Voter motive and the PPP’s future

Dec 08, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are mysteries about a national election that people will never know about. Would we ever know exactly what people voted for? You can do a poll and ask them. But would they be truthful?
The 2011 election in Guyana had some complex dimensions to it. Let us leave aside the asininity of Robert Persaud’s exclamation of the voters’ excitement about development so they just didn’t vote out of the perception that the PPP will win again.
The Region Six phenomenon needs explaining. Moses Nagamootoo was definitely a factor in the AFC good showing. Moses wrecked the engine of the PPP’s campaign vehicle. Traveling to Georgetown along the East Bank Demerara Highway during the early stages of the campaign, I noticed a large PPP billboard in Houston with Cheddi Jagan’s face extolling his legacy. This was the dangerous mistake the PPP made in its strategy.
Berbice is generally regarded as Cheddi Jagan’s territory. The PPP indoctrinated Berbice with the greatness of Jagan. Young Berbicians may not know about Guyana’s past politics but they know about a man named Cheddi Jagan.
More importantly, he appears to them to be someone who was modest, not corrupt and cared for the poorer classes. The PPP catapulted itself into Berbice for this election riding on the vehicle of Jagan’s legacy. Moses punctured all the wheels of the wagon.
Stupidly enough, PPP speakers in Berbice accused Nagamootoo of betraying Jagan’s legacy. This was the height of imbecility.
Armed with statistics, facts and evidence, Nagamootoo told Berbicians if anyone betrayed Jagan, it was the current leadership of Jagan’s party that in government paid young foreigners two million a month, build stupendously expensive houses, and were some of the world’s most corrupt politicians.
This was an assault that the PPP had no answer for because they didn’t have any evidence to support any likely accusation of past baggage on Nagamootoo’s part. A certain percentage of Berbicians accepted Nagamootoo’s delivery and a certain percentage felt they couldn’t bear to give their vote to another party so they stayed at home. The result was a phenomenal piece of history.
The Berbicians had opened their own prison door and walked out of a jail the PPP built for them 65 years ago. History was made on November 28 when Berbicians rejected the PPP.
The preoccupation of Donald Ramotar has to be to de-Jagdeoise his administration if he and his party are going to stay alive in the next election campaign. Should Guyanese go to the poll in three month’s time, the PPP is likely to face the same attitudes in Berbice because Ramotar’s Cabinet is a school of Jagdeo’s children.
The paradox facing the Ramotar presidency is that the PPP cannot continue to tell Berbicians that Jagan’s legacy guides and protects the party but the party in government practices economic behaviour that Jagan would not have wasted a minute frowning on.
It is either the PPP ceases to campaign on Jagan’s legacy therefore staying away from any mention of their founding leader’s name or they shape their policies to reflect the world Jagan would have loved to see the PPP Government live in. It borders on the impossibility to think the PPP could de-emphasize the past role of Jagan.
It is doubtful that the PPP could enter any election campaign today, the next year or in the coming five years and keep Jagan’s name out. But a repetition of the Region Six rejection faces that party if it does not reverse the pattern of rule set by Mr. Jagdeo.
The Amerindian jail house collapsed too. Two factors among others could explain this. TUF’s merger with the PPP meant that TUF could not have brought in the votes it got from the Amerindians. They no longer saw TUF as their party.
Secondly, TUF harassment of an Amerindian leader, Valerie Lowe, didn’t help TUF among Amerindians. Region Eight then didn’t want to hear about the PPP. There is also the stereotyping of Amerindians by the PPP that our native people repudiated in this election.
The thinking that Amerindians could be easily fooled by supplying them with a deluge of goodies dominated the PPP’s hinterland campaign. But surely, the Amerindians in 2011 are not the same people that Peter D’Aguiar could easily have bought out in the sixties. Why should anyone assume that modernized thinking in 2011 has bypassed the people in the hinterland areas? In a forthcoming essay, I will analyse why Georgetown didn’t show the AFC any generosity particularly in South Georgetown where I have my roots but went crazily for APNU. It may not have to do with ethnic voting at all.

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Voter motive and the PPP’s future

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