Change from outside

Nov 02, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Guyanese came out in their numbers on May 11, 2015 to vote the mighty PPPC out of office. The supporters of the AFC and the APNU had smelt the possibility of victory ever since the 2011 elections delivered a minority government.
The supporters of the AFC and APNU were emboldened by that result, and with the two parties merging into a pre-election coalition, they smelt the possibility of dethroning the mighty PPPC which had never in the history of Guyana lost an election.
The coalition really did not dent the PPPC’s support base, as many felt. The result of the elections showed that the PPPC got virtually the same percentage of votes as it did in the 2011 polls and the joint opposition did the same.
The political change which resulted from the 2011 came from outside of Guyana. What caused the change was therefore the marriage between the AFC and the APNU.
The match was not made locally. In fact, it was made in the Bahamas by foreign forces which had brought an influential figure from the AFC and another from the APNU together and there the Nassau Understanding was born.
That explains how the APNU and the AFC united. What it does not explain is how the PPPC which since 1192 had always secured a majority, slipped to under 50% of the electorate. Again, one has to look outside of Guyana for the explanation.
It was the migration of large numbers of Guyanese during the final years of the Jagdeo regime which caused the support base of the PPP to shrink enough for them to lose the elections.
The coalition chances were helped by United States meddling in the elections through certain artificially created civil society groupings, as they had done in Venezuela earlier. The US also contributed to the PPPC defeat by their liberal visa policy leading up to both the 2011 and 2015 elections. A number of PPP supporters took advantage of that policy in sufficient numbers to affect their majority.
The external supporters of the AFC in Canada were of the view that they helped in effecting change in Guyana. The AFC supporters in Canada, for example, were of the view that their US$75,000 donations swung victory the coalition’s way. They have no idea that what they gave was chicken feed when compared to what it would have cost the AFC to run that campaign. So it was not the foreign money that caused the APNU+AFC coalition to win the election; it was other external factors.
Guyanese at home took credit for the victory. But when they thought they were voting for change, they now are of the view that what they got was neither change nor exchange. What the Guyanese voters got was shortchange.
The APNU+AFC is worse that the PPP at its worst. The coalition is hopeless, hapless and helpless.
The electorate in Guyana is polarized and change is not likely to come from within. You just have to look at how the controversy of the appointment of the Chairman of GECOM is unfolding to understand that change is not going to come from within. Both the AFC and the WPA are now beyond any form of political redemption.
But it seems that political savior has been born and that savior is from outside of Guyana. The AFC’s membership in Canada has disassociated itself from the party unless the executive of its party disassociates itself from President Granger’s decision to appoint a Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission.
It seems as if the change that people wanted all along will come not from inside Guyana but from outside. The actions of the AFC Canada Group are unprecedented in the political history of Guyana. Never before has something like that happen.
There are major concerns among PNCR supporters in New York about the way they are being treated by the government. But they have never come out and taken the sort of action that the AFC Canada Group has done. These actions of the AFC Canada Group can signal a decisive break with the traditional follow-the-leader politics which has led to so much apathy in Guyana.
Perhaps things are changing. And perhaps the change that so many Guyanese voted for will come from outside of Guyana. We will have to wait to see if other AFC groups will follow the members of the AFC in Canada.

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