“That comes as a surprise,” we quoted AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan as saying when told that Mr Robert Badal, along with Mr Nigel Hinds were launching a new political party called Change Guyana. Mr Badal had been a supporter of the AFC in less turbulent days, and clearly the hierarchy of that party had no prior indication that his allegiances had changed.
Change Guyana will join a cluster of new parties which have made their appearance this year, viz, the Federal United Party rejoicing under the expressive acronym FED-UP; the Liberty and Justice Party; A New and United Guyana; and the Citizens Initiative. As Mr Ralph Ramkarran probably rightly speculated in his column last week, this mushrooming of small parties the like of which has not been seen for many years may owe its origins to the implosion in the AFC.
The story of the AFC is a cautionary tale; it illustrates again the dangers any small party faces in terms of its individual identity when going into coalition with a much stronger political entity. And in the past four-and-a-half years the party has done nothing to distinguish itself from its major partner, since it is associated with the most unpopular policies of the government. In particular, the handling of the sugar industry which was overseen by an Agriculture Minister drawn from its own ranks, alienated the admittedly small number of Indian voters who had helped take the coalition over the line to a majority in 2015.
It is no surprise then, that in contrast to the terms of the Cummingsburg Accord, President Granger has so far declined to commit his party to accepting an AFC prime ministerial candidate for the coming election. As long as the PNCR calculates that it will not get any significant votes from the AFC, the latter party will cease to have any leverage.
That said, the PNCR will no doubt recognise that it will need extra votes from somewhere outside its own ethnic constituency if it is to have any hope of winning the March election. The same is true, it must be conceded, of the PPP/C, although in its case for numerical reasons it needs fewer external votes than does the PNCR. Demographics have always been the key factor in determining Guyanese voting patterns, and while there is no precise correlation between ethnicity and electoral preferences, the census data still can provide pointers as to the rough size of the constituencies of the two political behemoths.
Currently, Indians account for less than 40% of the population, and Africans for under 30%. The other two significant groups are the Mixed category and the Indigenous people, the former of which comprises almost 20% of the total, and the latter more than 10%. Where the first of these is concerned it has to be said that it is a very imprecise category, made more so by the fact that it is a self-descriptor for those who use it. What can be said is that traditionally a high proportion of people placing themselves under this classification must have voted for the PNC for that party to be able to record results of over 40% in nearly all free and fair elections. One presumes that trend will not change.
Demographics, however, are changing, and while the two major ethnic groups have been slowly diminishing over the decades, the third – the Indigenous population – has been increasing. Neither of the big parties has been slow to recognise the importance to their electoral success of getting the indigenous people onside, but in recent elections their vote has tended to be split. Given the current political arithmetic, an indigenous party which had cross-nation appeal as in Stephen Campbell’s day in the 1960s, potentially could hold the balance of power.
The new Liberty and Justice Party had attracted attention because there was some hypothesising that it could bring in the indigenous vote across the board, and as such, could win seats in Parliament on its own account. However, reports that the party is holding talks with APNU raises the possibility that it may be thinking of going the route of the AFC and joining in a coalition. Whether if it did so it could account for the same number of indigenous votes as if it stayed independent is not something which anyone could even speculate on at this stage.
However, outside the parameters of the ethnic formula there does seem to be a floating vote, which is something most of the new parties are pinning their hopes on. It is not easy to determine how large it is, and the AFC votes from 2011 are the one of the few guides. Similarly, there cannot be absolute certainty about how it is comprised, although in 2011 and to a lesser degree in the subsequent election it included in its total a number of Indians disaffected with the incumbent PPP/C government. Conventional wisdom has it that many of those will have returned to the PPP/C, although no one can be sure. Some supporters clearly were urban voters, in addition to which it is thought that they tended to fall into younger age groups, since the young, it is assumed, are less chained to history than is the older generation.
Mr Ramkarran has expressed the view that “there is a pool of at least 6 per cent of the electorate who may be looking for a political home.” If so, then it seems as if they may be spoiled for choice. At this point no one knows whether that section of the electorate will split its votes between the various new parties, or whether one of them will be able to entice the majority of the old AFC constituency into its corner. If the former, then the ‘pool’ will have no parliamentary clout. In the end given the experience with the AFC it may come down to whether the floating voters trust the personalities involved, as much as what they think of the policies the parties are putting forward.
