The Republican Party and the PNC: Comparative notes

Sep 17, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – His head swollen by the new direction in mental thinking of White Americans, Donald Trump felt comfortable about his second term. It didn’t happen. It will not happen in 2024.
The presidential candidate for the Republicans, whether Trump or otherwise, needs a quota of votes for victory that they will not have if Trump and Republican Party politicians stick to their current ugly narrative. To win in 2024, the candidate will need a substantial majority of White voters. The Democratic Party will have significant numbers of the non-African electorate. Black America will not vote for right-wing politicians.
The fight is for White voters. But in that group are substantial numbers who were brought up with liberal values and do not trust the racist, anti-women, anti-abortion, right-wing excesses of Republicans. That is the target group that the two parties will fight to win. But the Democrats have the edge. Once Republicans remain ensconced in the new ideology, this group will vote against Republicans because of the long tradition of democracy in the US.
You have an identical situation here in Guyana with the PNC. The battle will be over one particular demographic section – mixed voters. Indians have gone forever from the PNC. Even a homeless, mentally challenged Indian will not vote for the PNC over the next hundred years.
The incumbent PPP will use every ounce of energy to satisfy the Amerindians. The PNC then needs a large percentage of mixed votes along with its guaranteed African supporters if it is to put up a good fight in 2025. But if the PNC continues on the road of weird politics as with the Republicans in the US, it will be stuck in limbo forever.
There are several non-starters that the PNC is currently embracing that are counter-productive. One is the race card. If you look at each Facebook show of people closely aligned with the PNC, the appeal to racial instincts is graphic. It is as if these persons see the race strategy as the only surviving mechanism. But how ironic! Instead of helping them to survive, it will jeopardise the future of the PNC.
You can only win by the relentless stirring up of racial sentiments if your race group is in a majority and you want them to remain conscious that their electoral majority is what you need. The PNC and their overzealous surrogates have to know that Africans in the population are far below the 50 percent mark and that if every Black voter gives his/her X to the PNC, victory will not be achieved.
Why preach race-based politics to your supporters? It has no electoral gain because you are sermonising the converted. Since the mix-race stratum consists of people of more than one ethnic make-up, you are likely to turn off many of them with the constant beating of the race drum.
The second non-starter is the reliance on street politics. That era is gone. Street politics and the Buxton mayhem have run their course. If the PNC resurrect it, only a handful will turn out and their behaviour will be violent thus alienating large numbers in the mixed race group.
No violence accompanied the arrest of PNC front man in Buxton, Kidackie Amsterdam, and Aubrey Norton when they were arrested recently. But there is no guarantee that it will not happen in the coming years before 2025 arrives. It will not bring votes to the PNC.
Another non-starter is the type of vocabulary the PNC and their surrogates are using as part of their politics. It is a cuss-down, vulgar approach that amounts to the misuse of an avenue that should be properly to win hearts and minds – social media. Compare the Facebook shows of Anil Nandlall and Sherod Duncan.
It is the wild man versus the intellectual deliverer. Duncan’s presentations are devoid of intellectual arguments and take the shape of cussing down. Nandlall, on the other hand uses scholarly arguments to persuade. Yes, he is a lawyer but you don’t have to be a lawyer to persuade people to your political stance.
Then there is the continued condemnation of the West in the political offerings of the PNC. How this will help the PNC win hearts and minds is easy to answer. The US, UK, Canada, India and CARICOM nations are countries with extensive presence in the psyche of the Guyanese people. The PNC and their surrogates are on a stuck record of the West’s intrigue in the March 2020 election. No one believes that. It has lost any magic, if it ever had any. If the PNC and their surrogates continue along these pathways, then why contest in 2025 when you are going to lose badly.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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