Robert Corbin back from the grave

It’s official now: two appearances in the media in two days means that Robert Corbin is back. He’s arisen from the graveyard where his long line of detractors and competitors for his position as leader of the PNC thought they had consigned him. But there are those that say he was just playing possum until he figured the opprobrium had dissipated a mite from the party he’d inherited from Desmond Hoyte. What’s up?

Corbin, of course, has had more lives than the proverbial cat when it comes to survival in the political jungle. Earning his spurs in the PNC while still a teenager in Wismar in 1964, Corbin burnished his reputation as an activist with more brawn than brains. His intervening barge and scandals were just temporary setbacks. His services in the bareknuckle Guyanese politics, where rigging was matter of course, were just too valuable to dispense with totally.
His rise to the head of the PNC, however, did not go down too well with the League of Coloured People element that felt strongly his ‘type’ should know their ‘place’ – to serve (especially as muscle, but never as top leadership. Trotman is LCP to the bone but he proved no match for the street fighting skills of Corbin – and he had to decamp. Alexander was a prole – he was a Burnhamite socialist ideologue – but he too proved to be no match.
Granger is a Burnhamite from the LCP stratum, but he was ideologically pragmatic enough to make the necessary concessions to save the party for its ‘historic’ role. He agreed to Corbin remaining as leader of the PNC. So why has Corbin arisen from his deep cover? The answer is simple: Trotman! We’ve been keeping you abreast of the moves Trotman’s been surreptitiously making to re-capture what he believes to be his birthright – PNC leadership for his class and more importantly for himself. He will have to get past Corbin, however. The wily survivor figures while the PNC may not yet be completely rehabilitated, he can’t let Trotman have a free ride. Let’s see if Trotman will survive this round of bitch-slapping.