Can the PNCR or APNU hold on to the same level of support of its constituents in 2025 as it did in the 2020 elections?

Nov 29, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Given the barefaced and dishonest attempt to rigs those elections, suggestions have been made that the PNCR has lost significant electoral support.

There are grounds both in support and against the view that the PNCR will suffer fallouts as a result of the electoral shenanigans during the 5 months between March and August of 2022. These grounds are assessed below.

A number of factors would support the theory that the attempt to rig the elections will backfire on the PNCR. For one, the APNU is discredited internationally. The International Observer Missions would have all reported on the conduct of the APNU+AFC to their respective organizations. The Head of the Organization of American States Observer Mission to Guyana told the organization, which represents 35 countries in the Western Hemisphere, that he never saw a more transparent attempt to alter the results of the elections. The United States imposed visa sanctions on those whom it felt were undermining democracy in Guyana. The Head of the Caribbean Community came out against the attempt to derail the elections’ results.

All of these developments shamed the APNU+AFC in the eyes of the international community and made it into an international pariah.. One Caribbean Prime Minister asked the loser of the elections to “stand up and take your licks like a man.” Another said that what took place in Guyana is not what the Caribbean stands for. And the +CARICOM Audit Recount Report suggested that much of the objections being made during that process ( primarily by the APNU+AFC) amounted to a” fishing expedition”.

A number of legal cases were filed during the five-month election impasse. The APNU+AFC supported many of the challenges. Given the consistency which the litigants lost those cases, the Coalition was left with a credibility crisis.

Unlike in 1997 and 2001 when the PNCR tried to steal power through street protests by claiming that those elections’ results were fraudulent, the APNU and its sidekick the AFC were unable to get its supporters to engage in mass protest action. The pandemic no doubt played a role but if the supporters of the APNU+AFC were convinced that the PPPC was stealing the elections, they would have taken mass action, pandemic or no pandemic.

So will the PNCR or APNU be snubbed by its supporters in any forthcoming election? One school of thought is that historical voting patterns do not suggest that the PNCR will lose any of its core support base. It was pointed out for example that despite destroying the economy of the country prior to 1992, the PNCR still managed to secure more than 40% of the votes in those elections and has maintained that level of support while in Opposition, expect in 2006 when the AFC successfully penetrated into PNCR’s support base.

Two general reasons have been used to explain ethnic voting in Guyana. The first is the ethnic security dilemma which argues that each of the two main ethnic groups has fears of ethnic security fears, and these insecurities lead to ethnic voting. But the ethnic demography of the country has changed. Guyana is now a country of minorities in the sense that no single ethnic group commands a majority of the population. No ethnic group thus can feel that they are permanently locked out of power. The other possible theory to explain ethnic electoral clannishness is that each group generally wants to be ruled by its own.

The ethnic factor tends to support those who do not feel that the PNCR will not suffer any major fallout from the attempt to rig the elections. It follows from this logic that voting predominantly along ethnic lines will continue in the 2025 elections.

Today, however, the PNCR is a divided house. Factionalism is rife within the PNCR and unless the present Leader can heal these divisions and unite the party, it is likely that the PNCR will suffer the same humiliation as it did in the 2006 elections.

David Granger had united the party after the devastating hiding the PNCR got at the hands of Bharrat Jagdeo in 2006. He was able to rebrand the PNCR into APNU and recover the support which the PNCR had lost. The support he and the APNU secured led to a minority government in 2011. He then launched a coalition-building process which culminated in the Valentine Day Agreement and the subsequent razor-slim electoral victory in 2015 General and Regional Elections.

Some of the very forces who forced him to demit the leadership after the 2020 elections failed him while he was in Government. And now some of them are privately confessing that they need him to return to the helm to restore the party’s fortunes. But will the supporters of the PNCR, particularly those young supporters who had prior to 2020 never experienced electoral rigging, every trust the PNCR again? Only time will tell.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)