It’s a sham, and a farce!
How the NNP Convention is not a legitimate exercise
ARCHIE BAIN, the last known Chairman of the NNP St George’s North West Constituency Group, and the manager of Dr Keith Mitchell’s last re-election campaign there, calls the entire arrangement for next Sunday’s party convention – a sham.
I had also described it to a friend only a few hours before I saw his post – a farce.
I knew what both words meant – without the need for any further reference – but in the circumstances – I wanted to be so exact – so I looked them up.
Sham - a thing that is not what it is purported to be.
Farce - a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay; (and in another instance) - an absurd event.
The pending NNP convention has indeed nose-dived into both – a sham and a farce. And take that from Dr Mitchell’s campaign manager on the one hand, and his three-time campaign strategist on the other.
And it is very unfortunate, though in many ways understandable, how this whole situation has been “personalized” – as if it is about Doc, or Peter or Emmalin.
The subject of national debate is about something bigger than any one of them; it is about the state of the body politic – whether these three are at the center of it or not; it is whether our political processes are worthy of the times in which it should serve.
It brings into question whether the New National Party – as it is currently (un)constituted – and whether it is led by Mitchell, Pierre or David – can be trusted ultimately to govern with accountability, and transparency; whether it can be trusted to be the defenders of democracy and fair play.
Those are deep fundamental questions that the people of Grenada must ponder in the weeks and months ahead.
What is in motion here is the de-legitimization of the NNP – as a credible force for good; an inexplicable act of political arson by Dr Mitchell himself.
On a podcast on Friday night, Doc opined that what is happening in the lead up to next Sunday’s convention is nothing different to what they have done in the past 40 years.
Given what we know and see now, it is a very damning self-assessment.
He was right in one instance though – and wrong in the other.
What is happening now with the gerrymandering and the underhand picking of delegates began from the very first NNP convention in 1984.
And I know because it was not anything I read in a book, or a story that was told to me by someone. It happened to me.
I was scheduled to be a delegate in the very first convention – supposedly one of the youngest.
Under the NNP constitution, which still stands today – each group from each polling division gets to select two delegates for its convention.
In 1984, representing the polling division CO2 (that’s upper Munich) were Hamlet Mark and Shirley McMillan.
Those names were duly submitted.
When we showed up at the convention, our names were not on the list – replaced completely by two different people, who were not even members of our group, much less qualified to be delegates.
I was editor then of The National newspaper – which was the party organ, so I had close contacts with the people at the headquarters.
When I asked them the Monday after – whatever happened to Shirley and my name – the ladies told me, Dr Mitchell (who was the general secretary designate and the one organizing for the convention) had asked that we be removed because we were “George Brizan people.”
PS: That was the only 14 months of my life that I “did party.”
And as a humorous side note – from the people I now see around the NNP – only Doc and Larry Joseph I remembered from that convention. Talk about “the belly of NNP?” – ah dee dey before Gregory Bowen and Peter David and Emmalin Pierre et al. (Maybe I should join back and run for leader then, having come from the belly?)
But back to the main point - Doc is an experienced hand at fixing party conventions.
Nowhere is it more bold-faced this time than in St Patrick’s East, St Patrick's West and St Andrew’s North West.
I hope Wayne James makes it back on the list for St Andrew’s North West after Lorina Waldron was told to remove him because there is “some doubt” as to how he will vote. (Pastor Lewis you safe too?)
The other thing Doc was not correct in his assertion however – that this is how it was done all the time – was in relation to the leadership contest.
In NNP’s history there was only one leadership contest ever – when Keith Mitchell challenged Herbert Blaize and won in 1989.
Mitchell’s nomination came from the floor (and rightly so), even though Blaize had asked him hours before if the “rumor” was true, and he skirted around giving him a direct answer.
There was never some arbitrary committee which “screened” or “approved” potential leadership candidates; and there was nothing banning nominations from the floor.
Doc was fairly the beneficiary of that.
This time, in maneuvers directed by Doc himself, there is a Screening Committee, and there is the banning of nominations from the floor.
As far as I understand, David’s campaign has asked for a list of the delegates that should have been finalized on Monday. He has been refused access to that list.
How does someone go into an election – any election – for national or even boy scout and they cannot get to see, peruse and canvass the electors’ list?
The protestations of the likes of Archie Bain and Prescot Swan, longstanding allies of Dr Mitchell, are telling.
The frustration from me – someone Doc had enough confidence even as a teenager to ask my advice about challenging Blaize (which by the way I advised against) – comes from 10 years ago, when in speaking about how to strengthen his legacy, was the idea proffered about deepening the democracy in the party. I tried to argue then (unsuccessfully) how that in the long term can strengthen both his hand and that of the party.
That was 2014.
Forget 2014 -- 2024 now looks a hell of a lot like 1984; all over again!
PS: Martin Luther King once wrote from the Birmingham jail: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
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