THE UNDECIDED COULD DECIDE THE CLOSENESS OF THE ELECTIONS

Oct 28, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Nominations are in. A number of parties have indicated their intention to contest next month’s general and regional elections and have submitted their list of candidates to the Guyana Elections Commission.
It was quite a day, yesterday, with all of the parties showing great enthusiasm and bringing out their supporters to rally by their side.
The election campaigns of the various political parties are now in full swing. There are interesting days that lie ahead as the political parties attempt to mobilise their supporters in the final sprint to the polls.
While at present it seems as if there is a clear frontrunner, the trend in elections in Guyana, which was verified by opinion polls in the past, is that there is always a fair amount of undecided voters. There is always a group of voters who do not make up their minds as to which party to vote for until the very last moment, sometimes on the day of the election itself.
While these voters may not decide the outcome of the elections, they can determine how close the race will be. As such, all the parties will be canvassing these voters while trying to win others who are not their traditional supporters and ensuring that their supporters stay on board.
So far a great deal of attention has been focused on those persons who have been endorsing political parties and those who were associated with parties and have joined the campaigns of other parties.
However, the PPP has been the first of the main parties to table its manifesto and APNU, its anticipated main rival, is expected to do so within the next eleven days.
The PPP has signaled that it will be going along with the policies that have worked for it. It is clearly not in the mood to change the things that have led to stability in the economy and growth over the past six years.
If the past is anything to judge by, what APNU will present will be a virtual development plan. While this is its first election, two of the main parties in APNU are noted for their grandiose plans. And this time is not likely to be any different. APNU is expected to have a manifesto that will be like a national development strategy.
So far the political campaign has been peaceful, but there were disturbing incidents such as defacing of the PPP’s billboards and an incident involving volunteers from both APNU and the PPP/C who were pasting up flyers.
APNU has boxed itself into a corner concerning the code of conduct being proposed by the Guyana Elections Commission, and therefore may find it difficult to sign on to even an amended code. Nonetheless, the entire country will be looking to see how all the political parties conduct themselves, and more especially, when the results become known.
A number of new parties are likely to emerge this year, but the level of support they will attract is left to be seen. There is certainly a role for small parties in the National Assembly as well as for independent candidates to make their mark in these elections.
Traditionally, the politics of the country has not been generous to small parties, but the dynamic can change, and small parties can eventually become a force to be reckoned with in the country.
The parties have prepared their open lists of candidates. From these lists, the various parties will extract the names of their candidates for the National Assembly. The ultimate choice – as to which individuals end up on their party’s list – will be a choice for the party, since we are dealing with an open list system.
As such, GECOM is not empowered to disqualify any persons from the list. Only if that person is eventually chosen as their representative to parliament does the question of disqualification arise, and such disqualification has to be pursued through the courts and not through GECOM.
At this stage, the question of GECOM making a determination as to whether any person or persons or the various lists are ineligible is a non-issue, because that question only arises after the winning parties have extracted from these lists, after the elections, the persons they wish to represent them in the National Assembly.

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