It’s the day after the most consequential Local Government Elections in the history of Guyana – bar none!! Our political bugbear had been ethnic voting that made elections appear more like ethnic censuses! But by tomorrow we’ll know if the PPP has broken the back of this insidious practice we’ve known since the fifties. The PPP’s abandoned the old political folk wisdom of taking LGE for granted – on the grounds they “didn’t matter”— and given them as much attention as any National Election. They’ve added a whole new twist to the old saying that “all politics is local”??
Before we even digest the results as they trickle in, we should ask “why”?. The easy answer is that the PPP seized the opportunity to hone their electoral machinery to get ready for 2025!! And that’s as good a reason as any. LGE literally force parties to work at the grassroots – even when their big wigs might prefer the glamour of national campaigns!! Everybody gotta get their boots dirty visiting into the hamlets and backdams squeezing that last local vote out. Did you notice those PPP Ministers posing with tractors??
But that wasn’t the only reason. More germane is that the PPP’s accepted their old ethnic majority has now disappeared completely. And since it’s shown no signs of reversing – with emigration continuing from their old base – they gotta reach across the old divides to win elections!! It’s as simple as that!! But interestingly, the PNC doesn’t seem to’ve absorbed that lesson…even though their base has always been a minority!! Their posture has been one of truculence ever since they lost the 2020 elections by cutting off the legs of the AFC that had brought in votes from “outside”.
And this is why – and your Eyewitness is going out on a limb here – when the PPP shows SIGNIFICANT gains in traditional PNC constituencies, it’s gonna be a game changer. The PNC’s gonna have to follow suit in their mobilisation efforts – or go the way of the Dodo and face extinction!! Some say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks – and Granger after the PNC won in 2016 certainly proved that!! So maybe the PNC ought to elect some new dogs into its leadership ranks?? You’d think so, wouldn’t you??
We’ll know soon enough…’cause your Eyewitness has been hearing about their internecine squabbles that’ll surely boil over after this drubbing at the LGE. This is what forced Corbin to move aside back in 2011 and maybe Norton’s gonna do the same for the survival of the party – if he cares enough.
The bottom line is that any rational political leader going forward cannot play the old “race card’. It’s now the Joker of the pack!!
…in Rodney’s legacy??
Today’s the 43rd anniversary of Burnham’s assassination of Dr Walter Rodney. And your Eyewitness ain’t throwing any gratuitous shade on Fatboy!! A distinguished Commission of Inquiry pronounced on the matter and identified him as the intellectual author. But the die was cast when Rodney returned from Tanzania in 1974 to take up a teaching appointment in history at UG. He’d already given an interview in “Black Scholar” where he fingered Burnham as being behind the official moves to deny radical Black groups like ASCRIA and NJAC from attending the Pan African Congress in Tanzania. While he postured as a “radical”!
It was Hamilton Green on the UG Council who executed the firing of Rodney…but this only gave the great historian time to mobilise at the grassroots – even as he did research into his “History of the Working People of Guyana”. It’s simply amazing to witness those who swear they are “Rodneyites” now praising Green for representing the best of Black Leadership!
O Tempora!! O mores!!
…in the Ukraine War
Your Eyewitness notes the long-awaited offensive by Ukraine into Russia is now under way. He hopes the war will soon be over because of the billions in sophisticated weaponry shipped to Ukraine.
“Flour too dear a shap!!”
