How the PPP will elect its new leader – secret ballot vs. show-of-hands

Dec 30, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Peeping Tom’s article (Kaieteur News 29-12-10) on Secret Ballot vs. Show-of-Hands – is a study in obfuscation and all manner of false arguments.
And, it does matter Peeping Tom. Each method of voting is guaranteed to produce a different candidate who will eventually become the next president.
When the 36 members of the Central Committee of the PPP assemble to elect their next leader, the meeting will most likely be conducted (chaired) by president Jagdeo.
Three or four nominations will be offered and seconded. Then the nominations will be put to a vote.
More than half of the assembled 36-king-makers will vote one way in a secret ballot – and a different way, if required to vote by show-of-hands. It is very simple to understand why each method of voting will produce a different result. Almost all of the assembled members will be appointed to positions in the new government – from Cabinet Ministers, heads of government corporations, board members of government entities etc. And, voting the wrong way will jeopardize their chances of getting their anticipated appointment. Also, how many of those 36 people will be strong enough to vote against the president’s nominee? (Currently, all 36-members are employed by the government – elected or appointed)
A vote of one’s free will, a vote of one’s conscience can only be guaranteed through a secret ballot.
Donald Ramotar is on record as saying that “show-of-hands” vote has served the party well in the past. I can only imagine the chuckles of disbelief and laughter from the Guyanese people that must have greeted Ramotar’s incredulous statement. From 1950 to 1997, the party had had the same leader, Cheddi Jagan. It was a divine-right thing; founder-leaders are usually leaders-until-death. So a show-of-hands vote system would have dove-tailed neatly with the divine-right idea.
After Cheddi died in 1997, his successor became his wife, Janet Jagan. Everyone knows how she got the job. Just ask Lionel Peters, the chronicler of the PPP’s secret history. Whatever it was, it was neither by secret ballot or show-of-hands.
Leaders of parties elected by divine-right are a thing of the past. Also a leader trying to pass on the mantle to his chosen-one is also a thing of the past – or maybe not in the case of a 700,000 people nation called Guyana. It doesn’t happen in the liberal democracies of Britain, Canada, USA.
Guyana is a one-party state. Whoever is elected the presidential candidate of the PPP will be elected to the presidency. There are two main reasons for this guaranteed outcome. PPP is an Indo-ethnic party; Indians are in the majority. And, people in this nation vote strictly race. This is a potentially dangerous situation. It is an invitation to political unrest and ethnic riots. I have always written scathingly about the PPP’s failure to take steps to change its ethnic character and perception and as a result its failure to win cross-racial African vote. I have always condemned the PPP for this untenable situation in the nation’s ethnic politics.
Over the last 10 years there has been a steady and rising call for an end to ethnic politics from Guyanese of all races. The short-lived candidacy of Winston Murray gave many of us hope that the politics of the past will come to an end. What is crystal clear to us today is that the Afro-ethnic PNC – like the PPP – has no intention of changing its ethnic ways of doing politics.
Both parties should be condemned equally for their refusal to give up their unique and frightening brand racial politics.
Brigadier Granger is poised to become the candidate for the PNC. What does his candidacy promise? The symbolism of his candidacy is to get all Africans to vote in a solid bloc. There are not enough African votes in the population to make him a winner. What a transparently failing and futile candidacy! Answering the charge of the army’s complicity in the 1973 stolen elections, it was this same Granger who said the Army was doing its job. Good grief! Of course the army was doing its job. But you have to answer the question as a re-born politician, not an army man.
Apologise for the army’s conduct. Say it was a mistake. And, it could not have happened under your presidency. Give yourself space to begin a conversation with the Indian population. Your need to win at least 10 percent of the Indian vote if you really wanted to defeat the PPP. Granger clearly failed his first big test. Or maybe he told himself he could win without the Indian vote. PPP’s success at the 2011 elections will be due not exclusively to its good fortune of being able to take advantage of the Indian majority vote – but also because it has a naiveté in a Granger for its opponent.
As I contemplate the future path of politics in the land of my birth, this much is clear: all hopes for an emergence of genuine multi-racial politics are dashed; PPP and PNC are comfortable in their old game of traditional ethnic politics – they will never tire of it. The fact that we live in a post-Obama world means nothing to them. No urgency to change.
It is not my intention to raise the specter of a Rwanda or Burundi befalling Guyana (Paul Tennassee once said Guyana was on the road to Rwanda or Burundi), but as I look in the rearview mirror, I see the same old images of the past – ethnic tensions and riots of the 1960’s and the aftermaths of 1997 and 2001 elections.
The Guyanese people are daily terrorized by criminal gangs for which there will be no solution under another PPP Government. And, corruption like the type under which a private firm was given a monopoly to import legal drugs into the country will continue unabated.
Mike Persaud

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