Dear Editor,
Mr Balwant Persaud has given the nation a much needed insight. It is unscientific and limited as polls go, but informative all the same as to the possible voting tendencies at this juncture as Guyana progresses towards the 2011 elections, which it is expected will usher in dramatic shifts from what has obtained in previous elections.
Balwant Persaud was the owner and principal of the Business and Accounting School at Maraj Building in Charlotte Street, behind the High Court compound. He was a member of Paul Tennessee’s Democratic Labour Move-ment (DLM) back in the eighties and nineties. Apparently he moved his business school to North Road Bourda, from where he migrated to Toronto, Canada, where he is now an immigration consultant. Balwant Persaud is not a member of the AFC.
As a social activist and because of curiosity about what voting patterns look like at this juncture in a changed elections environment, Mr Persaud came back to his homeland and did an independent, personal, unscientific exercise along the lines of a restricted poll in the two most heavily populated regions of Guyana – Regions Three and Four. He used a representative sample of fifteen hundred possible voters from those two regions, which are easily accessed from his Georgetown base. With determination this is easily possible. Reaching out to all ten regions of Guyana would cost millions of dollars and take a long time.
Mr Persaud’s attempt at a polling exercise does not indicate a margin of error; it is just the raw data of persons’ responses to the simple question of which party they intend to vote for. The results have now been released in the form of a letter to the editor in SN, September 12, 2011.
Mr Persaud’s findings confirm what the AFC has been finding out through their extensive outreach activities across the country, namely, their message is resonating; their political representations and positions are offering Guyanese a chance to genuinely change the political landscape and offer hope to a dispirited nation; and the AFC is addressing issues of concern to the Guyanese people namely, jobs, wages, crime, drugs, corruption, bloated government, a lawless society and continuous decline. But Guyanese want to take back their country and want to see it rejoin the community of law-abiding states, with a government dedicated to development with taxpayers‘ money being properly spent and accounted for. Guyanese are increasingly surging to the platform of the AFC now ably and best represented by Khemraj Ramjattan as presidential candidate and Raphael Trotman as prime ministerial candidate.
Mr Persaud should be thanked for his selfless pursuit to record the prevailing mood in Regions Three and Four. It is a pity that he did not have the time and resources to make it a complete exercise across the entire country, as that would confirm the emergence of the AFC as the fastest growing and most likely party to win the 2011 elections outright.
Yours faithfully,
Lionel Peters
