I hope there has been space for third parties

Mar 05, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Even before the 2020 election was ever on the horizon, I wrote that I would vote for a third party, specifically for Lenox Shuman’s outfit. I did last Monday. I don’t know the election results at the time of penning this piece (Wednesday afternoon) but I hope that the third parties did put in a plausible performance.
I believe third parties are good for Guyana. It was a third party that led to the international fame of Bill Clinton. He would never have made it to the presidency but the party of Ross Perot took conservative votes that would have gone to George Bush, Senior.
Al Gore barely lost the election to Bush’s son but if there wasn’t the party of consumer advocate, Ralph Nader, Gore would have won. Nader took votes from him that in such a narrow race, the result would have put Gore past Bush. Guyana’s track record of successful third parties is tiny.
The United Force of Peter D’Aguiar did well in 1964 and the Alliance For Change in 2011 but since then it has not been a forceful visibility for third parties. WPA got a seat in 1992 and 1997. ROAR, under Ravi Dev, did secure a seat too. Interestingly ROAR votes came from the Jagan heartland of Berbice.
In the recent general poll, a number of small parties contested. It appears that three of them did not disappear – Shuman’s outfit of the Liberal and Justice Party; ANUG of Ralph Ramkarran; and Robert Badal’s Change Guyana.
Badal’s deputy appeared by telephone on Kaieteur Radio where I was a panel yesterday and said that his outfit turned up in third place.
We have to wait and see if that synchronises with official GECOM results. But if the above named three managed to secure a parliamentary seat that will auger well for pluralistic politics.
The question is – are they in for the long haul? They should be. Whichever one of the big two giants wins this week, there is bound to be voter fatigue in 2025 and there are bound to be profound governance mistakes.
I repeat over and over since my Tuesday column – I don’t know who won the poll but this I can tell my readers who I know would expect it of me; I will analyse why the PPP lost or the APNU+AFC wasn’t the victor.
In pursuing that assessment, I would think the factors hold lessons for the third party leaders to internalise.
Oil money dominated Trinidad for over 20 years now. Most observers who passed through Trinidad agreed that it was a small, developed economy that no longer had Third World status just like Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea etc. But there have been changes of government while oil money made Trinidad rich.
The point is even with a resourceful economy, voters cannot be taken for granted. Parties fall to the ugly temptation of power and they do stupid things even with plenty money to spend.
My consistent contestation is that whichever of the two leviathans (and from what I have seen so far from preliminary results, the fight is between PPP and APNU+AFC) wins power, oil money will not be carefully spent. There is no one who can change my mind about this feeling.
Politics in the 21st century is very fluid. Parties that no one knew about can come up and win handsomely. It happened in Italy. It was bizarre there but it happened. Parties that are small, endure, bear up and persist have had rewards.
What has happened in Ireland was incredible. Sein Fein, the party associated with the Irish Republican Army, considered itself too small to break through the 100-year-old cordon of the two traditional parties.
Then two weeks ago, they did. Had they contested all the constituencies, they would have won the government.
So the question is – will Shuman, Ramkarran, Badal, Ruel Johnson and others stick around until 2025. Time flies, 2025 will be upon us soon. They should be in for the long haul. They should not be daunted. Oil money will not guarantee that whichever party controls the economy later this week will not self-destruct. Guyana has not been blessed with good, fantastic, phenomenal leadership.
I am not going to go back in history. I am not going to name names. But brilliant, dedicated, competent, political leadership has not been readily available in the history of this country.
By this afternoon, we should know the standing of the third parties. Whatever happens, it would be better for politics in general if they stick around for the 2025 battle.

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I hope there has been space for third parties

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