Minorities’ political strategy

May 10, 2009 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

Mr. Ralph Ramkarran, one of the possible PPP Presidential candidates for 2011, 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.

Inter alia, Mr Ramkarran mentioned ROAR’s (and my) espousal of the concept. To put the record straight, this was placed in the public domain as far back as 1990. In the paper, “For A New Political Culture”, we sought to address the African Security Dilemma that was precipitated in a polity that voted ethnically but in which they would always lose at majoritorian elections since Indians, their competitors for power, formed an absolute majority.

We offered seven proposals that included a temporary shared government and Federalism as that which South Africa adopted four years later. At the time we had a government in office that was supported by African Guyanese and we felt it was necessary to address their rational fears if the government were to be changed.

Mr Ramkarran has pointed out a collapse of the premise that undergirded the African Security Dilemma: Indians are no longer an absolute majority. According to him they are, “just under 40 percent and declining”. If one were to combine Africans with the “Mixed” section that had traditionally identified with them, they now outnumber Indians.

Under the present rules of the game, a party needs a plurality, not a majority to capture the Presidency and the Executive. In this scenario, Africans do not even need to go outside their traditional constituency to win power: the African Security Dilemma has been dissolved.
Mr Ramkarran has proffered the incontrovertible fact that the PPP has been able to garner almost 54% of the electorate. He proposed that this was achieved as a result of persistent politicking (in its widest usage) in the Amerindian and African communities. I agree with him and I have been asking over the past two years, why the opposition was not willing to follow an analogous strategy.

Last year I wrote in reply to Mr Eusi Kwayana in reference to whether the PPP government was a “dictatorship” or not. “The Indian community forms the bulk of the PPP’s majority and the opposition has to work out a strategy to break that majority. It is as simply stated – if not done (I realise) – as that. The alternative, which no one wants to talk about (openly), would be to form a minority government through armed means. How democratic would that be?”

Indians utilise a simple heuristic when elections roll around: “under which party am I better protected?” Up to now, the present array of parties in the opposition have not trumped the PPP on this question. This is astounding considering the level and intensity of violence that has been inflicted on that community over the last decade.

To those who claim that Indians may have some kind of death wish in sticking with the PPP, we have to remember that in the seventies when many of them concluded that the PPP did not have a viable answer to the PNC depredations, many flocked to the banner of the WPA of Walter Rodney. In the present, most of the opposition, especially the PNC have equivocated on the question of ethnically directed violence and in doing so have ensured that Indians will continue voting PPP.

I differ from Mr Ramkarran in our assessment of what drives political behaviour here. Rather than the class interest touted by him, I hold that politics in an ethnically divided society is “the politics of identity”. As I wrote exactly a year ago, “The implication being that the act of choosing who will “rule’ the society is bound up at very deep levels with questions of group worth and the wellsprings with one’s own identity. Going against the ethnic imperative is never easy – even rationality can only go so far.

But I do believe that there are enough Guyanese who accept that the fears of the two major groups are inextricably intertwined and that both must be addressed simultaneously. I also believe that the fears are so deeply embedded that only individuals who are trusted by having demonstrated their understanding of those fears by the separate communities will be credible. It is for this reason that I find the insistence on only an exclusive “non-racial/ethnic approach” rather than incorporating a true “multi-racial/ethnic” approach self defeating. For this reason also, I see no percentage in just “cussing out” the PPP or the PNC for that matter: they have become vehicles for more than “economic and political” interests to their respective constituencies.”

Criticising the opposition’s decision to take to the streets over the CNS TV6 issue I concluded, “Their indignation may be righteous enough – but do street protests help to strengthen or weaken the PPP’s majority? Obama may have been technically correct in stating that some voters turn to guns and religion out of “bitterness” but he changed tack when he recognized the impact of his statement on white voters he needed for a victory in November.

The approach may seem like “pandering” to some local opposition elements but if not integrated into their activities it will ensure that the protests lead nowhere but to frustration, anger and eventually violence. And Guyana – meaning all of us – will continue to sink further into the morass of stagnation and backwardness. Is this what we want?”
The question still stands – especially for those who are demanding “shared governance” without (to use Mr Ramkarran’s felicitous phrase) courting the “other”.