Mo’ fyaah once again?

Sep 20, 2009 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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Mr Eric Phillips responded to an article of mine, “Ballots not Bullets”. There, I had developed a theme I have been emphasising over the last few years: with Guyana now a nation of minorities, no one group could depend on a single ethnic group to catapult them into office. Consequently, the political fluidity that had been missing when Indians comprised an absolute manner and could lock out Africans (just below them in size) from executive office was now a possibility. Mr Phillips disagreed most vehemently with this assessment.
He asserted categorically: “Neither the PNCR nor AFC or any combined opposition will defeat the PPP electorally – at least not in 2011.” This is because, “The sad reality is that the vast majority of PPP supporters will not allow themselves to vote for any other Party… If Indians did not vote for Desmond Hoyte who was very pro-Indian and who engaged the REFORM to bring about fundamental change in the PNC….why would they vote for the PNC or AFC now.”
Well for one, time and circumstances have changed and the opposition could have changed their tactics and strategy to exploit those changes. The fact of the matter is that the opposition do not need “the vast majority of PPP supporters” to vote for them to create seismic changes in 2011. If, as is now most likely, Indians are at most 43% of the population (and the PPP are getting all their votes from that community as Mr. Phillips seems to assume) then theoretically the opposition does not need a single Indian vote to defeat them.
The major problem with the opposition is that they have not been able to get out their voters to the poll. In 2006, only 69 per cent of the 492,369 eligible voters went to the polls. This means that the PPP’s 54.6% winning percentage only translates into 37.7% of the total electorate –even less than the likely total percentage of Indian voters. This emphasises the point I made in “Ballots…”, that the PPP’s early strategy of courting voters from outside their traditional constituency has worked for them. And this is in the face of the steady deterioration of their once formidable mobilisation machinery within the Indian community, with the passing of many of the old local stalwarts.
In the 2006 elections fully one quarter of the voters in Region 6 did not show up to vote and the PPP received some 5,000 less votes there than in 2001. Overall, the PPP received 26,000 less votes than in 2001, yet ended up with two additional seats. This represents more a failure of the opposition than success by the PPP.
The bottom line is that the opposition has not picked up the disaffected Indian voter from the PPP because, possibly like Mr Phillips, they have written them off. This is a grave strategic mistake. An even graver one is to pander to the disillusioned fringe that is clamouring for violence to overthrow the legally elected government of the day. This alienates even moderate voters from other communities.
We may not like the rules of the game but it is one that the opposition insisted on as recently as 2000 after they violently dragged the PPP to the table. So what are we to do? Resort to violence whenever the rules do not deliver the outcome our faction wants? And we expect to be taken seriously when we invoke phrases like “the rule of law” and “justice”? Ends, I have repeatedly cautioned, are simply consummated means.
In all the elections since 1992, the combined opposition has always managed to garner around 47% of the votes cast to the 53% of the PPP. If 4-5% of the latter’s voters can be weaned away, while the Presidency may still be retained under our peculiar constitutional laws, the opposition can control the legislature. This will compel the two sides to bargain if the country is to be governed. This, we believe, can become the lever for more fundamental change. The 4-5% to be weaned away does not even have to be Indians as we have emphasised above.
There are the Amerindians that are now a crucial swing element that do not have the primordial ties to the two major competing blocs. I had adverted to the PPP’s assiduous wooing of that group – and explained the palpable success of their strategy (their votes for the PPP has increased at every election since 1992) thusly: “As with minorities the world over, caught between competing larger blocs, the Amerindians tend to go with the group with the purse-strings and power.” Mr. Phillips translated this to mean, “Ravi has also made the argument in his article that Amerindians have no conscience; they are mendicant and will vote, not out of principle…..but for the biggest spender.” I clearly said that the Amerindians’ “tendency” to switch was a structural condition inherent in minorities the world over. But I too believe that there will always be enough individuals within every group that can be weaned away from their general tendencies if their fundamental interests are addressed consistently and not expediently. These interests are never totally defined by the lure of lucre.
Mr. Phillips claims that since my speech at Mr. Ronald Waddell’s (2006) funeral I have joined those “who want to destroy Africans in Guyana using the anti-human rights Westminster (West Monster) system.” I consider Mr. Philips as I did Ronald: “a warm, caring and very intelligent individual deeply concerned about the problems of Guyana. His focus on the African community was simply a recognition that liberation, like charity has to begin at home.” I hope that he is not being driven into the same nihilism as was Ronald.
Mr Phillips asked, for instance, for my stance on African economic security. Since 2006 I have on numerous occasions repeated my fundamental 1990 stated position (“For a New Political Culture”) that there must be equitable economic development within all groups. I specifically reiterated that there must be affirmative action to rectify imbalances in the economic sphere for Africans (as in the military sphere for Indians) since these imbalances were caused by discriminatory colonial policies.
I have not changed my position of WHAT needs to be done to create a just and equitable system for all Guyanese citizens. I followed up “Ballots not Bullets” with “For Just Social Institutions” – and this includes our system of governance. What I have changed, is my insistence on the “HOW”. Ronald’s death forced upon me an intense meditation on the role of violence to create a more just Guyana. It reinforced most fervently my exhortation at Ronald’s funeral: “let us heed the call of Bonita Harris, the widow of Ronald, for us to reject violence in all its manifestations, not only in politics but within all our relationships.” Say “No! to “Mo’ Fyaah!”” (To be continued)

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