Back scratching

Pay off

Raphael Trotman is Speaker of the Parliament courtesy of David Granger – make no bones about that! Trotman knows it and Granger knows it: the only person who’s not in the know seems to be Moses “Shut yuh-so-and-so mouth” Nagamootoo. You on the other hand, dear reader, would remember how the AFC and the APNU ganged up and denied the Speaker’s chair to Ralph Ramkarran – which centuries of tradition demanded was his to refuse.
The AFC proposed Nagamootoo and the APNU, Debbie Backer, to fill the critical spot. It was Granger who nixed Nagamootoo’s chances – he adamantly insisted that Nagamootoo was too recently PPP! The stain hadn’t washed off yet. And Granger agreed to Trotman – who, let it not be forgotten, was once so ensconsced in the bosom of the PNC that he ran for its leadership. Presumably that association doesn’t leave quite the stain as the PPP. Well, it is now time for Trotman to pay back the favour: you know that nothing in politics is free.
Granger is competing against Carl “Barry” Greenidge for the leadership of the PNC this month-end. Visibility and prominence is now the name of the game. So what does old Raphael do? Purely by coincidence and happenstance (wink, wink), he arranges for an “independence lecture series” in Parliament. And guess who gets to deliver the first lecture? No prizes for picking Granger: we all know it was time for the Speaker to scratch Granger’s back.
Not surprisingly, Barry’s quit teed off. Firstly, there’s the matter that Granger is a historian. How come the lecture couldn’t be on economics which is Carl’s baby? Then to rub salt into the wound, the lecture, supposed to be in early June is mysteriously delayed to July – the month of the PNC internal elections. Barry doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to know which way the breeze is blowing from the Speaker’s chair.
But Trotman is not just paying back his debt: he’s also feathering his own nest. As we’ve said time and again in this column, the Speakership is just a way  – station for Trotman. Further political elevation is not going to come through the perennial also – ran AFC. Raphael is rehabilitating his credentials and positioning himself for the PNC’s leadership. He knows that Granger and Carl are both transition figures. Trotman knows time’s on his side; it’ll be Granger’s turn for back – scratching then. What a schemer!!

Dirty politics
Granger didn’t miss his chance to woo the PNC delegates for their leadership votes. His first salvo was to declare that Cheddi Jagan could never be the “Father of the nation”. This, of course, is the bone that is stuck in the craw of the PNC. They can’t get over the fact it was Cheddi Jagan who formed the PAC – which became the PPP, the first nationalist party – while Burnham was sill in law school. Not being able to build a case for Burnham as the “Father of the nation”, Granger pulled the stunt of saying there is no “Father of the nation”. If it can’t be Burnham, it can’t be anyone else!

Foregone conclusion
We are witnessing PNC “democracy” in action. One of its major victims, Vincent Alexander, recently warned that the rigging machinery is still in place. So what else is new?