Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 08, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
It needs no explanation that Barack Obama could not have become the President of the United States if he didn’t get a colossal swing of votes from white Americans. Even if all African-Americans and Hispanics had voted for Obama, that would not have been sufficient to carry him to victory.
Obama won in some conservative states where white Americans traditionally voted against the Democratic Party.
In Trinidad, an Indian party (the UNC is predominantly Indian and even its coalition partner, COP, is the same) could only win a two-thirds majority of the electorate if there is overwhelming racial swing by Africans.
The demography of Trinidad with its First Past the Post system does not allow for either of the two racial camps (UNC and PMN) to win a landslide. But this is what happened. Prime Minister Kamla Bissesar’s coalition movement got tremendous electoral support from African Trinidadians that gave her a two/thirds majority in Parliament.
One would have thought that in their respective Sunday Kaieteur News columns, the PNC and AFC would have analysed the cross racial voting for their supporters. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. There can be no doubt that this country has a pathetic parliamentary opposition movement.
If the PPP is to be removed by defeat at the next general elections, then both the PNC and the AFC need a cross-over by East Indians. You would have thought then it would have been an exigent task by both parliamentary parties to inform the Guyanese nation about the absence of race motive in the recent Trinidad general elections and the role African Trinidadians played in Mrs. Bissesar’s victory.
I looked over the last three Sunday KN columns of the AFC and PNC and indeed these parties have become jaded. All three dealt with issues that have been fully evaluated and analysed by editors, commentators and other stakeholders. For the PNC it was CLICO, the Rusal bauxite imbroglio and the failed Supenaam stelling.
For the AFC it was Synergy, the Whyte-Nedd victimisation case at the Ministry of Education and before that, a general reflection by AFC leader, Trotman. The five episodes dealt with by the PNC and the AFC are crucial to an understanding of fascist government under Mr. Jagdeo and the PPP. But all the angles in these situations have been put under the microscope the past months.
No one is saying that we should not keep them in focus but the nature of the election results in Trinidad was of a more exigent nature.
Something as cross-racial voting in the recent election in our sister Caricom state should have galvanised both the PNC and the AFC. For consecutive weeks, the PNC and AFC should have dedicated their KN columns to the attention of Indians in this land.
They should have appealed to Indians of this country to discard the cocoon of race that the PPP forced them into under Dr. Jagan from the fifties onwards and follow the phenomenal decency of white Americans and African Trinidadians and exorcise from their psyche the monstrosity of the PPP.
Indians can do it and will do but it takes commonsense from opposition and other stakeholders to appeal to Indians. In Guyana we need a few dozens Indian Walter Rodneys and Indian Jack Warners. Jack Warner is an African UNC leader who has appeal among African-Trinidadians.
I repeat what I wrote on this page yesterday; the champions of filth will have to kill me because I intend to walk the length and breath of this vast territory to persuade Indians to discard the morbid immaturity that they take into the ballot station.
I want them to know that the throwing of miasma on me will not deter me.
It is going to be a nasty election, the dirtiest in the history of the region. The PPP knows that if it loses in 2011, the top leaders will face prosecution; it is impossible for them to escape imprisonment. The evidence is too overwhelming. They are going to go all out to plaster this nation with the malignancy or race hate.
It will be unimaginably horrible. They see race baiting as their only escape route. This is where the East Indian activist comes in. From Rupert Roopnaraine to Christopher Ram to Yesu Persaud to Janet Bulkan, we all have to play our part in helping the Indian population understand that Guyana will not survive as a viable land under a next PPP Government. Indians must not re-elect evil. Evil is destructive and Indians must eradicate it when election time comes around.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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