With general elections that have been dominated by ethnic voting only a year away, the political parties have been getting their “A” teams in place via internal party elections. The PPP held their 32nd Congress in early May, and elected a 35-member Central Committee (CC) along with 5 “candidate members” with no voting rights. The CC in turn elected a 15-member Executive Committee (ExCo) that will run the day-to-day affairs of the party, with VP Jagdeo as Gen Secretary. What was very noticeable and commented on was that both the CC and ExCo were overwhelmingly drawn from the PPP’s Indian Guyanese membership. However, the Civic component of the PPP/C, which was introduced in 1992 to introduce individuals in civil society but outside of its membership, to broaden the ethnic and social representativeness in Government, was retained.
Since then, their Presidential Candidate has been an Indian-Guyanese from the PPP, while the PM Candidate is an African-Guyanese from the Civic.
At the PNC’s 22nd Biennial Congress, they elected their Leader, Aubrey Norton, and four Executives consisting of a Chair, two Vice Chairs, and a Treasurer. They were all African-Guyanese. A 15-member Central Executive Committee was announced almost a week later, and included 4 Indian-Guyanese. Simultaneously, the AFC held their 8th National Conference, and elected their leader, Nigel Hughes, Chair; Vice Chair”; Gen Sect. and 12 members of the National Executive Council (NEC).
In terms of strategies to agglomerate the necessary crossover votes outside of their core constituencies, the parties, which all maintain they are “multi-ethnic”, have to place on centerstage the fact that, unlike in 1980, when the PPP’s Indian-Guyanese base was 50% of the population, Guyana is now a nation of minorities. While the 2022 census results have not been released, if we follow the population trends since 1980, Indian-Guyanese should now be around 36%; African Guyanese 29%; Mixed-Guyanese 22%, and Indigenous-Guyanese 12%.
After free and fair elections were introduced in 1992, the PNC retained a solid 42.3% of the vote, even though it had brought Guyana to perch precariously above Haiti as the poorest country in the hemisphere. This would have come primarily from its African-Guyanese base (32% of the population in 1992); Mixed-Guyanese 12% and some Indigenous-Guyanese, 6.5%.
The WPA, which had thought it had destroyed ethnic voting and would win the elections — probably on the reflected glory of the PNC-assassinated Dr Walter Rodney — barely got 2%, while the UF scraped together 1%. The PPP, with its Civic component, garnered 53.5% of the higher turnout of votes from its Indian-Guyanese base (48.6%) and a smattering from the other groups.
In the following elections, the PNC was drubbed, and in 2001, the PNC tried to broaden its appeal by appending a “Reform” component formed with individuals from outside the PNC membership. Their support decreased marginally. The PPP also maintained its support base as the overtly Indian-based ROAR barely squeezed out .93%. The WPA coalesced with a newly formed Indigenous-based party, GAP, and they together received 2.4%. Ethnic voting retained its hold.
In the 2006 elections, the PNC-R was expanded to PNCR-1G – PNC Reform One Guyana – but lost support to the newly-formed AFC, formed by Raphael Trotman (a Mixed-Guyanese from the PNC who had unsuccessfully vied for leadership); Ramjattan, an Indian ExCo member from the PPP, whose ambitions were stymied within the PPP; and a Mixed WPA member, Shiela Holder. They secured a record for a third party in Guyana – 8.4%, which came mostly from the PNC, which dropped by 8% to 34%. The PPP’s strategy of asserting development for all ethnic groups saw their share rise to 54%. GAP merged with ROAR and they secured 1.26% as the WPA exited electoral politics.
In the 2011 elections, the PNC morphed into a “kinder, gentler” APNU, in coalition with several micro-parties under the leadership of David Granger. With its African/ Mixed base reinvigorated, it rebounded to 40.8%, while the AFC increased by 10.2%. The PPP, with its incumbent-weary base bleeding to the AFC, secured only 48.6%. Because of our pre-election coalition rule, the PPP secured the Presidency with its plurality, but its governance was checkmated in the National Assembly when APNU and AFC voted together. That prompted APNU-PNC to woo the AFC, and in 2015 the APNU/AFC Coalition secured 50.3%; the PPP was decimated to 49.2% and lost the Government.
(to be continued)
