience should encourage it to overcome the current crises and prepare it to fulfil its promise of a good life for everyone.
