Analyzing the 2015 General Elections results

May 30, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Serious episodes of impossibilities characterized the results of the 2015 National Elections. All three parties – APNU, AFC and PPP – will have to call in their analysts to help prepare political strategies for 2020.
First, the Amerindians devastated coalition hopes. In all the Regions where there were Amerindians, the indigenous people embraced the PPP. In what can be called a caricatured victory, the coalition won Region Eight by one vote. In 2011, the PPP was beaten badly there. In 2015, the coalition increased its take by a hundred votes; the PPP by one thousand.
Secondly, Berbice will prove to be the PPP’s biggest problem in 2020. There is talk throughout political society in Guyana that Berbicians as they did in 2011, stayed home in 2015. There was a turnout just above the fifty percent mark. But there is a big but. Were those absentees living in Guyana in May 2015? Is it possible that the absentees are among the two dozen East Indians who leave Guyana daily for Canada, US and Trinidad?
The cruel reality that has ruined the permanent electoral happiness of the PPP, is that East Indians do not want to stay in Guyana. From the time they leave high school the mind is set to go to North America. Any journalist who has connections to US Embassy and Canadian High Commission officials would tell you the majority of migrants are Indians.
If they were leaving in large numbers since Cheddi Jagan became President in 1992, then imagine what will happen now that a non-PPP government is in power. What the PPP is facing is one of the cruelest ironies in history and in politics. An Indian demographic majority made the PPP win elections all the time. Now an Indian demographic minority will cause the PPP to lose elections forever.
Thirdly, the coalition’s expected high percentage did not happen. The Indians did not swing toward the AFC in large numbers pumping up the percentage from 2011. Fourthly, the PPP’s prediction of a large scale return of Indians to the PPP did not happen.
The AFC made a coalition victory possible because it gave APNU the votes that APNU needed to take the coalition over the fifty percent mark. More Indians from Regions Three and Four balloted for the AFC this time. The AFC lost three hundred votes in Berbice in 2015 compared to 2011, but that was made up for by Indian ballots in Region Three of young Indians nationwide and middle class Indians in Region 4.
Fifthly, African Guyanese gushed to the polls on May 11 like a river that burst its banks. Even if there was a tsunami in Guyana, it could not have stopped Afro-Guyanese from voting. They registered in humongous numbers and voted in humongous numbers. They felt it was do or die for them as an ethnic community.
African Guyanese decided that they were not going to live a minute longer with the PPP Government. When the coalition was born, it was a big Christmas gift of a diamond nugget for them.
Sixthly, the gap between the AFC and APNU as opposition parties and the PPP in 2011 was 8000. In 2015 it was cut in half. Seventhly, there was still no huge national turn out for the 2015 national elections. It stood at 72 percent, identical with 2011. Finally, the vote difference between the coalition and the PPP could have been a thousand votes less if TUF did not contest. I believe TUF collected a thousand votes that would have gone to the PPP.
Now for a brief analysis of these statistics. The use of a deadly racist campaign and the colossal use of state resources took Indian votes away from the AFC and Amerindian votes from the coalition. You can try as hard as you can to use acceptable language, the point is, that our Amerindian folks are not urban people that apply analysis to political trends as Guyanese do in Regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Ten. They live simple lives deep in the interior and relate mostly to governmental officials who patronize them. With the PPP out of power, the PPP will lose Amerindian votes in 2020.
Many Indians became genuinely scared after Jagdeo sermonized them with a phantasmagoria of violent attacks from a resurgent PNC and African people.
The religious Hindu priest, Aksharananda chipped in too with his own scare tactics in Region Three where he is popular among Hindu folks. If the PPP bandwagon was clean and the PPP had campaigned on its achievements, Indians would have rejected them giving the AFC large number of ballots.
Nasty racist poison by the PPP prevented a coalition landslide.

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