PPP/C put in the time, reap the rewards

Jun 15, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

I published an article a few days ago on how the PPP/C will win the LGE by a wide margin. Here is what I said on June 8 – “The HOW of the victory [will be] because the PPP/C is an exceptionally well-organized political party, with an extraordinary ground game. Freedom House has been engaged in detailed election planning for months. Considerable time and energy have been devoted to listening to the electorate through scores of outreach meetings. Meetings with local communities across the country provided detailed information on the priorities of citizens, both at the national and local levels” (Guyana Chronicle)

Well, it turned out to be exactly that, a victory built around exceptional organization, and a brilliant ‘ground-game.’

At the PPP/C press conference on June 13, General Secretary Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo expressed thanks to the party activists, the candidates, and their 26,000 ‘backers’. He also thanked street captains, and the thousands of volunteers who were part of the logistics on E—Day, delivering food, transporting elderly voters, the cleaning-up crews, and the like. Typical of the PPP/C leadership, they hardly acknowledged their own tireless efforts, at times wading through mud and rain to the far corners of this vast land with such a prodigious terrain. President Ali, Prime Minister Phillips, and Vice President (and PPP General Secretary) Bharrat Jagdeo formed an indomitable team and led their cabinet and party officials in a dizzying country-wide campaign to secure the victory that is now evident.

Allow me to offer a few analytical points on LGE 2023. First, I agree with Freddie Kissoon that race, as talked about by the likes of David Hinds, did not have the sway they had hoped for. Younger Afro-Guyanese voters ignored the “black-pudding approach” to political consciousness and certainly, political behavior. Even the late-breaking ‘Trench Crappo’ and “Cool-Aid” rhetoric for ethnic mobilization by APNU did not work. Instead, the PPP/C made step-level gains in Georgetown, Linden, New Amsterdam, Bartica, and also in Region 1.

One of the real stories for this 2023 LGE is the RATE of increase (not only the magnitude) in APNU to PPP/C turnover between 2016 and 2023. The pace of the cross-over is quickening, and the time-series data must be of the greatest concern to the languishing APNU, and the AFC which is in now on assisted living.

On Monday night I remarked on NCN that Professor Stuart Hall’s ‘politics without guarantees’ is likely to take hold in Guyana.  Hall, a Jamaican by birth who became a world-renowned scholar on political sociology (among other things) had warned Afro-centered activists and politicians not to expect “Black” folks to have a one-way, one-track mind when it comes to culture, ideology, and politics. Hall advocated for a politics that is democratic and rational, not one that is ‘tribal’.

His key point was that political identities are not fixed. In the United States, for example, hundreds of thousands of racial minorities are politically conservative. Being a minority does not, should not, and has not ‘guaranteed’ the politics and voting behavior of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians, among others.

More often than not, economic modernization facilitates the transition from ‘traditionalism’ to ‘modernity’. In the former, folk culture is dominant, and here one can expect great resistance to change. With modernity, people become more open to ideas other than the ones they grew up in. They tend to become ‘utility maximizers,’ meaning that they make decisions based on rational self-interest.

Younger Guyanese of all ethnic backgrounds are quickly moving away from embedded traditionalism, towards forms of modernity. While the former is ‘backward-looking,’ the latter is based on what lies ahead, the future, grounded in questions and considerations such as upward social mobility.

Guyana is going through rapid economic, cultural, and social transformation. It is no accident that President Ali’s favorite word (actually it is a concept) is ‘transformational’. The PPP/C won as big as it did in this LGE because its leadership understood well the shifts that have been taking place in the Guyanese economy and corresponding shifts in the minds of the electorate. Throughout the LGE campaign, the PPP/C leadership constantly reminded their candidates to “stay on message.” Well, what was the message?

In a nutshell, the message was that voters should make the most of the new opportunities that are now available in the country. The PPP/C implored voters to put aside past ways of thinking about things and to embrace a new vision based on looking after their own affairs, as well as that of their families, and their communities. It was not about sticking to your ‘own.’

The APNU, by contrast, stuck to its old political technology, sharing out the same cool aid, as Jagdeo labeled it. The APNU formula and their message was – vote for the same folks your parents voted for, even if those folks had destroyed the economy and ruled through the rigging. They wanted the people in Georgetown, Linden, Bartica, New Amsterdam, and beyond, to stand still, fixed forever where they have always been, looking back at the bad old days and, somehow, miraculously feeling good about that dastardly past. Thousands walked in the other direction, towards change, towards the future, towards progress.

The massive victory of the PPP/C at this LGE is remarkable, if for no other reason, then certainly because it gave the politics of race a hard kick in the behind.

Sincerely,

Dr. Randolph Persaud

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• Chronicle, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, Dr. Randolph Persaud, PPP/C, rewards

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