Dear Editor,

It would be foolish not to agree with Aubrey C. Norton (03:01:02) [ please note: link provided by LOSP web site ] that the People's National Congress has lost credibility, support and vigour. It is no longer a viable opposition.

That this party needs new leadership is a proposition which ought to be beyond question to most rational observers. There is no doubt that the aged and dated warlords who occupy its premier rostrum have seen better days. They are all obsolete by at least two decades and should be allowed out to pasture, quickly.

It has been an engrossing exercise, observing how the PPP has managed the process of change and transition, effecting the creation of a matrix of age, experience and party tradition on the one hand, in association with youth, adaptation and market re-positioning on the other. A worthy case study to be sure.

The PNC, at the other end of the spectrum, has merely been allowed to age. Old leaders, old ideas, old perspectives, old methodologies. It seems as though this party became content with seeking supremacy through meditation upon the mantra of its name. It has not sought to create a new marketing niche for itself. This is a classic dinosaur.

It really does not matter whether or not Aubrey C. Norton is a member of the PNC. Non-membership does not negate the validity of his contentions for the most part, at least not to himself and the thousands of others of his generation, actually the people who really have a future at stake and whom the PNC ought to be more anxious to garner into their ranks.

The pomposity evident in a supposed reply to Norton's letter, by someone who indicated a connection to the PNC speaks volumes about the arrogance, self centredness and pre-occupation with a status and glory, long past, that is really the anchor which is dragging this party down.

An inflexible opposition to the acceptance of new ideas, an unwholesome unwillingness to let new blood be infused into the stream of leadership, an inability, perhaps even unwillingness, to get in touch with the new mindset of the people. A lack of recognition that the business of politics is no longer transacted according to the dictates of despots, benign or otherwise.

These are the leaden weights which keep the PNC firmly saddled with the image of a one-region, mono-cell, obscurantist, reactionary cabal, focused solely upon the contemplation of its ethnic umbilical connections and capable of doing very little else that is socially or politically constructive.

The PPP is now perceived as being the party of movers and shakers, an image it takes pains to cultivate and enhance, the party which seemingly grasps at ideas and gobbles up people who seem aflame with the urge to get something going.

In contrast, the PNC with its orotund echoes and opportunistic sallies, comes over as the empty-headed blonde with cotton wool between her ears.

Some simple advice to the PNC, either re-invent yourself now or you will perish.