The morning
after the election George Grant said he was scratching his head; wondering what
just happened.
He was one of quite a few people of that ilk
who have been living for a while now in a land of denial.
To fully understand the shellacking that the
National Democratic Congress got on February 19, you can easily track the
timelines of my blogs available online from 2010 forward. (So I am not just
Monday morning quarter-backing here).
I was reviewing them overnight -- and it
refreshed my memories, blow by blow of how the seeds of this demise were being
sown.
When I warned them back them, I was summarily
dismissed as "a threat to the nation" or as a badass bitter man,
angry about some crumbs that I was supposedly so cheap to be needing to gather from
the foot of their rotten tables.
The economy was bad, and the leadership was
never inspiring -- and on those two counts alone the NDC was always facing a
one term.
But even so, they were - supposedly -- always
with a chance of getting a few seats here and there.
What pushed it over the edged was what I
called the R factor - the rebels and the
rebellion.
The lavalass
that washed away the NDC came because in the end there was a massive national
rebellion against the leadership of Tillman Thomas and Nazim Burke.
If their egos do not get in the way, they
should now make way for a brand of new leadership. If not -- and here is another
bold prediction -- the NDC will soon be buried alongside George Brizan in St
Pauls.
The dipping of the fingers in ink after
voting was a poignant signal of "giving them the finger" by the large
majority of people in Grenada.
There have been countless people I met who
said they voted not so much for NNP, but against the reconstituted NDC because
either "them fellas too dam bad" or "them fellas too
ungrateful" or "them fellas aint care about anybody."
A week ago, in the pages of the Today newspaper
-- not known for any astute serious political analysis but childish meanderings
-- they were predicting that the election would have meant the end of the
so-called rebels -- those expelled last year from the party.
They even said "the myth" that the
party needed their organizing excellence and their messaging nous and
fundraising power would be proven to be just hype.
Oh, how they were wrong.
And oh, how I always knew they were wrong.
Other than the fact that NNP won massively,
and that returning Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell has a unique opportunity to
finally shape his final legacy, the other big winners this past week were
"the rebels".
In the end of the day they were the effective
leaders of the on-the-ground insurgency that swept away NDC for good.
NNP would have won without their efforts, but
NDC would have not been obliterated.
Once they hit the ground, NDC was always
toast.
Which brings me to one of the most poignant
comments I heard during the campaign -- when one former activist of the NDC in Tivoli
said -- what the party did last September was not just expel ten key members --
but effectively expelled the people.
And so there was that other factor -- revenge.
A whole lot of people voted to get their
revenge. They voted because they came to hate what both Thomas and Burke came
to represent.
And until now, I thought revenge was a bad
thing. No more. It is an act to exorcise the demons of insensitivity and
inaction; of ungratefulness and unfeeling. It helped a lot of people to
liberate themselves from the suffocating spirit of political hypocrisy and
contradictions.
As much as this was a vote for betterment;
this was also a vote for political fairness and reasonableness.
The same people who gave political advice to
Tillman Thomas and Nazim Burke -- those who write the five year
Stonecrusher syndicate -- got it wrong -- again!
After the vote, "the rebels" now
have more political relevance than the choir.
People ask if I am not worried that there is
no opposition. No I am not.
The people decided that is what they wanted.
NDC acted in a way to make the scenario palatable
and possible.
In
that bitter, vicious, restless heartbreaking summer of 2010, I had pleaded and cautioned
Glen Noel and Willie Joseph -- that they
will have no path to a national victory unless they make peace and
reason.
Back then I could see the golden dreams of
July 2008 slipping away. I predicted that unless there is a change of course
and attitude, annihilation will come.
The NDC's biggest achilles heel was their
arrogance -- borne out of action such as the suspension of parliament, and the declaration
that "nobody will cheat me of my time."
The architects of that disconnect are the
ones who would have woken up seriously and genuinely surprised on Wednesday
morning.
For me, it was no breaking news. It was
simply, a long time coming!
PS: Comrades
Chris, Glen, Faye, Vincent et cet -- for yet another election cycle; I was
right again.
PS2: For the
same comrades, just a reminder. Political strategy is not about dealing with
the best case scenario, but building a worst case scenario and working to
change it as if your life depended on it.
PS3: When
you are an incumbent, it's not enough to peddle fear.
