Dear Editor,
The notion that the PNC can ride back into office on the back of an Indian front man is not to be taken seriously. Nor do I think the party is or has ever considered the idea either plausible or desirable. If Mr Murray, or whomever, is eventually selected as a candidate it will be, we are sure, on his merit as a party activist and technician and not because of his race.
I therefore need to differ with a construction contained in a letter from F Skinner published in SN on Wednesday, September 21 (‘The opposition parties cannot read the codes’). Mike Persaud who seems espoused to the idea has, similary, under-analysed the mechanism that works to ensure the ethnic vote. And it is more likely to stay that way or get worse as polarisation settles into habit.
The idea of placating or wooing a portion of the Indian electorate by means of a ‘face’ drawn from that group has gained place in the discussion of possible strategic alternatives the PNC party may adopt. But history, both local and regional, suggests that the hope is illusory.
We recall that even before the PNC had entered office in 1964 it enjoyed the visible support of some high profile Indian politicians and community leaders. A group of influential professionals that included the late Sir Lionel Luckhoo and some business leaders were with the PNC. It was not as significant as the Indian-Presbyterian vote in Trinidad for the Williams PNM in the fifties, but it was visible and symbolic. The United Force also had its contingent of Indians in the leadership. Neither party seemed to have benefited massively from their presence. The PNC in office did not need to be told about inclusivity. The party was a model of ‘reaching out’ as it sought Indian and other non-African involvement in a studied policy that went beyond race and made a loud point about stepping over religious and class boundaries also. The PNC even, as we know, drew many Indians from the inner circle of the opposition PPP tents. Desmond Hoyte continued the policy. And these were not mere straw men. These were people like Ramphal and Shahabuddeen and Chandisingh. People who worked and thought and managed. Visibly. The efforts at multi-ethnic participation could not be said to have had as their objective winning Indian votes. It is more likely that while the PNC would have welcomed this as a collateral effect, the party genuinely, as in the case of the WPA or AFC today, fancied itself multi-racial in philosophy and practice.
It is therefore questionable as conclusion to assert that Indian-Guyanese would vote PNC mechanically and reflexively, simply because the party has an Indian figurehead. Indians are voting PPP for a complex of reasons most of which cluster around the fact of ethnic identification and affinity. In the Caribbean, Indians from Trinidad and Tobago as well as Suriname vote race in a way that makes a nonsense of the idea that Indians are voting race in Guyana out of an imagined ‘security dilemma.’ Indian immigrant voting patterns in Mauritius or Fiji show a similar tendency to vote community or race as soon as the chance comes. Hermanus Hoetink, the Dutch scholar looked at this phenomenon many years ago and opined that the factor that shifts the Indian population in any immigrant community to voting race is size of population with reference to the rest. Once a critical mass is reached, he concludes, Indians vote race. The behaviour of other immigrant groups in similar circumstances merits comparative study. The mumbo-jumbo about ‘insecurity’ needs to be viewed for what it is – mostly a rationalisation. But Indians are voting race in a reaction that has more to do with the sociology of settlement and immigration than anything else. The question is, why were not the other minorities, Amerindians or Chinese, etc, who were not similarly beaten up, voting the way they were supposed to have voted in the sixties. Mostly UF. We are drawn to state that politics in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial society, often becomes another expression of group identity and everything else will rest subordinate.
Note also that Horowitz and some other thinkers on these matters suggest that, with time, the ethnic differentiation may increase in some ways as it decreases in others. Race voting may simply get worse. Not better. And the centrifugal forces will continue to fashion the society in several ways until some sort of equilibrium is reached.
Also to note that we ought not to place the whole origin of the problem in the Westminster system. That type of parliamentary configuration arose in a society where the basic opposition was between a ruling landed aristocracy, inevitably minority, and the others ranging from bourgeoisie to working class. What Westminster seemed to have done is to ensure, in the House of Lords, a permanent place and voice for the eternal minority. Perhaps those campaiging for a change in our electoral system wish for a similar accommodation.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
