WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE FATIGUE FACTOR?

Apr 01, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Everyone is entitled to change his or her mind. Even when it comes to the reasons why the PPPC failed to gain a majority at the November 2011 general elections!
It was said that the PPP/C lost because of the syndrome known as incumbency fatigue. In other words, people got tired of the same old faces and decided to change course; well, at least a small number of people because the PPP/C fell just shyly short of a majority and who knows, if those results from the nineteen polling stations in Region Three had been added to the count, the PPP/C may have ended up with its majority.
But everyone is quiet about those charges made by of all people, a Commissioner of the Guyana Elections Commission. Even the PPP/C is not saying anything but it had hinted after the elections that it was robbed.
The theory of incumbency fatigue was never taken seriously because the PPP barely failed to gain a majority. If incumbency fatigue was a major factor it would have seen far more persons either staying away from the polls or a far more precipitous decline in the votes cast for the PPP.
The second explanation that was offered just after the results were announced was that the PPP had neglected to do the ground work, had failed to keep active on the ground and as a result, lost support. The evaluation of the results indicate more complacency since in many areas where they won comfortably the voter turnout was lower, meaning that even in their support bases where work was done on the ground, voters stayed away. This could be because of complacency since many presumed that the PPP/C would have won by a larger majority.
One of the mistakes that the PPP/C made after the elections was not to undertake an exit poll to determine just why large numbers of their supporters did not vote.  If it had done a poll, it would have been able to investigate the reasons for thousands of their supporters staying away.
The PPP/C seemed comfortable with an analysis which had identified incumbency fatigue, voter apathy and complacency as some of the main causes for the PPP/C’s failure to secure its usual parliamentary majority.
These days, new reasons are emerging. It is now being said that extravagance on the part of a named party leader helped tilt the balance in favour of the opposition. Other reasons have been added to the melting pot. These include cuss-bird politics, cronyism, anti-socialist policies including attack on sugar workers and neglect of the party’s support base. Big rallies were also cited as another reason. But the big rallies have been around since 1997. It did not prevent the PPP from winning comfortably then, nor did it do so again in 2001 and 2006.
And in 2011, the PPPC held more community and road-corner meetings than its political opponents and in fact far more than in any other campaign in the past. These meetings were ineffective in bringing out the voters.
Despite this, there may be may be truth in all of the reasons that are now emerging. It may be true that the construction of a big house led to problems. But it is most likely that this mansion rallied the opposition supporters back into the opposition camp. It may be true that persons were turned off by cuss-bird politics. But such politics may have angered moderate opposition supporters who in the face of this aggravation decided to vote for the opposition parties.
It may be true that the PPPC neglected its support base and particularly the problems in the sugar industry hurt the party at the polls.
But if one really needed to accurately determine why the PPP/C failed to gain over 50 per cent of the total votes cast, a more detailed analysis of the results needs to be undertaken as well as a poll to investigate the reasons why supporters did not turn out in their usual numbers and why the AFC did so well in areas which traditionally were considered strongholds of the ruling PPPC.
This is what needs to be done. Instead what is being thrown in the public domain are convenient truths, things that are not without perhaps some grain of truth but which are self serving reasons being advanced.
But what is difficult to understand is why this theory of incumbency fatigue is being abandoned by those who trumped it as the main reason for the decline in the votes cast for the PPP/C during the last general and regional elections.
But in all the opinions that are being given as to why the PPP underperformed, very little attention is being given to an important consideration: that the opposition for the first time outworked the PPP/C both during the campaign proper and especially on Election Day. This is angle which should not be ignored in any analysis of the 2011 election results.

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