Race Matters

Dec 04, 2011 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

Last week, I posed the question as to whether in this last election our voting patterns would be any different from those of the past: that is, dominated by ethnic interest. I noted, “In ethnically divided societies such as Guyana, voters gravitate to the two ends of the competition axis depending on their ethnic origins. The party’s stand on issues becomes almost irrelevant since it is supported solely as a protector of the group’s interest.”
As the votes slowly trickled in (very, very slowly) it quickly became apparent that Guyanese voters were holding true to form. Now, this is a reality that most try to sweep under the carpet – I am not sure to what end. Even though the same voting pattern is manifested at every election, no one wants to talk about it. We’re all supposed not pretend it’s not so. And we ignore the wellsprings of the behaviour and inevitably effective means to deal with it. And the sore festers.
In the 2006 elections the then newly-minted AFC insisted (ironically, like every Guyanese party before it – excepting ROAR) that it was “truly multiethnic “. Its mechanism to break the entrenched voting pattern was to have a rotating leadership between its African/Mixed and Indian founders – the irony that Jagan and Burnham had tried the same maneuver back in 1950 sans the rotation. This they copied from the WPA for which it did nothing at the polls.
As I had written in 1992 and repeated before every election including 2006, “The AFC (I had inserted “WPA” before 2006) is attempting the most difficult feat of all – to be a non-ethnic party i.e. having a non-ethnic ideology, membership from all ethnic sections, and leadership which does not secure their position by representing particular ethnic interests. The problem is that such a party takes itself out of the prime axis of competition and their support is confined to that percentage of the populace that has abandoned reflexive ethnic voting. Or those who can read into the leadership structure or policies etc. and find an ethnic orientation.”
With the supporters of the PNC extremely dissatisfied with the leadership of the PNC in 2006, a goodly chunk of them read an “ethnic orientation” into the leadership/presidential candidate of the AFC (then African/Mixed) and voted in protest for the latter party. After the 2006 elections, I pointed this out and declared that I would wait for 2011 when the Indian leader would become the presidential candidate to judge whether the AFC was truly “multiracial”.
Well here we are. The PNC addressed the leadership concerns of its constituency, rebranded itself as APNU and their voters all returned home. Indians, on the other hand, had become alienated from the PPP for a number of reasons and read into the Indian leadership of the AFC (augmented especially in Berbice by Indian native son Nagamootoo) an ethnic orientation. A substantial bloc transferred what has to be a protest vote to the AFC and reduced the PPP’s count to below 50%.
And I am going on record once again to declare that if the PPP were to honestly identify Indians’ dissatisfaction and address them, in the next elections, they will return “home”. The point I am reiterating is that that there is very little AFC can do about this state of affairs: their votes depend on the mistakes of the two major parties.
The other factor that operates to solidify the ethnic orientation of the voters is that no matter how sincerely the leaders of the parties try to present a “multi-ethnic” leadership front, “The “iron law of oligarchy”, i.e. that power inevitably accretes in a small elite within any organizations, is perceived to operate. In Guyana, the fear is that one ethnic group would dominate and that the other ethnic leaders would be mere tokens.”
Mr. Hinds in the PPP, Dr. Roopnaraine in APNU and Mr. Trotman in AFC as the respective PM candidates and putative “second in command” did not cut much ice with the rank and file to disavow them of the notion that they had no real control over the party. During the campaign there was much discussion in the press that “ROAR” elements – read “Indian” – had “taken over” the direction of the AFC. This was a very risible proposition, given that the putative ROARites had endorsed very openly ROAR’s proposal to address the African Ethnic Security Dilemma – through Ethnic Impact audits of governmental activities – but rejected Federalism and the ethnic proportionality in the composition of the Disciplined Forces. But there you have it: race matters.

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