The silly season begets much confusion

Jun 24, 2010 Editorial

Every time the elections season approaches there is a mad scramble by the various political parties to win votes and to present all manner of scenarios designed to attract potential voters. The most recent scenarios are about alliances.
Many people have commented on the so-called opposition alliances. They have said that there needs to be a combination of the opposition forces to defeat the government as though there are so many undecided voters that a combined opposition would make a difference.
Indeed there are many disillusioned people, some more than others, because to their mind the government has failed them. They are seeing the decline in education, a constant loss of jobs, little or no support for the elderly (unless one considers the equivalent of US$33 per month a princely sum) and above all an absence of state transport systems.
Some of these people are also disillusioned with the failure of their children to get jobs, even in the services of the government for which they voted. Others are disillusioned for other reasons. During the extended dry period when many farmers were losing crops, they were angry. They met anyone who would listen and complained about abandonment, about the failure on the part of the government to guarantee them protection by way of providing irrigation facilities in times of crisis.
These people are no longer disgruntled now that the problems have passed. They have reverted to what many know as traditional political support—one that is rooted in ethnicity. But there are analysts who do all sorts of computations, the most recent involving demography. The focus on demography stems from the fact that the East Indian vote represents the largest bloc. The pundits now say that that bloc is shrinking. They also conclude that a combined opposition would therefore secure more votes than the incumbent.
What they are not saying is that the entire voting population is shrinking, that other ethnic groups are leaving in large numbers.
It is as if all the people who are not of East Indian ancestry would vote against the government. They do not recognize that the vast majority of young people, be they East Indians or Blacks or Mixed, are extremely apathetic. They seem uncaring about who wins the elections and are more preoccupied with capitalizing on what is on offer in the society.
With the exception of the ruling party which conducts fan outs throughout the year, the political parties do not visit their supporters often enough. One can easily bet that people in some parts of the country do not know the members of the other political parties. They may learn the names in the coming weeks and months when these political leaders visit the communities with the hope of garnering votes when the elections come around.
But for all the talk about coalition, one would expect that the best coalition would involve the two parties that control the vast bulk of the population. This coalition would make sense in that it would remove the ethnic distrust from the society.
There were attempts at a coalition in the past—more than two decades ago. Both the People’s Progressive Party and the People’s National Congress identified their respective negotiating teams.
Those talks fell through because some in the teams did not want the coalition. Each had his vested interest. The People’s National Congress was in power and those on the party’s side felt that whatever they thought was their birthright would have been minimized. Those on the other side—the PPP—felt that the coalition would have been a move to miniaturise their party, to rob it of its identity. They were not paying attention to other coalitions on the world in places like Israel and Italy.
The time may be right for a similar effort although the first thing is that there should be some civility between the various leaders. It must have been nearly two decades since the leaders have demonstrated an ability to talk with each other.

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