THE COALITION WON BECAUSE THE AFC HELD ITS SUPPORT BASE

May 19, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

People tend to be gullible towards political rhetoric. Many of them therefore are going to believe that Guyanese voted for change in the 2015 General and Regional Elections; this is however far from the truth.
The 2015 election was as close an election as there ever was and ever will be in Guyana. If any future election is as close, there will be major unrest in Guyana. According to figures provided by the Stabroek News, in Region 8 the PPPC lost by one vote. Now this alone is reasonable grounds for a recount of the votes cast in that Region, something that was reportedly denied.
With two additional votes in that Region, the PPPC would have held a majority in the National Assembly; there would have been a minority government; and elections may have had to have been held within three months.
It is therefore a fallacy that Guyanese voted for change. The votes were virtually split 50-50 in these elections. Half of the population can at best be said to have voted for change, while almost the other half voted for continuity. When it came to change, the electorate was split down the middle.
The overwhelming desire for change therefore cannot account for the APNU+AFC coalition’s victory. APNU+AFC owed its victory to something else.
The sole reason why APNU+AFC scraped home – and this is a good allusion to use to describe the coalition’s victory – is because of another reason. The sole reason why the coalition defeated the PPPC is because the AFC held its support base.
The PPPC is now attempting to show that the AFC did not deliver on its 11% pledge. But their analysis is either deliberately misleading or wrong. The only reason why today Guyana has a new government is because the AFC held its support base. This can be confirmed by looking at the voting patterns in the 2015 elections and comparing it with the performance of the individual parties, APNU and the AFC, in the 2011 elections.
The PPPC was hoping that by joining with APNU that the AFC’s support base would have crumbled. It was hoping to recapture most of the votes that the PPPC had lost in 2011 to the AFC.
It was able to some extent to restore some lost ground in Berbice, but only slightly so. The PPPC marginally increased its overall share in Berbice; but the AFC by and large held its support in that Region, and this is why the coalition was able to deny the PPPC, the ten thousand additional votes that the PPPC was hoping to obtain in Region 6.
In Region 5, the PPPC also only marginally improved its performance. Here again the AFC held its support base.
The greatest blunder for the PPPC was its campaigning in Region 4, the largest region and the one that was always likely to have the greatest impact on the overall results of the elections. True the PPPC was able to increase its take over 2011 in Region 4 by about 15 %. But the coalition was able to do the same. However, because of the significant share of this Region in the overall electorate, the failure of the PPPC to gain additional percentage points in Region 4 may have cost them the elections.
The AFC also held its own in Regions 2 and 3. However, it lost significant ground in Region 8 where the PPP did well. But the total number of voters in this Region is much too small to have impacted on the overall top-up apportionment.
The PPPC’s strategy therefore failed on three accounts. Firstly it aimed at increasing its share of votes nationwide; it should have been more targeted in its approach. Had it employed a statistician, it would have been better advised and therefore would have been able to develop a more targeted strategy.
Secondly, the PPPC should have allocated greater resources towards doing better in Region 4. It did not do this, trying instead to focus more on regaining Regions 5 and 6, and in the end this cost them critical votes.
Thirdly, the PPPC needed to split the AFC’s support base. It was not able to do this; and therefore it lost. The premise that by joining with APNU, the AFC’s support would be split did not hold true. The AFC held on to its support base and delivered the 11% needed to win the presidency.
Why was the AFC able to do this? In order to determine this, an opinion poll is needed. But I will suggest three possible reasons: One, the lack of originality in the presidency of Donald Ramotar; two, the Bheri Ramsaran incident which enraged the women of Guyana; and thirdly, the DAX contract which spoke volumes about the PPPC’s approach to governance.

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THE COALITION WON BECAUSE THE AFC HELD ITS SUPPORT BASE

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