Tomorrow I do not vote for a party, but for a chance for the poor to beat poverty

Mar 01, 2020 Features / Columnists, Hinds' Sight with Dr. David Hinds

Here we are on the eve of what is by all accounts, the most consequential election in the modern history of Guyana. The consequences are enormous for this small post-colonial society that is on the brink of wealth which was never envisaged even up to five years ago when the present governing coalition of parties narrowly but dramatically took office.
Here is a country facing a future that is pregnant with possibilities for its peoples, but concomitantly burdened by a political architecture that has been stubbornly counter-productive. We go to the polls tomorrow with all the agony, fears and bitterness that has been our collective lot these past seven decades.
Every single Guyanese who has asked me about the outcome of this election has done so with a high degree of anxiety—this heightened state of anxiety that has followed us from year to year. And so tomorrow, we take those fears and anxieties to the polls. What else can we do?
We tried one-party rule and revolutionary resistance to such rule, but in the end, we come to the 2020 election with the same state of mind as we went to the 1957 election when we were still formally a colony. Shamefully, we must admit that contrary to our self-congratulatory moments, we have not made many strides in the direction of the sane society we need in order to overcome our ghosts.
But tomorrow we march to the polls with the thought that this mother of all elections would solve our problems. One only has to listen to the diehard PPP supporters to get the sense that the Coalition government has destroyed Guyana beyond repair. These supporters, mostly of one ethnic group, have made the deliberate choice to either erase their party’s two decades of woes or reconstruct them as an age of prosperity.
It is what it is; we like it so. We choose to live as willing and not so willing creatures of what is worst in us. The other side is the dark, dreadful side that must be decimated at all costs.
And the supporters of the Coalition, mostly of the other mega race, go to the polls with a sense of righteous justification for holding up to God’s heaven their own flawless government. None can tell them that their inner consciousness of the truth, which they must mask in order to be a patriot of the tribe, is not the full truth. They, the unrighteous must not ascend to the “oily throne” as their sticky political fingers do not mix well with oil wealth.
Somebody has to win after tomorrow’s vote. And somebody has to lose. That’s our grand design for the Guyana we love. Win and win all. Lose and lose everything. To be truthful, we have run out of creative solutions. Some, like my friend Freddie Kissoon, are hoping that the newer parties can muster enough votes to bring about a minority government. They want a very neat 32-31-2 scenario—fixed by the hand of the divine. Their hope is that the parties with the “2” would use the “2” to beat the big parties into their senses. I wish them luck.
For me, I have chosen a side. That choice goes against the grain of the other side. My electoral choice, the Coalition, is not perfect in my eyes. At least I have said so these past five years. Yet I am Guyanese, and I want something out of all this for the poor Guyanese of all ethnicities.
I think we can get more for the poor from the Coalition side. I am putting my bet on the Coalition as the mechanism for opening the doors wider for the poor and the powerless. So, I go to the polls tomorrow and vote not for a party or for parties, but for a chance for the poor to do better. Yes, my vote tomorrow is for a chance for the poor to beat back poverty.
The road will still be rough after the election, so the vote tomorrow is just the beginning. We have to be prepared to defend our votes by tearing off the masks after Monday’s results and face reality. There is no other plausible way. For what it is worth, I ask my readers to join me in this humble crusade for the poor in our midst.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
More of Dr. Hinds’ writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.news. Send comments to [email protected]