Multiracial policies cannot flourish in majoritarian political parties

May 06, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Years ago, a prominent Indian personality decided to join the PNCR. It was his hope that he could make a contribution to the party.

His experience turned out to be far from pleasant. Though he enjoyed the ear of the then leader of the party, he ended up in loggerheads with other persons including a party commissar. The Indian personality was eventually was forced to quit the party because he could not influence its direction and he felt as if he was in a racial party.

Years ago, also a number of African Guyanese crossed over to the PPP as part of the civic component of the party. They too were sidelined from decision-making and made little or no impact on the policies of the PPP.

But the PNCR and the PPP are mass-based parties. They both pretend to be national parties even though both accept that the bulk of each support base is drawn from one or the other of the country’s two main ethnic groups.

Indians who go over to the PNCR find that they are often subsumed by the dominant ethnic membership of the party. The same applies to Africans in the PPP. These parties have majoritarian decision making models in the sense that the majority of the leadership decides but since the majority of the leadership is invariably drawn from the dominant ethnic group of that party, the majoritarian decision-making model translates to ethnic dominance.

The PPP has entered national elections since 1992 as the PPP Civic (PPPC). But is there an independent Civic component within the PPPC? Has the Civic grouping ever met for any sustained period of time to develop its own policies and positions and to negotiate these with the PPP leadership? It is doubtful this has ever happened and it doubtful now that the Civic members of the PPPC even meet to develop their own positions. The members of the CIVIC component within the Cabinet are not widely known to the public. This is how farcical has become the Civic appendage to the PPP.

Given the political polarization in the country and the fact that the respective bases of each of the country’s two main political parties are drawn from either the Indian or African communities, it needs to be asked how minorities within these political parties be able to avoid being subsumed by the larger ethnic groups. How, for example, would an Indian leader in the PNCR be able to demand that Indian demands be taken seriously? And how would an African leader be able to agitate for African concerns within the PPP given the overwhelming majority of Indians in that party? Indeed, how would the Civic component of the PPPC be able to influence policies within the PPP?

These are not academic questions. They are concerned with multiracial representation within our political parties and, specifically, how minorities can be influential in these parties.

The answer may lie in a recent development within the PNC. Within that development may lie the seeds of a model that can lead to promote multiracial representation within the PNCR, and, hopefully, this model can be replicated within the PPP.

A few weeks ago, a person made some obnoxious comments on a political platform that included the PNCR and the WPA. The distasteful and jaundiced comments were roundly condemned by a group of four PNCR members, all of Indian ancestry.

In condemning the comments, the group said the comments were hurtful to the East Indian community. The group expressed disappointment that none of the others speakers at the meeting sought to address or clarify the alleged distasteful remarks.

This was a novel development in local politics. It can hardly be recalled any instance of a group of persons within a political party openly expressing disgust at remarks made at a meeting in which their party participated. It showed that there were persons within the PNCR were prepared to take independent positions on irksome matters.

It also points to a possible model, within the country’s mass-based parties, that can accommodate multiracial politics. This model can address the constraint posed to multiracial politics within each of the country’s two main political parties by virtue of the fact that they each draw the majority of their support from each of the main ethnic groups.

So how can multiracial politics in promoted in parties are perceived as ethnically-dominated parties? The answer to that is to reject the majoritarian decision-making model in each party. Instead, the PNCR and the PPPC can each promote a plural decision-making model.

In this plural model ethnic caucuses should be established in each party. Each caucus would meet independent of the leadership and develop policies and positions which it can then ask the leadership to embrace. Thus, within the PNCR there can be Indian caucus and within the PPPC an African caucus.

In this model, minorities in each party need not feel emasculated. They can have a voice and demand greater influence in decision-making within their parties.

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