While the governing APNU+AFC coalition won the Kwakwani Neighbourhood Democratic Council election on March 18 they were fiercely challenged by an independent group which won five of the 12 seats and captured the most votes in the Proportional Representation (PR) component.
They are the only independent group to beat out both big parties: APNU+AFC and the PPP/C in the PR aspect at the recently held Local Government Elections (LGE) and Kwakwani United for Progress (KUFP) says its “flat-foot” work and educating their community on the benefits of LGE was responsible for their good showing.
“We believed that we would have gotten more votes but we know that for those we got it was because of the heavy emphasis we placed on educating the residents about the overall process and what it would mean to them,” Leader of the Party Charles Thom told Stabroek News on Tuesday.
Kwakwani, which is located on the Berbice River, has a population of approximately 4000 persons.
The results for the Kwakwani Constituency shows KUFP garnering 422 of the 806 valid votes, in the PR section, cast on March 18. APNU+AFC followed with 328 and the People’s Progressive Party 56. This secured them three seats on the council tied with APNU+AFC because of how the election quotient was calculated. The PPP/C got none.
For the First-Past-the-Post voting, the party won two constituencies and narrowly lost the other four. The results are as follows. For Constituency 1, the KUFP 167 votes; APNU+AFC 26 and PPP/C 15.
In Constituency 2, APNU+AFC 79 votes, KUFP 62 votes and PPP/C 2 votes while in Constituency 3 KUFP received 64 votes, APNU+AFC 54 votes, and the PPP/C 6.
Over in Constituency 4 APNU+AFC got 56 votes, KUFP 28, PPP/C 8 and KFIU 3. In Constituency 5 APNU+AFC received 93 compared to KUFP’s 66 and PPP/C 20.
In Constituency 6 the results were APNU+AFC 36 votes, KUFP 16 and the PPP/C 8 votes.
After calculations, GECOM stated that the party or group with the highest remaining votes has to be given the next available seat so in the end the new Neighbourhood Democratic Council will see KUFP with 5 seats and APNU+AFC with 7 for a total of 12 seats on the council.
KUFP have already selected the five persons; four women and one male, whose occupations range from housewife, to student, to medic and others. The constituency winners are Faye Rodrigues and Sharmela Thomas. The PR nominees are Juanita Leacock, Maleka Russell and Charles Thom.
Thom explained that the decision to form the party was made when residents expressed their displeasure at the candidates chosen by both the APNU+AFC and the PPP/C.
“We felt that the people who chose the candidates to represent the coalition here in Kwakwani, they chose the candidates who were loyal to party not to Kwakwani as they had never done anything for community development here. So we decided to get a team together and form the group. Myself and a student from the Guyana School of Agriculture, Maleka Russell we made the decision, then it was time to get candidates to join,” he said.
A logger by profession, Thom said that while persons agreed that the APNU+AFC coalition’s candidates were not apt to represent the community, there were persons who were adamant that they would nonetheless vote for them as they felt obligated, given that the APNU+AFC and PPP/C were the parties they had chosen at the General Elections.
“We spent time, a lot of time speaking to persons who told us that we were running against government and were splitting the votes. Some felt to vote for us was betrayal of their General Elections parties,” he said.
“We had a hard time getting candidates for the party because they too said that we are running against the government. We had to explain to them, the same way to the regular voters, that we can be a better option. We can be a better option because we won’t have party ties but we will here to support the government so that way, with no strings attached, we are able to represent them, the residents of Kwakwani, better,” he added.
Persuaded by the party founders, a team of over 40 persons joined the KUFP. They formulated and printed a manifesto and began working to get the voters’ approval.
“We made promises that should we win, whatever seat we are allocating it will reflect Kwakwani, one will be a youth, one will be Amerindian, there must be women, we will work to ensure that the roads are done, the people on the western bank of the Berbice have potable water, people have land titles and so forth,” Thom said.
“The first things we will and must look at, I am sure everyone agrees, is getting the roads done. Kwakwani has some deplorable roads. That and water for the people on the West Bank of Berbice. We have the manifesto and we will be referring to it to have projects implemented to better our community,” he also said.
And while members feels disappointed that they did not get the amount of seats they expected, the party eagerly anticipates the next Local Government Elections.
“I felt disappointed because I felt we could have gotten more seats. We went around teaching people how to vote, walk around and on television. I thought there would have been more persons going out to vote but they stayed home. In some constituencies they probably didn’t take to us because we were ordinary people, poor people and some said they wanted people with assets…,” Charles Thom stated.
“It was a learning experience for all of and we are proud of what we have done. We will and I give the assurance that we will support whoever is chosen for the chairperson and we work to make Kwakwani a better place, for all of us,” he added.
While the PPP/C government was in office, Kwakwani had been the target of several attempts to have its council replaced by an interim body. Its residents had vociferously resisted this by way of protests. In July 2012, numerous protests divided the community.
