Dear Editor,
At the recently concluded PPP Congress, of the 40-member policy-making body elected, only 5 were African-Guyanese. This raises serious questions. (Is the party in power unable to attract Africans into its membership? One wonders whether it is the policy of the party to keep African “inclusion” to a minimum).
Consider that this nation is made up principally of two major ethnic groups, each with a significant proportion of the total population – Indians at approximately 50 percent and Africans at 35 percent – you have to ask: Is the PPP a truly national and genuinely multiracial party?
Further, a study of the electoral mandates of the PPP in 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2006 elections will show that the PPP has drawn the bulk of its votes, at least 90 percent, from one ethnic group, Indians; and no more than 5 percent from Africans. The rest comes from the indigenous Indians. This fact will suggest, that in spite of the PPP regularly winning an easy 51 percent constitutional mandate, this mandate is seriously deficient and flawed. It lacks broad-based multiracial support deemed politically helpful and necessary to govern a uniquely multiracial society like Guyana.
Is the party’s leadership focusing on and addressing the problems of its failure to win even a minimum threshold of say, 15 percent of the total African vote? And, the perception and reality that the PPP is an Indo-ethnic party engaged in promoting and practicing ethnic politics?
Does the PPP (notwithstanding its claim of being a multiracial party) have an unwritten rule that only an Indian can be its leader and presidential candidate? Although the party has not selected its presidential candidate for the 2011 elections, all the talk and speculation within and without the party’s rank and file are mentioning names of Indians only. This must be seen as an affront and an assault on the sensibilities of the qualified, loyal, dedicated African members of the party – and Africans at large. Everything that comes out of this Congress suggests that the PPP is smug and complacent about the party’s and the nation’s age-old practices of ethnic politics.
If the party’s current leader, President Jagdeo and the predominantly Indian Central Executive Committee would only recognize the urgent and compelling need for the party to reinvent itself into a genuinely multiracial party, then the time to act is now. Don’t wait for 2011. Select an African-Guyanese as your party’s Presidential candidate for 2011. Use the next three years to demonstrate to the nation that the party is serious about overcoming the age-old albatross of ethnic politics and serious about winning a broad-based multiracial mandate in 2011.
The 1000 members who attended the PPP Congress shouldn’t have to be reminded that one of the major parties in the United States recently elected an African-American, Barack Obama, to be its presidential candidate for the November elections. And, this has occurred in a nation where the Africans’ share of the population is only 13 percent.
This is a major leap towards a more perfect multiracial democracy in the U.S. This historic event should have been a powerful inspiration for the PPP Congress, specifically, its leader President Jagdeo – and indeed all Guyanese.
It is time to bring an end to the existence of ethnic parties (both the PPP and PNC are ethnic parties) and an end to ethnic politics in Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud, New York
