The AFC’s primary Parliamentary agenda has to be ethnic balancing, fairness and equality

Feb 27, 2012 Letters

---

Dear Editor,
No issue is more critical to the life of a party in Guyana like that of ethnic balancing to the AFC. For the AFC depends on the erasure of ethnic insecurity or ethnic security to rise as a political entity.
Right now, it is trapped between two walls of ethnic insecurity/security created by and for the PPP and PNC/APNU. The AFC knows the reality too well. While less voters overall are voting race (61-63% since 2006), it is clear that those who do actually vote (roughly 90%), are voting race or ethnic security/insecurity by voting for race-based parties (PPP and PNC/APNU).
Africans and Indians comprise roughly 70% of the population. The PNC/APNU and PPP got an average of 90% of the actual vote in the last two elections. Looking at the statistical realities and voting behaviours, it is evident that the AFC’s only salvation as a party is to get Africans and Indians to migrate from the PPP and PNC/APNU in sizeable numbers (10% to 20%) to a multiethnic platform under the AFC.
To do so, the AFC has to discover what will motivate ethnic/race voters to change. It appears already that some traditional race voters and traditional PPP and PNC/APNU supporters will support the AFC depending on the racial composition of the leadership front of the AFC. Africans supported a Trotman led African-centric AFC leadership cadre in 2006 and left in 2011 when an Indian-centric AFC leadership cadre emerged under Ramjattan, which brought a flock of Indians to the AFC.
My calculations indicate that approximately 4% to 6% of the entire African and Indian voting age population (100% of voters) which traditionally supported the PNC and PPP swung to the AFC in 2006 and 2011 respectively.
When that number is expressed based on those who actually vote (approximately 70% of all voters), it is approximately 6% to 9%. However, that group is fleeting and transient.
The challenge is for the AFC to capture and hold them. More importantly, the challenge is to understand whether there are more potentially permanent Africans and Indians who always vote for the PPP and PNC/APNU who will be willing to vote for the AFC and why.
Considering that Indians and Africans comprise 70% of the entire voting pool, the AFC cannot win an election with a multiracial and multiethnic message alone. The AFC has to delve deeper into understanding what factors will energize Indians and Africans to support it.
I believe many Indians and Africans are truly fed up with the PPP and PNC/APNU and their shenanigans but are driven by ethnic security or ethnic insecurity.
Ethnic security occurs where the ethnic group votes for a political entity because it feels that entity is the best one to represent its ethnic interests, meaning it feels ethnic political security with that party.
Ethnic insecurity arises from an ethnic group fearing that unless it votes for its own ethnic party the other ethnic group will obtain power and will use that power to abuse and marginalize the group.
Ethnic security is stronger than ethnic insecurity amongst Africans largely because Africans have realized that Africans cannot win power as long as racial voting continues in Guyana due to the simple fact that Indians outnumber Africans. Africans flock to the PNC/APNU because it is the only political entity that provides that ethnic political security.
Ethnic insecurity is stronger than ethnic security amongst Indians who, despite their detest of the PPP’s autocracy and corruption, are afraid of a return of African power, given the terrible suffering experienced under the African-dominated PNC. Thus, Indians will largely vote for the PPP to keep the PNC from gaining power.
This is where the AFC comes in. It has to use its balance of power in Parliament to bring ethnic balance to remove unthinking ethnic insecurity and security. First and foremost it has to push for ethnic balancing of the military and police force to reflect the nation’s ethnic composition and to remove the possibility of what happened under the PNC, ie., the armed forces being used to support dictatorship and the tyranny of the minority over the majority.
The armed forces must be subject to Parliament, not the President. This would prevent the President from tampering with the police and army like Burnham did in the 1960s.
An ethnically balanced armed forces under Parliament’s command, removes the problem of one ethnic group dominating other ethnic groups because of the racial composition of the armed forces.
Looking at the trends, statistics, demographics and voting behaviour, it looks like no party will win a majority government for the future. Ethnic balance in the armed forces along with a future of minority governance is a good balance that will encourage people to try voting outside of ethnic security/insecurity.
This is what the AFC has to be pushing for aggressively. The next step is serious electoral reform to prevent any form of rigging of elections.
Then pursue a social and educational reworking of our society with mandatory tolerance education in schools and workplaces. Pass laws to ensure that every employer provides tolerance training to his/her employees.
When these things happen, more voters will vote outside of pure race and the AFC benefits. It is one of the key ways the AFC has to distinguish itself from APNU/PNC and the PPP in this Parliament.
M. Maxwell

---

---