By GHK Lall
Local Government Elections (LGE) enlighten all about how Guyana is, and where it stands. The PPP claimed a huge victory, but was it really so? The PNC asserted that it whipped the challenger in its home, but how much so? But, most of all, what does it say, and where does it leave President Ali’s ‘One Guyana’ initiative. President Ali’s ‘One Guyana’ initiative is to be saluted. It is noble in ideal, appealing in its possibilities, what this country needs more than anything. I say that it is, and never as in this time of great wealth. Close to three years after a bitter 2020 elections season, I inspect the LGE results, and seek to reconcile such with the One Guyana proclamation.
I say this: the PPP made LGE inroads; but the PNC held its own where it mattered. The PPP won in many areas; but those were one-horse races: foregone conclusion because of no PNC participation. Now, therefore, I urge fellow citizens to look beyond the numbers, and there are all those subsidiary plots that claw at, and revealingly peel away, the claimed ‘victories’ by both major parties, especially the ruling one.
First, responsive PNC supporters were beneficiaries of lavish PPP generosity via their own sizable cash grants (a la sugar workers), house lots, job placements, and contracts, most conspicuously in Georgetown, Linden, and New Amsterdam, three historic PNC fortresses. But the PNC still emerged triumphant in all three areas, leading population centers. For emphasis, the PPP registered progress, but it was very expensive, and now it has to maintain that rich benevolence to build on what it gained. It will be costly, and its own base is watching, while others are simmering. Though not highlighted as much, the PNC eked out some progress of its own in the PPP strongholds of Bush Lot and Plegt Anker.
The PPP progressed numerically, and the PNC held its line, but to where nationally, and with a view to how much was spent, and who was seriously handicapped, and where was not contested. In rawer terms, a limping political power could not be put away, where it counted. Prior to June 12th, I wrote that the PPP should win Georgetown, given its strenuous efforts. It didn’t and that is the litmus test. When I throw in Linden and New Amsterdam, what emerges is that gifts can win only so many votes, and an injured tribal political contestant can only lose so much, notwithstanding having nothing to give, and lacerated by internal conflicts, even sabotage, and much more. When all these are added to low voter turnout, narrow gap, and money, this was the season for the PPP to win. As much as it did moneywise, did it do too little for too few and too late, is the question.
It is my position that this leaves the ‘One Guyana’ program perched on the most precarious precipice. A party that started late, that was largely invisible and inaudible, and by many accounts inconsequential, is still given allegiance by the bulk of its own. With two out of three voters staying home, and ferocious winds in its face, the reality is that most PNC supporters stayed with their group. Backs turned against overtures. Rejection of appeals. Dismissal of promises. And all in the toughest of times, and the bleakest of prospects. In a nutshell, the irresistible magnetic pull of race trumps all else. It is a two-headed monster.
There is no value in minimizing PPP gains, but all are exhorted to recall sugar workers and the wall of disinterest that greeted the Granger administration moves. I detect the unchanging timelessness of Guyana’s political environment, and in its recurrent nature. Some respond, most dig in their heels, and in a hard, guava season, to boot. I detect further that there is rage, rancor, and resentment. Hostility and aggression manifested and delivered in various ways provoke such passions. It is why I insist that One Guyana is both slogan and slap. With so much expended, it is inexplicable that so little was achieved. Indeed, there was some addition for the PPP, but the needed multiplication was glaringly absent. The PPP can polish, but when it controlled every purse string, it still couldn’t get over the line. What I gather from the LGE numbers is this: take goods, goodies, and gifts and get going. Get lost. It doesn’t get any more rankly polarizing than that, and Burnham comes to mind, with his own precedent and parallel.
Burnham and his despised party card are remembered; he got away with some of the same practices for an extended period, until he ran out of time. The PPP and Jagdeo have the hated party whip: vote and welcoming and rewarding. Don’t and there is the door. These things eventually fail, fall apart. As historian Miriam Dixson reminded us: when oppression and clannishness are cultivated, then a “mental ghetto…a thought universe of harsh conflict” results. The consignment of humans to different states leads to devouring with rancor and aggression. This is the barrenness that the possible beauty of a genuine ‘One Guyana’ encounters, to which it must give way.
