A drowning man will clutch at the race vote

Dec 20, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Surely, you don’t need to have a high school education to see that the five percent increase to public servants cannot work in the PPP’s favour in either a local government election or a national poll.
It means if we are going to have local government elections in 2014 (it has to be held in 2014 because GECOM said it will be ready) then the PPP has given up on the search for multi-racial support and will concede an opposition victory in Georgetown. There is no other interpretation.
Georgetown since the first election in 1957 after the suspension of the Constitution in 1953, has never voted in a majority way for the PPP, right up to 2011. The PPP was in power for nineteen years, yet in the 2011 poll it did not even secure twenty percent of Georgetown’s ballot.
Why in 2014, given the Sooba affair and the complete humiliation of the City Council, would Georgetown vote for the PPP? The five percent offer and the City Hall stand-off are clear indications that if local government elections are held next year, the PPP is not prepared to pursue multi-racial support.
Of course, two inventions can come into play. And both will be self-delusions, but the PPP has always lived in the twin towers of self-delusion and paranoia. First, the PPP could implement an IMC. No amount of protest by the PNC will stop it, but who says it will bring in votes? It will not, for one fundamental reason – an IMC will be a political affair and even if composed of professional people, those individuals will sycophantically play PPP politics instead of doing a professional job.
If the IMC is directed by hand-picked business people, their overriding interest will be to comply with what the PPP says. In the end an IMC will be viewed with rising venom by voters who will reject the PPP at the poll. Of course an IMC can work.
There is nothing esoteric about an IMC. Put lawyers, doctors, civil servants and other categories of civil society and let them run Georgetown until elections with a handsome budget. But who says the PPP understands and wants this type of devolution of power? In the end, the IMC will turn out to be just a puppet and the PPP will be humiliated when municipal elections come.
The second invention is to increase salaries and wages just before the municipal kick-off. Here is where self-delusions come in. The PPP may think that it will work. But it will be repudiated in the most decisive way by voters. And for one reason only. Why would anyone in Georgetown be so naïve to vote for a PPP City Council because just before elections they raised public servants’ earnings?
I know the world has stupid people, but I doubt there are so many silly voters in Georgetown that would fall for that deception. The Sooba affair and the five percent increase is vivid testimony that the PPP is not interested in wooing Georgetown and will rely on the race vote in any upcoming national elections.
The opposition parties need to be grateful to the PPP for its life of self-delusions. I don’t believe the opposition parties should contest the next general election before constitutional changes but if they do, they stand a chance of finally ending PPP rule.
Two reasons explain this. First, the AFC and APNU could have secured substantially more votes in 2011 if they had worked harder. AFC was delinquent in Essequibo and the West Coast. The PNC failed to bring out about thirty thousand voters who didn’t turn up but were very much alive in Georgetown.
Secondly, the PPP’s self-delusions will work to the opposition’s advantage. The PPP honestly feels that Indians didn’t turn up in Berbice and elsewhere to vote in 2011 because they were so enamoured with the invincibility of the PPP that they just sucked their teeth and said, “We ain’t going out, it ain’t mek sense. Bharrat and dem boys done win already.”
The PPP at the psychological level seriously believe this. And when they gather in conference, sycophant after sycophant is going to get up and repeat that mantra – “People stayed at home because they thought the PPP will win anyway.”
Add to this, another form of self-delusion and the opposition will be jumping with joy. The PPP still clings to the past when Guyana was fifty-five percent Indian and forty percent African. Surely, they must know that Papa Cheddi is dead, the blue-eyed bowjee is dead, and that the Guyana in which they lived then is long dead.

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A drowning man will clutch at the race vote

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