The PPP/C needs to assess its local government campaign

Jun 22, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The PPP/C was stunned during the first few hours following the close of polls on June 12^th 2023.  Up to 11pm little news was emanating from Freedom House even though from around 8 pm on the same night APNU trolls were reporting a clean sweep of its Linden constituencies and winning Georgetown and News Amsterdam.

Later that night after the shock had abated, the PPP/C’s General Secretary took to an impromptu press briefing and announced a “big night” for the PPP. It was not a “big night” for the PPP/C. The PPP/C was hoping to do much better than it did. Even though it improved its tally of votes in Georgetown, Linden and New Amsterdam, it was expecting to do much better and perhaps even register an upset, given APNU’s low-keyed, low-budget and lackluster campaign.

If the PPP/C is forthcoming, it admitted that mistakes were made and would undertake an honest and objective analysis of why it did not create any major upsets in the 2023 LGEs. That analysis should cover three principal questions: Who was responsible for developing the PPP/C’s strategy for the elections; how well-designed was the strategy; and how effective was its implementation…?

The PPP leadership operates a like secret society. Not much information gets out about internal party affairs. But it would be most interesting to know whether there was a committee formed to develop a strategy for the LGEs or whether this was a one-man or one-person dominated exercise.

The PPP/C is a mass-based political party. It contested in all constituencies up for grabs. To contest in so many locales, the development of an election strategy has to include all of the party’s main political leaders and cannot be left to consultations and meetings with candidates with one person at the head table. As such, it is necessary for the Central Executive of the party to undertake an analysis of who developed the strategy and how effective it was.

In terms of the actual strategy itself, the Central Committee needs to assess whether part of the strategy involved weekly press conferences mainly to respond  and castigate the Leader of the Opposition. It would be difficult for the most objective member of the Central Committee to deny that the weekly one-man press conferences strengthened the Opposition rather than weakened it.

The tantrums which were thrown at those weekly press conferences agitated the supporters of the APNU. And the more they witnessed the public chastisement of their leader, the more galvanized they became to go out and support the PNCR. The weekly press conferences thus were counterproductive to the PPP/C’s election campaign. Even though the PNCR was weakened and factionalized, those factions united following the weekly one-man PR onslaught emanating from Freedom House. The PPP’s Central Committee must therefore do a thorough assessment of the extent to which the party’s General Secretary may have undermined its LGE’s strategy.

Following the analysis, the Central Committee of the PPP will have a decision to make. Who will it hold accountable for the development and appropriateness of its 2023 electoral strategy? It must not delude itself into believing that it ran an effective campaign. Given the massive sums that it spent, the strategy did not yield the desired results. The PPP/C has a misplaced idea of what constitutes grassroots campaigning. Printing thousands of flyers and giving persons to distribute house-to-house in communities is not an effective grassroots strategy. Ninety percent of the flyers end up in the waste bin.

Door-to-door canvassing does not work for a number of reasons. For one, you are invading a persons’ private time and space and this is not always the best means to seek votes. Second, many of those who go door-to-door are not adequately prepared and capable of responding to the questions and views expressed by citizens; in most cases door-to-door canvassing involves mechanically handing out flyers in the hope that they will be read. The PPP/C has been engaged in a flyer-distribution blitz since 2011. It has been a failed strategy. It is also costly, time consuming and intrusive.  The PPP/C must also be honest that this idea of recycling crowds by moving them one location to the next in the same region does not work. Nor is the mass distribution of jerseys going to convert those who are undecided – perhaps the most critical demographic.  All of these issues must be dispassionately examined and a clear and honest assessment arrived at as to how the party can avoid making the same mistakes in the future.  As for the weekly press conferences at Freedom House, the PPP/C has to decide whether this is not a greater liability than not saying anything at all.

(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.)

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• APNU, Government, Peeping Tom, PPP/C, reporting

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