IS IT NECESSARY AND DOES IT MATTER WHO ARE THE PRIME MINISTERIAL CANDIDATES?

May 07, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Of the three main political parties, only the Alliance for Change has named it Prime Ministerial candidate. Both the PPP and the PNCR have not done so, the latter no doubt awaiting the outcome of its Big Tent coalition talks with some marginal parties and groupings.
But does it matter who either of these two parties name as their Prime Ministerial candidates? What different is that going to make the outcome of the elections and is at all necessary to name such a candidate.
Constitutionally, there is no requirement to name a Prime Ministerial candidate. The PPPC was the one who brought attention to the need to identify such a person on the ticket and to assign to that individual some prominence in its campaign because it was seeking to emphasize a balance on its ticket in 1992 when Cheddi Jagan chose Samuel Hinds as his running mate.
After Cheddi died, the PPP went with an A team concept of Mrs, Jagan, with Samuel Hinds and Bharrat Jagdeo providing an image of ethnic, gender and generational balance.
But there has been little evidence that a prime ministerial candidate has been a vote catcher in any election since 1992. The people, by land large, vote for their political parties whatever the choice is of a prime ministerial candidate and that has to do with the fact that it is the presidential candidate that dominates the ticket.
If some of the marginal parties who are hoping to piggy back on the PNCR support in this year’s elections have their way, the PNCR would not have someone from within its ranks either as the presidential candidate of the proposed alliance or as its prime ministerial candidate.
Names of persons outside of the PNCR will most likely be proposed as a consensus candidate.
The PNCR, however, is not going to accept that and will most likely impose its will and indicate to the marginal parties that the position of presidential candidate is non-negotiable. But it may compromise on the Prime Ministerial candidate.
In the end it is not going to make much of a difference whomever is chosen because the selections do not make much of a difference in our polarized political environment.
The Prime Ministerial candidates will not be vote winners unless some extraordinary choices are made and it is difficult to conceive of such choice being made given the political culture which has developed whereby each side deemed all manner of things about persons who align with either party. If someone joins the PPP and was a former associate of the PNCR that person is treated as traitor and come under a great deal of pressure. The same thing happens if a PPP person jumps ships and joins the PNCR.
If an outsider joins either party, then that person is also subject to criticism. The political culture is therefore not very encouraging for persons from outside of either camp to decide to join. This is why the PNCR is going to find problems putting together a coalition that involves professional parties.
The value of the prime ministerial candidate thus becomes mere symbolism. That person is used to signal that either party is reaching out to some constituency.
But here again, what does it matter? We have been hearing so long about the importance of the youth vote about the women vote but election after election and despite deliberate to court these constituencies, what we see is the same old pattern repeating itself.
Each election, we hear about the importance of mobilizing the youths since they are the ones who will break with the politics of the old. But the youth turns out to be more aged, politically, than the older generation.
The youths vote no differently year after year than the older generation did.
There have been female prime ministerial candidates before but that has never helped the party of that candidate to do better. The main parties, however, the PNCR and the PPP have never had a female Prime Ministerial candidate and really it is not likely to matter because it will not be a vote catcher.
In fact, the more you look at opposition apathy in Guyana, the more it is becoming clearer that Guyana is not in the mood for change and that the PPP, given both its performance and the indifference which is being demonstrated by the electorate, is likely to sweep back again, this time with a bigger margin, than the last time.

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IS IT NECESSARY AND DOES IT MATTER WHO ARE THE PRIME MINISTERIAL CANDIDATES?

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