Dear Editor,
Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously said: ”You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” Listening to the early pronouncements of the contenders for the PNCR presidential candidacy, I strongly advise they distort or discard Cuomo’s advice. In light of the enormous challenges facing the PNCR, the contenders should campaign not in poetry or on only what they will do when in government, but in prose on exactly how they will get the PNCR into government.
The country is deep into another election cycle, with the PNCR struggling again to escape the mental and psychological traps with regards to its electoral chances. Statements from the current and future leadership and also from supporters suggest all concerned find it easier and palliative to focus on economic, security and other governing policies. Typical of the problem is letter-writer James Reese’s suggestion in SN, October 21 that a televised debate should be held for the candidates to say “what policies they will put in place and what institutions they will create to address the myriad issues and challenges affecting the society and its development.” But isn’t there a greater and more urgent matter for the PNCR? Shouldn’t we be discussing the strategies to get the PNCR into government? This is the debate (hopefully, in prose) I would watch.
Any serious effort to return the PNCR to government must overcome three enormous hurdles: (i) an adverse ethnic population disparity; (ii) a hardened enthusiasm deficit among its supporters; and (iii) the winner-take-all electoral system.
The first point can be easily established by any of the recent population census counts; that as a relict of our colonial past, there are more descendants of indentured labourers than of enslaved Africans.
The PPP has recast this fate of history into a moral and political virtue of its own design and making. Within the PNCR, on the other hand, one always experienced frustration at the inability of the party to take these numbers as they are and make hard political decisions. Too many too often in the party leadership have sought comfort in the ‘analysis’ that the high post-1992 Indian-Guyanese migration has removed this initial numerical advantage. But any dispassionate measurement of relative ethnic population size must also consider the increasing black migration rate and the historically higher Indian birth rate. The latter point forces us to consider whether more Indians than any other race (in both absolute and relative terms) reach the voting age each year.
On the second point of voter apathy, the presidential contenders must explain how they intend to reinvigorate an electorate that has turned away from politics. An enthusiasm deficit among the support base has badly hurt the PNCR in the last four elections at both the registration and polling stages. With good reason, the point is often made that the PNCR loses an election by the end of the registration process. True, the PPP government has battered an entire nation into indifference and discontent, its own support base not exempted.
The PPP, however, has more financial, organizational and cultural triggers to pull to re-motivate its supporters. For the PNCR, it is always an uphill battle to convince an electorate that does not believe it can win or does not believe GECOM can deliver a fair election. What are the views of the contenders on this problem? Do they, for example, subscribe to the thinking that it’s best not to discuss these issues because they may discourage the party’s supporters?
Or do they respect the intelligence of these supporters who have long ‘sussed out’ the situation and only want to hear of the plans the party has to overcome these difficulties?
Thirdly, the commitment in the PNCR to the position that Guyana must abandon the winner-take-all system must go beyond lip service. It is absurd that in a multi-ethnic society like ours that has developed politically as it has, anything less than 50% of the national vote amounts to zero participation in real national decision-making. Do the candidates find this outrageous? They must tell us.
There is impressive leadership quality among the PNCR presidential contenders. One hopes the immense challenges in the path of the party returning to government in no way daunt them. One also hopes they see no sense or virtue in setting their sights only as high as the office of Leader of the Opposition.
Give us some prose on these matters, gentlemen.
Yours faithfully,
Sherwood Lowe
