Local News
by The New Today
As Grenada’s main opposition New National Party (NNP) of the aging 78-year old Keith Mitchell continues the bickering over a successor, a pro-supporter of the Peter David faction has launched a blistering attack on the current front runner, attorney-at-law Dwight Horsford.
Speaking to THE NEW TODAY on the weekend, the official warned Horsford, a former Solicitor General of Grenada, to be careful of not being used by Mitchell to try to keep out David from the leadership position as he could then be devoured by Dr. Mitchell in an effort to get back into the top position to lead the NNP into the next general election.
He linked Dr. Mitchell to a key recommendation made by a party select group headed by the husband of a former government minister that anyone who is vying for the job of Political Leader of NNP must hold “conservatives” views.
He said this is clearly targeting David, a former leftwinger in the 1979-83 Grenada Revolution, who is believed to have supported the radical faction led by Bernard Coard, the suspected mastermind of the bloody palace coup in which Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was executed at the height of bitter internal feuding for control of the then ruling New Jewel Movement (NJM).
According to the David insider, it is the belief that Dr. Mitchell is trying to install Horsford on a temporary basis at the convention planned for December and will emerge “at the right time” to lead the NNP into the next election.
“Keith doh going no way. Keith is plotting – he’s going to fold up Dwight as toilet paper because people are not feeling the effect of Dwight,” he said. “What Keith wants to do is create the conditions to come back with people calling on him to return to lead NNP into the next election,” he added.
The insider believes that Dr. Mitchell is setting up Horsford to fail as the new party boss and just before the election will seek to re-emerge as the saviour of the party.
He charged that the former Prime Minister will use people to bring “news” to him that Horsford “is not getting traction” on the ground and “the people don’t want Dwight” and then seek to pave the way for him to return at the helm of NNP.
THE NEW TODAY understands that one of the brothers of the defeated NNP boss has been telling several persons in the St George North-west constituency that Dr. Mitchell will not stand as a candidate in the next national poll.
The official called on the former Prime Minister to invite Barbadian pollster Peter Wickham to do a poll to find out the best person to put at the helm of NNP and prepare the party for the next general election. “The best option that he (Keith Mitchell) had was Peter David and Emmalin Pierre as Leader and Vice-Leader – that’s what they were picking up but he doesn’t want that,” he said.
He is predicting that Dr. Mitchell will at some stage tell party faithful that ”all who he try, it ain’t working” as part of his plan to pave the way for his return at the helm of the party in time for the next general election. This, he said, would result in “a sound licking” at the polls by the island’s longest serving Prime Minister at the hands of the incumbent Dickon Mitchell of the Congress party.
He pointed out that PM Dickon Mitchell who was only into his 8th month as political leader of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) gave him such a bad licking” will undoubtedly give him “more” licks at the polls. According to the official, if NNP goes into the next election with Mitchell as political leader, several party supporters will stay away from the polls and others will simply vote for Dickon Mitchell and Congress.
“Keith will lose more seats now,” he quipped.
The source indicated that David is still committed to going forward at the NNP Convention to try and win the top position as party leader.
He believes that within the NNP David now has “the bigger base” that the defeated former Prime Minister had counted on his side “the old guards in the party” who were once loyal to Dr. Mitchell as former Chairman Dr. Lawrence Joseph and Medical doctor Bert Brathwaite.
“They are in Peter Camp – they see Peter as the one to keep NNP alive,” he quipped.
The insider stressed that many of the party supporters would like to see the NNP going into the next elections with a Peter David/Emmalin Pierre Team at the helm. He suggested that Pierre’s role will be to attract the women in the party.
The NNP convention is being planned for early December to coincide with the December 3, 1984 date when the party was first elected into office in Grenada to restore democratic rule of law after nearly five years of non-elected Marxist rule of the New Jewel Movement (NJM) of Maurice Bishop which staged the March 13, 1979 coup d’etat against the Eric Gairy-led Labour party government.
