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Politicians must move away from race-bait campaigning – Ramsaroop
– Notes no race has majority anymore
Economist and politician, Peter Ramsaroop, believes that the time has reached for politicians to move away from race campaigning. He said this as he noted that the voting population has changed over the last two elections and has “radically changed” since the 1980s.
He said that the two indicators that have changed the dynamics are race and age groups.
Ramsaroop, who in recent times has served as the economic advisor to the opposition, and himself an analyst involved in predictive modelling, has evaluated the last 2012 census data.
He noted that based on the numbers presented, no race in Guyana has a majority.
Ramsaroop said that Indo-Guyanese once accounted for 52 percent of the population in 1980 but today it is down to 39 percent “and declining further with migration.”
He said that Afro-Guyanese are just fewer than 30 percent while the mixed-race group is about 20 percent and increasing.
Economist, Peter Ramsaroop
Ramsaroop noted that the Amerindian population is just around 11percent.
This, he said, is great for Guyana because politicians must be able to appeal to all races in order to win an election.
Ramsaroop said, “The days for a political party to appeal to a single ethnic group in order to win an election are over and Guyana will be better for it. If you examine the trends, it shows that over the last 40 years, Guyana’s population is coming together. Political parties will now need to shift into newer thinking so that they may appeal to all of Guyana. No longer can they just appeal to their base and hope that will drive them home.”
Ramsaroop also stressed that key economic planks will need to be presented and ultimately be appealing to this larger population.
He said that political parties will need to “represent a broader based approach to ensure we build a unified Guyana especially as we go into an Oil Economy. The expertise needed will be drastically different than what we have presented in the past.”
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