The moral choices facing the electorate

May 01, 2023 News

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Kaieteur News – The forthcoming elections will be a test of morality. The electorate will be faced with a question: do they support a party which has attempted to benefit from rigged elections, brought this nation into dispute, showed utter contempt for the will of the people and  now want to be the people’s representatives in municipalities and neighbourhood democratic councils.

The elections will NOT be a referendum of the PNCR’s leadership. It will be a test of the people’s sense of political morality. If the PNCR does well, it would mean that they are either forgiven for attempting to benefit from rigged elections or their supporters endorse those actions

The PNC brought this country to its knees. It established a political dictatorship between 1968 and 1992 and it destroyed a once flourishing economy. It was accused of grave human rights violations as well as political assassinations. The people of the country endured almost twenty years of grinding hardships under the model of cooperative socialism.

As the 1992 elections drew near, the Working People’s Alliance was so confident that the PNC would pay a high price for its past misdeed that some of its activists predicted that the PNC would not gain more than 10% of the votes cast. And when you looked at the record of the PNC in government, particularly between 1976 and 1992, you would have said that 10% was being generous.

In the 1992 elections – the first free and fair elections in almost a quarter of a century-  instead of the PNC being relegated to a 10% party, it secured 42.31% of the votes. The PPP/C won by a landslide with 53.45% of the total votes cast.

The subsequent elections of 1997, 2001 and 2006, more or less mirrored the results of the 1992 elections. In 1997, the PPP/C gained 55.25% of the total votes cast as compared to the PNC 40.55%. In 2001, the results were 52.96% for the PPP/C and 41.83% for the PNC.  In 2006, the PPP/C snared 54.67% while the PNC saw a disastrous decline of its support to 34.67% due in large measure to the performance of the Alliance For Change.

How does one explain this performance of the PNC given its disastrous terms in office? The explanation proffered, and which remains credible, was because of ethnic insecurity. This theory posits that the supporters of the country’s two main political parties cling to them because of fear of their economic and personal security.

That theory was used to explain the continuing ethnic polarization of the country. But that theory is no longer relevant. The demographics of the country had begun to change.  Indians were no longer a majority of the population and thus the PPP/C would need to woo other sections of the population to maintain its majority.

The AFC emerged as a credible third force. In the 2011 elections, it held the balance of power in the National Assembly thereby deny the PPP/C, for the first time since 1992, a majority in the House. It was now possible for the PPP/C to be defeated as it was in 2015 when the AFC joined with the APNU – a partnership of the PNCR and a number of small inconsequential parties.

The ethnic security dilemma no longer exists. As such, this theory can no longer be used to explain ethnic polarization.

The failed attempt by the APNU+AFC to benefit from rigged elections in 2020 has led to moral crisis in the country’s politics. Will the supporters of the APNU (the AFC is not contesting this year’s local government elections) vote for a party which was complicit in attempting to benefit from rigged elections? Or will they use these elections to reject the discredited narratives peddled by the APNU and the AFC?

This is the moral choice facing the electorate. The outcome of the June 12th local government elections will decide the future of politics in Guyana. If the PNCR does well and if retains most of its strongholds, then a new theory would have to be developed to explain why the PNCR, after what it put this country through for 5 months between March 2nd 2020 and August 2nd 2020, was not relegated into the political wilderness.

The choice is before the people. Do you support a party that was dishonest to the point of wanting to benefit from rigged elections? Or do you stand on the side of morality and use the local government elections as a referendum to reject the shenanigans of those 5 months and reject those who peddled and continue to peddle discredited narratives?

There is also a moral choice facing the supporters of the PPP/C. Do you support a party which has breached its promise to renegotiate the oil contract and which continues to operate in the same manner as in 2011 when it lost its parliamentary majority? Do you support a party which has a flawed understanding and a poor track record of local democracy?

Morality is about right and wrong. The electorate will face a moral choice come July 12th 2023.

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• AFC joined with the APNU, discredited narratives, leadership, PNCR’s, PPP/C

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