At first blush, it might appear that the news of 28 parties being invited for a briefing by GECOM on their participation in the Sept 1 General Elections is a sign of a healthy democratic culture in our polity. It could give our 700,000 voters more than ample choice if they represent distinct interests or ideologies and even merely candidates with distinct personalities. But if the goal of fielding political parties in elections is to attain political office, even a single seat in parliament, most of these parties would know they do not have a realistic chance of achieving this. Hence the “joinder” hysteria. What makes the proliferation of parties interesting is that historically, voting has been dominated not by the perceived competence of parties but by their perceived willingness to support the voter’s ethnic group – at most six.
But because we had two of the groups approaching each other in size, this resulted in a classic two-party system of the PPP and PNC centred around the two major ethnic blocks – Indian and African-Guyanese. The permutations and combinations of the groups, however, also produced credible, variable third parties – the UF, WPA, AFC, etc. – depending on the historical circumstances. However, the PNC’s rigging of elections between 1968 and 1985 vitiated the strength of our parliamentary system of Government by making the role of the Opposition into a “toothless poodle”. It is a trite observation that bereft of an effective opposition, even benign parties in Government will reflexively expand to occupy the political vacuum and tend towards arbitrary actions that are the antithesis of liberal democracy.
Over the years, as a commentator and briefly as a participant in our parliamentary democracy, I have stressed this need for a strong opposition for effective governance. And the question that faces us is whether such an opposition can emerge out of the seeming legions of political parties seeking to contest the Sept 1 polls. Mainly because of its chequered past, the PNC, as the major opposition party after the return of “free and fair” elections in 1992, has been struggling since then to rebrand itself. After engaging in ultimately unsuccessful extra-parliamentary excesses, it launched a series of organisational remakes in the new millennium by incorporating individuals outside its traditional executive pool to form the PNC/Reform and the PNC One Guyana (PNC/R1G).
During the election-rigging era, the WPA, with its “multiracial” platform, leadership and membership, had raised hopes of a new political culture, but they faded into insignificance post-1992. In 2006, however, a new political phenomenon was launched when defectors (because of stymied leadership ambitions) from the governing PPP (Khemraj Ramjattan), the PNC (Rafael Trotman) and the WPA (Sheila Holder) formed the AFC that was quite successful. In 2011, the bleeding PNC jettisoned its name and brought in David Granger from outside the traditional political arena to form the APNU coalition with four small parties. And finally, there was the electorally successful APNU coalition with the AFC in 2015 that shot itself in the foot to lose power in 2020, which it compounded by attempting to reintroduce electoral rigging.
The Opposition fell further into disarray in all the areas traditionally used to measure Opposition effectiveness: organisational cohesion, competitiveness, goals, site of contestations between Opposition and Government, distinctiveness and strategies. Sadly, with a mere ten weeks to go before the elections, this disarray has deepened, and the 27 parties vying for office against the PPP are a symptom of that. Out of the coalition negotiations between the PNC and the AFC, we have seen politicians exhibiting very few democratic values or credentials in issue-driven politics. Rather, what was evident were political entrepreneurs driven by personal ambitions, where forming a cohesive political entity based on common values to provide an alternative to the PPP was overshadowed by haggling over the divvying up of offices and positions that ensured these would remain non-existent through “splitting” the Opposition vote.
The 27 opposition parties all appear to be following the “iron law of institutions”. This posits that some “people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.”
This must change for Guyana to have a party system that ensures a more accountable democratic governance process.
