PNC in power will be just as bad for Guyana as the PPP

May 12, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Happy belated Mother’s Day! I wish all mothers everything they wish for themselves and their families.
Mothers Day should be a day of thanks and honest reflection. Thanks for the daily sacrifices mothers make. Thanks for their unconditional love. Everyone should also be thankful for Mother Earth and all the sustenance she provides to human beings as we seek to destroy ourselves.

Mother’s Day should also cause everyone to reflect on the role of Mothers in the development of Guyana. Reflection on the role of Family in a moral society; reflection on the role mothers play in the racism and hate mongering that undermine national peace and harmony.

Every mother wants the best for her family. An excellent education; a physically safe and secure environment; enough food and sustenance; jobs for their husbands, lovers, themselves and their children; good race relations; freedom of expression and the ability to worship their own God as they perceive him or her.

The Government of Guyana is also the Mother of Guyana. Her role is to ensure equality, peace, justice, job creation and security among other things. This is not happening in Guyana.
In Sunday’s Kaieteur News (10-05-09), I was somewhat surprised by Ravi Dev’s article entitled “Minorities’ political struggle”. Surprised not by what Ravi had to say on his own behalf, but surprised by what he had to say about another prominent and trusted Guyanese citizen: the Speaker of the House, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran.
Ravi indicated Ralph Ramkarran “offered an interesting riposte to the calls by Mr. Eric Phillips of ACDA for Shared Governance in Guyana. Titled, “You cannot expect marriage without courtship”, its main thrust is that in a nation of minorities, it is possible for any party to win general elections if they are willing to court those that are outside their traditional bases”.

Let me dispel this myth. A myth that could lead to bloodshed and continued racial strife. A myth that could result in many lost lives at the next elections if we are not careful.
I say this because as I go around Guyana, most people are disenchanted with the PPP and unhappy with the political alternatives. So the status quo may remain and Guyana will continue to degenerate economically, morally, socially and politically.
Most Guyanese are glad ‘Fineman’ and his gang are gone. However, Africans in particular have reached a stage where they do not see electoral politics as delivering economic, social or political justice for them as a race in Guyana. .

There are two reasons why I want to dispel this ambient myth about the PNC or AFC winning an election if they were to “court the others”.
My first reason is to stop political deception.
The second is to place in public domain the real reasons why the PPP will not do what is best for Guyana. That is, endorse and work towards Shared Governance.
The main trust of Mr. Ramkarran’s argument is that Indians are no longer a majority (51%) in Guyana. They were 43% at the last census and are now “40% and declining “as he postulates.

The deception propagated by the PPP is that they won 54% of the votes at the last elections because they reached out and convinced other races they were best for Guyana. The other argument by Mr. Ramkarran is that the PPP will continue to win other elections because the PPP has been able to “court the others”, while the PNC has not been able to “court the others”.
The reality is that Indians will never vote for the PNC regardless of the reaching out. It simply will not happen in 2011 or 3011. If the PNC wants to deceive themselves they can even claim God or the Obeah man told them so.

But what is the true reality?
Results of the last elections shown below illustrate the PPP could have won the 54% majority solely on the Indian vote and without any “others” voting for them. The last election saw the PPP gaining a 55% majority with just over 183,000 votes or 37% of the 492,369 eligible voters on the voters list.
The Indian population at the time was 43%. Hence, it is logical to assume their numbers in the voters list was 43% of 492,369 or 211, 856 voters.

It is therefore difficult to argue as Mr. Ramkarran is arguing that the PPP won 54% of the votes because Africans, Amerindians and other combined with the 43% Indians voter base to give the PPP another 12% of the votes to give them a 55% majority. We also know a large number of African Guyanese chose not to vote at the last elections. Turnout was 68.82 %, the lowest ever in Guyana’s history.
The reality is that the PPP received 183,000 votes and obtained a 55% majority because the total number of voters who voted was 333,788 out of a possible 492,369.

The 183,000 votes the PPP received could have all been gotten from the Indian voter base of 211,856.
Now I am not saying Amerindians, Africans, Chinese, Portuguese and others did not vote for the PPP. My argument is two-fold. First, the 183,000 votes obtained by the PPP were predominantly from Indian votes.
Second, this “mixed” vote argument is an intellectual scam, first proposed by the AFC and now being reinforced by the PPP through Mr. Ramkarran’s statement proposal that other Parties can win an election in Guyana if they reach out to Indians or if they combine with the “mixed” to outnumber Indians.
As a matter of fact, the McDougal Report indicated Indians will not vote for the PNC because they are afraid the PNC will do what the PPP is currently doing: marginalising one group at the expense of another and settling old racial political scores.

Mr. Ramkarran is one of the few politicians I respect in Guyana. He has integrity, has the emotional intelligence to know Guyana will continue to suffer if either the PPP or PNC wins an election, and furthermore has a very good understanding of what Cheddi Jagan wanted but did not do when he was in power. In fact, Mr. Ramkarran is one of the few decent “servant leaders” in Guyana.
The premise of Mr. Ramkarran’s argument is however very incorrect. His advice to the PNC to “court” Indian votes is good but this alone would never result in electoral victory for the PNC.
Rather, it would allow the status quo to remain after 2011 because political parties will spend effort going after Indian votes instead of focusing on constitutional reform and forming coalitions to defeat a crooked racist PPP government.

The vexing problem of this so-called “mixed” population of 18% needs to be put in perspective. Can anyone in Guyana who is of mixed race tell me what this means electorally, culturally, politically or economically?
I recently met a young girl at a store at Lamaha and Albert Street.
By all appearances she was very African in her appearance and dress. In her conversation with the Chinese looking shopkeeper who asked her what she was doing later and was desperately trying to get her telephone number, she said she was going to the Temple.
I asked her about that and she replied her mother was Indian and her father was African but she lived with her mother and her mother has always taken her to the Temple.
Is this young girl a member of the “mixed” population that can combine with the Opposition to be numerically larger than the declining PPP population? No. This girl has been heavily influenced by her mother and the Temple.

Take me, for example. My grandfather was 100% Amerindian, my grandmother was 100% African, my mother was mixed, and my father was African. By this definition, I am mixed. I, however consider myself African because I grew up in an African home.
Most Guyanese of “mixed” race are either Indian or African in their upbringing. Politicians should stop deceiving the public.
There is no “mixed” culture with a specific “mixed” religion. There is no cultural or racial homogeneity that defines this so-called “mixed” population.
Perhaps the PPP wants to perpetuate this myth because it is in their best interest to do so. This “mixed” race is not a PNC or Opposition pool of voters as the PPP wants us to believe. They are proportionally predisposed to be PPP, PNC and AFC voters.

I am certain both Mr. Ramkarran and Mr. Dev fully understand today’s politics is because of racial insecurities, both nurtured and perceived.
Both know the current Westminster system is an egregious and destructive system for Guyana. It cannot foster racial harmony or economic growth.
Guyanese need to focus on constitutional reform and good governance. These are two things the PPP is against.

Why is the PPP against constitutional reform and shared governance and the PNC for it?  The answers are simple.
The PPP is in power and believes they have a racial majority that will last for quite an eternity. It must a be remembered  the Party with the highest vote count, whether it is 30, 40 or 50% of the votes , will chose the Executive Presidency, the entire Cabinet and effectively control both the Judiciary and the Media.
The PPP also hopes and will do their utmost best to ensure the next election is again a racial census.
Corruption is also rampant and no PPP member will give up this illegal freeness. Moreso, the used of vehicles and other government properties by PPP supporters who are in all of the Ministries is something often overlooked.

The PNC wants shared governance because it first recognises this is the only path back into power. They know the racial arithmetic will always be against them. They too want the benefit of being in government.
They too want access to the loot available in many shapes and form. The sad reality is the PNC in power, judging from their lack of leadership, ideas, hard work in the communities of their supporters, intellectual and political morass, will be just as bad for Guyana as the PPP. In combination, Guyana will become a more, wretched State. What Guyana needs is a Government of National Unity led by a Civil Society leadership team.
The current leadership in the political parties, judging from their antics and lack of vision, cannot be trusted with nation building. There are too many vested conflicts because of personal, political and business interests.

Our politicians keep arguing about “trust” and the past. So Burnham is the fall guy. He died 24 years ago. They never speak about ordinary citizens and what is in the best interest of Guyana. I have yet to hear a vision for Guyana from President Jagdeo and any other political leader.
And Jagdeo has been in power for almost 10 years. It seems he has been “in power, but not in office”.
Our political class has become a national and international disgrace. Only the AFC seems to want to change the status quo but the nurturing of the racial vote by the PPP will prevent the AFC from ever gaining power.

The arguments for a Government of National Unity are overwhelming but negated by the arrogant need for power and the associated corruption of the ruling party, and the irreversible lack of credibility of the PNC to convince the Indian population and many Africans that they can govern Guyana fairly
ACDA’s call for good and shared governance goes beyond the racial animosities of the PPP and PNC and focuses on National Development.

The PPP has shown it is not good for Guyana. It has had 17 years to show this.
They have not and cannot. They have not been able to heal Guyana’s biggest problem. The problem of race. Rather the PPP has used race to win elections (witness Jagdeo’s statement at Babu John about the African PNC giving weapons to criminals to kill Indians if they were to win the last elections”) and the PPP daily uses race to reward and punish citizens of Guyana. As a matter of fact, President Jagdeo and the PPP will go down as the Party that made Guyana the most racially polarized it has been since Independence.
The PNC cannot solve Guyana’s problems. They are having enough problems just being an effective Opposition.

New leadership will not change historical perceptions overnight. Neither the PPP nor PNC will allow the AFC to win an election.
As Mother’s Day was celebrated and mothers throughout Guyana were honoured, they should have asked themselves about the future of Guyana.
Will the current bunch of political parties and party bosses lead Guyana to the things mothers want for their families?

The answer is a resounding no. Change is needed.
Mothers, regardless of race religion or creed, need to vote for the aspirations they have for their families. This should be their resolve for the next election.
If they do so, neither the PPP nor PNC can win the next elections. Rather a Civil Society led group of decent people and trusted politicians will be given a chance.
Eric Phillips

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