Changing our political culture

The results of the September 1 General Elections, in which the 68-year-old People’s National Congress (PNC) was upended by the three-month-old We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party has challenged entrenched attitudes on our political culture which postulate that elections here were “ethnic censuses”. Political culture – a subset of our overall national culture – consists of the attitudes, beliefs, values and orientations about politics in a given population at any given time. The political choices we saw reflected at the polls had to have been actuated by significant changes in the foregoing factors. “Culture” in general – and political culture in particular – then lie at the heart of the earthquake that generated the forces to create such a seismic shift in political behaviour in such a short time.
Culture is our “way of life” and no matter how divided we may believe our country to be, there was a “Guyanese culture” and a Guyanese political culture subset. Political culture, structures and institutions are typically shaped by a nation’s history and evolve out of the interaction, disagreements and conflicts among social forces, as they attempt to resolve their common problems. In Guyana, however, the political culture, structures, and institutions were imposed by a colonial power – Britain – whose concerns were not to resolve the contradictions of the society but to extract resources most efficiently for its benefit. Their strategy was to “divide and rule”, and while lip service was given to the ideal of working for the “good of the country”, the emerging political forces mobilised along the ethnic/fissures and categories fostered by the British, who perpetuated the said divisions, which dampened our progress.
Culture – including political culture – however, is never static but evolves with changes in the society. For instance, during the early post-colonial era, there was what one anthropologist called a dominant “white-bias” culture. And even though we proudly called ourselves a “land of six peoples”, to a lesser or greater extent, we all strove to acquire the mores and manners of that culture. The earliest models were the “local whites” and coloured populace – with the phenotypically European Portuguese – soon joining their ranks to form a self-conscious elite that was looked up to by the rest of society. With the introduction of trade unions to agitate for workers’ rights – and so form a proto-political front – the early leader Hubert Critchlow was the exception to that elite being in charge.
The early political leaders – including the US-trained dentist Cheddi Jagan, whose ethos was governed by the International Communist Movement, and the UK-trained lawyer, whose ethos was governed by his drive to be “white” – were uniformly white-bias leaning. However, following the logic of the majoritarian democratic system they inherited and maintained with modifications, they mobilised along ethnic lines, which, therefore, became entrenched.
But changes in the demographics of the country gradually forced changes in the make-up of the political leadership and also their strategies for garnering majorities at the polls. The Churchillian-cadenced Burnham was succeeded by Hoyte, who had the same white-bias credentials, but the latter’s successor Corbin did not and he suffered defeat because of that. In the meantime, the demographics of the country had changed – its ethnic composition – and successful political parties after 2011 had to now practise populist policies that attracted support from all sections.
Corbin brought in the elitist Granger, but he lost the populist plot that placed him in government 2015-2020, as did Norton who did not even have the elitist credentials – and paid the price on September 1st. In the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Cheddi Jagan was succeeded by his wife Janet, who shared his communist proclivities and ethnic advantage as did her successor, Bharrat Jagdeo. The latter’s successor Donald Ramotar was a transitional ideological figure but was not populist enough with the altered demographics. Irfaan Ali – populist by nature – won in 2020 and 2025 even though the PPP still had not overcome its historical burdens.
The new party WIN with no historical baggage and a populist leader hived off most of its support from the PNC. Hopefully, this new populist political culture can be expansive as practised by the PPP rather than exclusivist as promoted by WIN and PNC.