As is constitutionally mandated, we have been assured by the PPP’s General Secretary that General Elections will be held in November or December of 2025. This was not unexpected, since their strategy for winning those elections clearly has been the execution of their development agenda, focusing generally on the massive infrastructural works they have initiated and particularly, on courting the African Guyanese constituency. The latter has overwhelmingly supported the PNC since Forbes Burnham split the unified nationalist PPP movement in 1955 – notwithstanding both parties’ insistence that they were “multiracial”.
However, ever since they lost the 2015 elections to the PNC/APNU, which had entered into a coalition with the Indian-dominated AFC, the PPP have been more receptive to the ethnic/racial orientation of the Guyanese electorate and declared they will be openly targeting the African Guyanese vote. Up to then, outside of their core constituency, they had wooed the Indigenous Peoples’ votes by stressing “hinterland” development and split that bloc almost evenly with the PNC. It would appear they have accepted the political logic of the new demographics since 2011, where their majority Indian constituency has dwindled below 40 per cent and Guyana is now a nation of minorities. Any party desirous of a fair chance of getting into office would have to acquire votes from outside their base to secure the majority that the Guyana Constitution mandates to form the Executive.
The PPP saw the new politics unfold in 2011 when the AFC capitalised on the PPP’s long incumbency from 1992, which brought the usual disadvantages of incumbency in developing countries – such as perceptions of increasing rent extraction in stagnant or declining economies. Even some usually-loyal supporters will take a chance with challengers who are considered inexperienced and unconnected, even if they are seen to be of lower quality. It is for this reason the choice of the “outsider” David Granger as PNC leader was fortuitous since his probity level was adjudged to be very high and the addition of Moses Nagamootoo to Khemraj Ramjattan assuaged concerns in the PPP’s erstwhile Indian constituency.
David Granger, however, lost the new plot for governing our divided plural society after he was elected in 2015 with only a one-seat majority (6000 votes) over the PPP and proceeded to shutter four sugar estates and firing 7000 sugar workers. They were the most discontented segment of PPP’s traditional constituency that had been courted by the AFC. They promptly returned “home” in 2020. With the PPP now benefiting from comparatively massive oil revenues, they now had the wherewithal to spend massively in all communities. Even though the PNC/APNU have waged a “dog-whistling” race campaign to persuade African Guyanese they are being discriminated against in the distribution of the largesse, they appear to have overplayed their hand by insisting that there is now a PPP-instituted “apartheid” regime in Guyana. The PPP have – and would be able to produce in the coming year – figures to show improvement in all communities.
Against this background, it appears the PNC/APNU’s strategy – the AFC has become the “Dead Meat” it predicted before coalescing with the PNC – in 2025 would be to convince its supporters and the international community that the PPP will manipulate the electoral system – as they now claim the PPP did to secure office in 2020. Bootstrapping from “observations” their election agents made during the 2020 Recount – and which the Caricom recount team derided – PNC leaders have already started laying the groundwork. One of the new PNC leaders who is challenging for the leadership recently insisted that “a GECOM Report” shows that 35% of ballots from Reg 1; 75% from Reg 2; 68% from Reg 3; 55% from Reg 4; 51% from Reg 5; 77% from Reg 6; 71% from Reg 7; 54% from Reg 8; 80% from Reg 9 and 70% from Reg 10 had “anomalies”. Never mind their Election Agents signed off on all Statements of Poll (SoPs). And the Recount proving that Mingo fiddled with the Reg 4 SoPs even before anyone went into the ballot boxes does not matter.
Their strategy will be to “give a dog a bad name then hang him”.
