Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jul 06, 2010 Letters
Dear Editor,
The phrase “Balance of Power” means a constituent group that, if persuaded to vote one way or the other, can swing the outcome of the election. Ultimate power resides in that group’s hands. Sometimes most of your energy and resources have to be concentrated on identifying the group that holds the balance of power and devising strategies to win them over.
There have been lots of discussions about how to defeat the ruling PPP in next year’s scheduled elections. Ideas and strategies suggested: Big Tent or A Combine of All Opposition Parties (Joey Jagan, Freddie Kissoon). Freddie also suggested only an Indian like Joe Singh must head the combine. Eric Phillips would prefer not to have an election unless he gets his way to abolish the “winner takes all” constitution. Are these ideas worth their salt?
Where does the Balance of Power lie? Is it in the African group, the Indian group, Amerindian group?
Any one old enough to know anything about Guyanese politics over the last 60-years will tell you “every last man votes for ethnic parties”. And, they will also tell you that Indians comprise fully 50-51 percent of the population. (Never mind what the census says). The Indo-ethnic PPP also has a lock on the 6 percent Amerindian vote, thus guaranteeing a PPP victory.
Anyone studying and making predictions on next year’s elections must start with these basic proven facts. Unlike most democracies, Guyana does not have a swing vote (no need for tracking polls). People vote the way they vote based on their race and loyalty for their ethnic party.
The Amerindians at 6 percent is one Balance of Power group. Can the Opposition parties work with the Amerindians? Do they have access to the Amerindians?
The Indians historically have always voted solidly for the PPP? Can an opposition party come up with a strategy to peel off 5 percent of the Indian vote? That’s all that is needed to defeat the PPP which has won the elections of 1992, 1997, 2001, 2006 by 3-6 percent margins. That’s your balance of power right there – win over 5 percent of the Indian vote.
Which of the opposition parties has made a study of the Indian constituency – to understand the reasons of why they vote the way they do? And, if they did, then it should not be a difficult task to devise a strategy to win their vote?
This after all is not rocket science, but just a study of the psychology of people’s voting behaviour. And, you don’t need Voters’ Psychology 101 either. Just talk to the Indian people – and find out what is troubling them.
Simply and succinctly, the Indian people by and large have taken an oath in heaven not to ever allow an Afro-ethnic party like the PNC, as presently constituted to return to power. And, this is not necessarily racial, but based on an all too still fresh memory of the racial tyranny the PNC ran from 1964-1992. You can also bet that the Indo-ethnic PPP will never allow them to forget.
That will be their main campaign strategy. And, why not if it helps them to win and they can get away with it.
This notwithstanding does not mean that 5 per cent of the Indian people cannot be persuaded to vote outside of their ethnic base.
And, this is all it takes to produce a different outcome at the upcoming elections. For emphasis – it is not 10 or 15 percent, just a bare minimum 5 percent.
So which party is trying to figure out a strategy to win over a bare 5 percent of the Indian vote? Talk of coalitions before the elections will not allay the fears of the Indian people, especially since the PNC is still an unreformed Afro-ethnic party with an African leader. And, why would they vote for the AFC – wouldn’t splitting their vote make it easier for the PNC to get back into power?
Freddie Kissoon has written scathingly and with condemnation of Indians for voting race (“the Indian mind”), as if Africans also do not also vote race? Freddie is simply a lazy political analyst who refuses to understand Guyana’s history of racial voting. Why would anyone blame the people for voting race – rather than looking at all the factors that galvanize and constrain them to vote race? The existence of ethnic parties is the main culprit – and principal reason why people vote race. Freddie is not interested in changing the racial politics of the country, but only in replacing the ruling Indo-ethnic PPP with an Afro-ethnic party.
But I can forgive Freddie for his current ongoing mistake. I made the same mistake in 1990-92. As an activist in the New York area, working for free and fair elections, several people warned me that we were really working to replace an Afro-ethnic government with an Indian one. They were all right. Even President Carter and the Carter Center made the same mistake. No group has bothered to lobby the Carter Center to finally get it right on a second try.
The key idea to producing a different outcome in next year’s elections is for the PNC to disband itself. This however is not realistic. What is realistic and practical is for the PNC to reinvent itself into a genuinely multiracial party. Can the PNC’s African leader, say Corbin, enter any of hundreds of Indian villages and engage 10 Indians in a political dialogue? Not a chance. Can the PNC under an Indian leader, say Winston Murray, visit Indian villages and be received? Let the readers figure this out. Such is the power and reality of race. What is at stake – winning 5 percent of the Indian vote?
Again for clarity, I do not say that just changing the race of the guard will do the trick. I have always said that a new reinvented PNC will have to adopt an Indian platform – commit to guaranteeing racial parity in the police and army; adopt a pro-western rather than a pro-Brazil-Turkey-Iran foreign policy; accept help from the ABC countries to reduce the burgeoning crime rate in Guyana.
Defeating the incumbent party is less important at this critical juncture of the nation than bringing an end to the existence of ethnic parties.
Mike Persaud
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