The antidote against Indian ethnic insecurity

Jan 30, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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In every election there has to be a winner and a loser.
I have seen elections in other countries where the supporters of the losing party are devastated. They stand shell-shocked as the results are announced. They have long faces. They cry. They hug each other for comfort.
In Guyana, there is no hugging and crying.  There are riots.
When a party cannot accept the will of the people; when it has grown so accustomed to rigging elections and trampling on the will of the people, it cannot effectively operate within a democratic framework. Nor can it accept defeat.
The PNCR has been very skillful at deflecting their successive electoral humiliations at the hands of the PPPC. Its leadership has never stood up and accepted blame for the failure to win a free and fair election. It is always somebody else’s fault. There is always the charge of electoral malpractice. Even when the evidence is produced to show that the PNCR has lost, there is no conceding.
The reason is simple. If the PNCR concedes, its supporters are likely to call for the leadership to account for their electoral defeat. But if the supporters are fed the lie that they were cheated, then the blame is deflected elsewhere. This is the root cause of the looting, the burning and the muggings.
The PPPC felt it was cheated at the last elections. However, it did not riot. It had the consolation of the Presidency. Neither did its leadership accept blame for the loss of the party’s once unassailable majority.
The PPPC blamed GECOM and the polling day staff for robbing the party of votes. It did not concede its own mistakes. Instead, it heaped blame on the electoral process.
One of the Commissioners on GECOM recently resigned. It would be instructive if he would indicate, now that he has resigned, what would have been the final tally of votes if those 17 polling stations which were allegedly not included in the Region 3 votes had been tallied. Would the PPP have regained its majority?
The nature of our electoral system is as such that all elections will be close races. The changes to the electoral system brought about from the 2001 reform process will ensure this happens. No party will ever be able to command a majority of more than four seats. And the closeness of elections will make it easier for the political parties to manipulate the emotions of their supporters. It will be easy for the supporters of all parties to feel that they were cheated.
The parties should avoid creating false expectations in their supporters. Every party has to go to the polls with the message to their supporters. That message is that we are going to win the elections. That is rhetoric. The reality however is that some parties do not stand a good chance of winning. Some have no chance at all.
It will, for example, take an electoral miracle for APNU to win the Presidency of Guyana. In 2006, APNU lost support relative to what the PNC gained in 1992. APNU cannot conceivably close a nine percentage point gap on the PPPC. The PPPC is not going to implode to allow APNU to either gain a majority or a plurality. That is the reality.
The AFC cannot win the Presidency. It was a 10% party. It has lost ground since. It is now seeking through intense campaigning to regain part of that ground by trying to scoop the one Region 9 geographical seat.  The AFC can only aspire to holding the balance of power. It is now using that ambition to be demand the presidential candidacy of a joint opposition slate.
This joint opposition slate is the best chance the opposition has of gaining the Presidency from the PPP. But this can only happen if the AFC gets the presidential candidate of a joint opposition slate.
If the parties go their separate ways, the PPP is likely to win the Presidency and perhaps once again its majority. The AFC is not likely to gain sufficient seats to hold any balance of power. It knows that its support in Berbice is gone.  Its recent rally in Whim attests to the AFC’s dwindling support in Berbice.
If, however, the joint opposition goes with the AFC, with either Ramjattan or Nagamootoo as its presidential candidate, they may stand an outside chance of a narrow plurality. The reasoning is simple. Sufficient numbers of disenchanted PPPC supporters may feel secure under a coalition headed by the AFC. An opposition coalition headed by either Nagamootoo or Ramjattan is the antidote against Indian ethnic insecurity.
Without the AFC heading the coalition there will be continued Indian ethnic insecurity and this will lead to the PPP regaining its majority and the Presidency. Those are realistic scenarios. Anything else will engender false expectations, the dangers of which have been tasted before in Guyana.

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