There has never been an election quite like it. Party alignments, re-alignments, coalitions, annexions and defections are happening so quickly, voters hardly have time to catch their collective breath. There have been shifts of allegiance before, for example in PNC times, when men such as Vincent Teekah and Ranji Chandisingh decamped from the senior echelons of the PPP. What Teekah’s reason was will probably never be known, but Chandisingh’s motivation may have been connected to ideology, since he was a committed Marxist-Leninist, and the defection came after the Declaration of Sophia. Prior to 1992, the PPP formed what it called the ‘Civic,’ which after the election brought into the cabinet various individuals not directly connected to the party. Foremost among these were Samuel Hinds – who came to public notice on the Guard platform – and Henry Jeffrey, once associated with the PNC and who subsequently left the government following a disagreement with President Jagdeo over the Economic Partnership Agreement. However, they and some others never became members of the PPP as such.
What is happening now, however, is different, if only because there is so much party interchange. It kicked off with Joseph Hamilton, a former PNCite, announcing he was joining the PPP, which he described as the soundest political entity in Guyana. He dismissed any suggestion that incentives were involved as simply “PNC-style politics.” Mr Hamilton was subsequently joined by the former President of the GTUC Gillian Burton, also a former PNC adherent. She too strenuously denied that she had been offered any inducement to change allegiance, deeming the PPP the “best party.” Then came the news that Richard Van West-Charles, former Minister of Health under the PNC and Burnham’s son-in-law had migrated to the AFC. His action was “guilt-free,” he said, explaining that it was time to move away from the ideologies of the PNC. At the same time, Rajendra Bisessar, a longstanding former member of the PPP Central Committee, appeared on the AFC platform, saying that he was “tired of corruption and mismanagement” in the ruling party.
There was also Bob Persaud, Sash Sawh’s brother-in-law, whose wife was killed along with the late Minister, and who proclaimed himself an AFC supporter (Sash Sawh had been a major campaigner for the PPP in Canada, prior to 1992), but the major catch from the AFC’s point of view was Moses Nagamootoo, former minister in the PPP government. He told the media (among other things) that he had lost faith in the current leadership.
However, the movement was not altogether one way, since academic, Rishee Thakur, left that party and is now on the APNU leadership team because, he said, he did not believe the AFC would be able to attract voters across ethnic lines. CN Sharma, the leader of the JFAP after declaring he would not be the presidential candidate for his own party informed reporters that he had signed a declaration in support of APNU. In the event, the JFAP did not put in an appearance on Nomination Day anyway, and therefore will not be contesting the election.
Dr Cheddi Jagan’s son, ‘Joey’ Jagan of the Unity Party and a major critic of the PPP and the government, announced that he was thinking of returning to the fold of the PPP, because the party’s presidential candidate – Donald Ramotar – was the best option for this year’s election. Since this announcement was made within the portals of Freedom House, the electorate presumably supposed that his return to the party his parents built was more-or-less a fait accompli, rather than something he was simply pondering. Yesterday, however, we reported that he had clarified he was backing the PPP/C, but would be part of the Civic grouping, and not the party per se. In the case of Frederick McWilfred, however, there was no uncertainty about his allegiances, since he appeared on the PPP roll. In earlier times he had been associated with the PNC, and last year he came to public notice as the leader of a small miners’ protest against the government’s new regulations in the mining areas. He too told this newspaper that he had a lot of confidence in the PPP presidential candidate. Finally there was Peter Ramsaroop, the eternal grasshopper, who now says he is backing the PPP because its manifesto contained many key programmes.
This, of course, is all in addition to the APNU coalition which places the PNC and the WPA, among other minor political entities, under the same umbrella, and the complications in relation to the TUF. There are now two factions of this small party, one originally led by Manzoor Nadir, and the other by Valerie Garrido-Lowe. The vexed question of which one would be able to contest the elections under the party name did not have to be confronted after Garrido-Lowe announced that she would be joining with the AFC. She was followed, it was reported, by several members of the party executive. It was the earlier Nadir faction, under its presidential candidate Peter Persaud which submitted the TUF’s list on Nomination Day, while Nadir himself, having worked so long as a minister in the PPP/C government, has now officially resigned from the TUF and thrown in his lot with the ruling party.
This high volume of cross-party traffic may well not have much of an impact on the election outcome, except possibly in a few instances. The potential effect of the TUF split is very hard to read. Their share of the vote has declined over the decades, and in more recent times what diminished support they retain is found in Region Nine. One suspects that even there, their supporters may tend to comprise mostly members of the older generation, who still have memories – if only indirect – of Stephen Campbell, who many decades ago brought the Amerindian vote to the United Force, as it then was. Will the traditional supporters now follow Garrido-Lowe into the AFC, or will they vote for Peter Persaud, who will be associated with the PPP – or will they simply change allegiance altogether? No one can even begin to guess.
Then there is McWilfred, who was very popular as the spokesman of the small miners in their confrontation with the government last year. What will his supporters in the industry think of his new allegiance? Will his popularity enable him to lead the small miners to vote for the PPP/C, or will they regard his new political home as a betrayal of sorts and just ignore him? That too, remains to be seen. The PPP is clearly hoping that McWilfred can bring in some Region 7 votes, since with its large mining community that is a region they may be somewhat nervous about.
Moses Nagamootoo, of course, is the one who potentially could have the most impact, and it is because of this the AFC pursued him with such assiduity. Within the larger context of the PPP he has always had his own following in the party’s Region Six heartland, and the AFC is hoping he can bring this – or at least a substantial portion of it – with him. In addition, he is very well known among the PPP’s traditional constituents in general, and the AFC is no doubt anticipating that this familiarity might induce some of them in the rural areas to change their age-old voting patterns. Can Nagamootoo make any inroads into the PPP vote? The truth of the matter is that at this stage it is quite impossible to know, and it may well be that we will not have any inkling until after the votes are counted.
There are the rallies, of course, the most conspicuous being organized by the PPP/C. It is now no secret that the party has been bussing in some of its supporters to these, something it never had to do when Cheddi Jagan was alive. The live entertainment and the t-shirts, etc, have not tempted as many to attend as the party would clearly like either. Having said that, however, the fact that it cannot attract the numbers it used to at rallies, is nowadays not in and of itself an indication of voting trends. For a variety of reasons, people are less inclined to come out of their houses for these events than they used to be, and as said before, this does not necessarily say anything about who they will vote for, or even if they will vote at all. APNU too had a good deal less than impressive showing at Linden, at one time a PNC stronghold. Surprisingly too, their presidential candidate was not present.
While the political contours are clearly changing, it is difficult to estimate how deep those changes go. In the end, only November 29, and the days immediately following, will reveal exactly what is going on in our political firmament.
