The announcement that the PNC has coalesced with the WPA to contest the Sept 1st General Elections is of some import for politics in Guyana. Especially so after the leader of the PNC, Aubrey Norton, subsequently affirmed that WPA’s presidential candidate David Hinds’ controversial ideological pronouncements are not “in conflict” with the PNC’s. The PNC-WPA coalition is evidently not a “coalition of convenience” just to oust the PPP, since the WPA brings almost no electoral support. It is troublingly a “coalition of commitment” to particular, divisive values adumbrated by Hinds with increasing hysteria over the last few years.
With the WPA an electoral nonentity, Hinds’ strident expostulations were dismissed as an attention-grabbing gimmick. However, the endorsement by the mass-based PNC signals a degenerative turn in Guyanese politics. Our political mobilisation history has weaponised our ethnic diversity into two warring camps that periodically descend into violent confrontations, and a tradition had developed to ameliorate this by at least genuflecting to “multiracial” politics. Ironically, Hinds is from the formerly multi-racial party par excellence but now trenchantly attacks the premises of that approach.
An early example came two years ago when a WPA supporter on their political platform made extremely derogatory statements about Indian Guyanese ancestry. A number of prominent Indian Guyanese PNC members took offence and publicly rejected the slurs, but Hinds dubbed them “slave catchers”, analogising them to those who had captured and sold Africans into slavery. He insisted that these Indian Guyanese should have remained silent since they were feeding a myth in the African Guyanese community that they were “traitors”. This was diametrically opposed to the “multicultural” view that individuals who were members of a party in which they were not ethnically dominant should represent their ethnic cohort interests to demonstrate they are not mere “window dressing” or “tokens”.
Another normative canon of multiracial politics was that parties should consciously broaden their representation of issues to include those relevant to groups outside their core constituency. From the onset, the PPP, PNC, WPA and all other parties stoutly maintained this position. This stance became increasingly relevant after changed demographics ensured no single group constituted a majority to elect “their” party on their own. The expectation was that if political parties were seen as representing the interests of all groups, the criteria for voting would become based on their demonstrated ability to deliver manifesto promises (valency politics) and not simply exploit ethnic fears based on a perception of the party protecting particularistic ethnic interests (one form of spatial politics).
Hinds later scatologically denounced some prominent African Guyanese who left the PNC for the PPP by dubbing them “BT/bambsie/ass lickers”, etc. This was clearly based on a racist premise that African Guyanese are bereft of agency to decide which party best represents their interests. In his 2023 fulminations about “slave catchers”, he had insisted that only African Guyanese could speak to their issues, but evidently not all of them are qualified to performatively do so. He arrogates to himself that arbitral role, and Norton, in describing Hinds as “intelligent” and “knows that he has to choose what he says”, accepts on behalf of the PNC his WPA partner’s formulations.
Most recently, Hinds demanded an apology from one prominent Indian Guyanese PNC member, former GT Mayor Pandit Ubraj Narine, who had publicly upbraided him for his aforementioned demeaning description of African Guyanese. He condescendingly purported to “school” Narine as a “bai” and instructed him to keep his nose out of African Guyanese business. With Norton now condoning this jaundiced perspective, it is not surprising that several well-placed PNC Indian Guyanese have since departed to the PPP. Which act earned them a reprimand from Hinds for being “ungrateful”?
Narine was “an Indian man rewarded by the votes of Africans…because…the racial optics are part of our politics. All parties are in it. So, that is not the problem. The problem is the fact this young man… and others of his ilk are ungrateful. Because they were given prominence… an office that they did not fight (or struggle) for”. But those Indian Guyanese in the PNC could not be “ungrateful” since Hinds concedes they offered value for their “prominence” since they aided “the racial optics (that) are part of our politics”. Quid pro quo.
It would appear that Hinds is stuck in a 60s, confrontational activist leadership style and vocabulary when what is now needed is motivational leadership for seizing available opportunities. With Hinds now Norton’s ideological influencer, this can take Guyana backwards.
