I have suggested before that for me, although getting rid of the PPP from government is a necessity at this stage, in our condition it is not a sufficient cause. A political cause that is worth fighting for must also set and hold a direction that will prevent future aberrations such as the ones we have had to live with under both the PPP and PNC. Someone once said “The question is not simply to fight and win but to find a cause worth fighting for”.
The opposition has said or done little so far to secure me in the belief that they truly grasp the gravamen of our present situation and are able to chart a way forward. True, on a daily basis they ply us with vague positions and promises, but some are impractical and/or dangerous.
Indeed, we have heard these promises before and so looking about us, we cannot fail to recognise that such blind faith is unwarranted.
That said, the reality is that on both sides our political oligarchies know that most of us are imprisoned by ethnicity and that as such the most concrete thing they need to do at elections time is to provide us with a limited number of political manifestoes that few remember and fewer ever read.
In my view, the racial/ethnic struggle to hold and maintain political power that has been at the heart of both our politics and poverty for over six decades is not based overwhelmingly on the wish of any group to punish the other, but upon the fear, partly natural but also nurtured by politicians, that the other groups will punish “us”.
Protestations to the contrary, all politicians are forced to live with and manipulate this most punishing political environment and therefore find it near impossible to provide both sides with a single political cause worth fighting for.
We must not fool ourselves, it matters not how bad the other side appears to us, when the stark choice has had to be made between them and us, we have historically chosen us.
After three decades of PNC rule, in 1992, that party won some 42.3% of the votes cast: the largest proportion of votes it has ever won in free and fair elections to date.
In other words, notwithstanding the existence of the non-racial alternative in the WPA, Afro Guyanese, who in private were “cussing down” the PNC, flocked to the polls and voted for their ethnic/racial party. Those who did not were branded traitors to the cause!
Confronted by this reality today, many “good reasons” are concocted as to why the community then voted overwhelmingly for the PNC. We are told that Desmond Hoyte had begun a process of transformation that deserved to be supported or that a large number of Africans supported the PPP, abstained or voted for the WPA. Political clairvoyance is also in vogue, with many pointing to the “disaster” that the PPP has become to justify their choice in 1992.
On my reading of the statistics, they do not support these arguments. The poor WPA, the party of Walter Rodney, could only muster 2% of the votes in 1992.
Today, the PPP having become what it has, many of these same people who flocked to vote for the PNC in 1992, are haranguing Indians as wicked or simply foolish for still supporting their ethnic party. Indeed, they want Indians to put their faith in an African-led essentially African dominated coalition with a motley set of unconvincing and vague proposals when, if their elites are to be believed, they will not put their trust in an Indian presidential candidate in an essentially African-led political arrangement!
For the sake of Guyana, I hope that once we properly appreciate our historical positions we can move on and that the opposition does garner sufficient votes to remove the PPP from government. This is not because their praxis has left me with any significant belief that they would be better than the PPP if they were to have such a long stay in government.
It is simply that the PPP regime, rooted as it is in ethnic allegiances, has been in government for too long and this is not and has not been good for our freedoms or democracy.
Two weeks ago, I promised to deal with what I viewed as the four possible outcomes from the APNU/AFC coalition discussions.
Number four and the least desirable outcome would have been for the talks to break down and there to be no coalition.
Like many people, I assessed that if the political situation had remained the same, with the three parties going to the polls individually, the most likely outcome would be a political situation such as we had prior to the prorogation of parliament.
Of course, particularly in the third world, where media scrutiny is relatively weak, political parties tend to make all kinds of outlandish claims and this has contributed to why politicians stand so low in the public esteem.
Although no one took it seriously, even the AFC claimed that it could win the coming elections on its own. But in my assessment, contrary to the hopes of some, it has not done sufficiently well to be in a position to take enough votes from the PPP for the PNC to win a plurality.
We have heard a lot about the Nagamootoo effect, but the experiences of the AFC with African support in the 2006 and 2011 elections demand that we be cautious in our assessment.
Normally one would have to see about three elections with the same or better showings, to conclude fairly definitively that the support for a party has substantially increased or decreased.
As for APNU, after the disastrous showing (34.0% of the votes cast) of its main component, the PNC, in 2006, its winning 40% of the votes in 2011 was quite a comeback, even if it was less than the 42% it secured in 1992.
There has been much talk about low turnout in the African (and I dare say in Indian) communities, but the PNC has never fared better than the lower 40 percentages in elections.
Indeed, for me, the fact that both parties have wisely decided to form an alliance is sufficient evidence that they were uncertain that they could win even a plurality on their own. My third option was what we now have: a coalition led by an African, and I will consider this next week.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
