An atavistic and retrograde form of politics is pushed in Guyana as we head into the homestretch of the 2025 elections. This development has the potential to derail the gradual movement of our politics into a less confrontational trajectory, through the logic of centripetal political mobilization reacting to Guyana becoming a nation of minorities, with no one ascriptive group constituting an inbuilt majority.
The backwards mobilization tactics is dubbed “the politics of outbidding”. The classic statement on the phenomenon was made by Donald Horowitz in his classic, “Ethnic Groups in Conflict”: Societies that are deeply riven along a preponderant ethnic cleavage (as is the case in Guyana) tend to throw up party systems that mirror the ethnic divide. However, two types of parties usually appear to challenge the dominant ethnic parties. The first are “multiracial” parties that purport to bring the groups under one banner and the other are ethnic “flank” parties or organisations that push the dominant parties into adopting more extreme ethnic positions.
The PPP and PNC were essentially ethnic parties after 1957 when Burnham took his African/Coloured Guyanese supporters from the PPP into the PNC and Jagan was left with the Indian Guyanese, while other groups were wooed by both. The dictatorship of the PNC from 1968 to 1992, distorted the political system since their electoral rigging made opposition parties of whatever variety, moot. The “multiracial” Working Peoples Association (WPA), launched in 1974 took on the PNC and made a big impact but foundered after its leading light Dr Walter Rodney was assassinated in 1980. In 1992, when “free and fair” elections were returned, even though it was convinced it had broken ethnic voting, the WPA garnered a mere 2% of the votes.
In the elections of 1997, 2001 and 2006, the WPA failed to break out of its peripheral role, even as widespread violence erupted when gunmen, holed up in Buxton – labelled “Resistance Fighters” by one WPA executive – took on the Police Force and massacred innocent citizens. The Alliance for Change (AFC), launched as a “multiracial party” in 2005 to take on both the PPP and PNC, and did well at the 2006 elections. For the November 2011 elections, the PNC evidently was persuaded by the WPA remnants to coalesce with them and three other “micro parties”- to declare it was now “A Partnership for National Unity” (APNU).
It would appear that after the paroxysm of ethnic violence in the early 2000s, the PNC was reacting to the changing demographics of Guyana – driven by an ethnically differential rate of emigration. Guyana was now a nation of minorities, and they calculated that a coalition that masked its presence, could compete without resorting to extra-parliamentary measures, such as the “mo-fyaah; slow fyaah strategy of Desmond Hoyte after 1997.
In 2011, the AFC provided a home for disaffected PPP executive Moses Nagamootoo. He was able to attract traditional PPP supporters, especially from Berbice, disaffected by the travails in the sugar industry and incumbency fatigue. APNU and AFC together checkmated the PPP and restricted them to a plurality-controlled presidency. In the 2015 elections, the APNU/AFC coalesced and were able to capture the government. However, Granger shot the coalition in the foot when he unilaterally closed four sugar estates and throwing 7,000, primarily Indian Guyanese sugar workers, on the breadlines.
In the March 2020 elections when it realised it had lost, the PNC reflexively launched moves to rig, and were supported by the WPA remnants and the AFC but had to demit office by August. Since then, the WPA remnants, have been pushing the PNC under Norton into a more “Hoytean” confrontational mode. Using the now ubiquitous social media platforms to directly address the PNC’s base, the WPA remnants first declared the PPP government was creating an “emerging apartheid state” that must be confronted outside of parliament. They tried to delegitimise Norton when he refused. After that failure, they have resorted, along with some fringe elements, to delegitimise the electoral arrangements.
They are transparently setting the stage for post electoral violence after the ragged Opposition loses.
