On 16 August 2025, after reading various media comments on the content of the manifesto of the APNU/WPA coalition, I WhatsApped the following to someone who is very close to the coalition to give myself some assurance that I did not miss its dealing with what is arguably the most important political issue in Guyana today.
‘Hi … I have not yet read your manifesto, but I am being inveigled to ask you what’s in the manifesto to stop Aubrey (Norton) from behaving just like or worse than Jagdeo (under whose watch Guyana has been designated a full blown autocratic state) if you win the elections.’ The answer I received was, ‘That’s a tough question. The short answer. Nothing!’
On 21 August 2025, I asked the following of well-placed and usually well-informed source: ‘I was just asked a question: Why is Village Voice supporting WIN (We Invest in Nationhood)?’ The answer I received was, ‘Because of their political agenda which both of us are aware of.’
‘Everything changed but remains the same.’ While external circumstances may evolve or change, certain core elements or principles can persist, and the 2025 general and regional elections in Guyana is as near as one could possibly come to an example of this condition.
The People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which has been ruling Guyana for almost three decades, is supported overwhelmingly by those of East Indian ethnicity, who are about 40% of the population. Guyana has a presidential plurality, winner-take-all political system, and over the last two decades the Indian oligarchy that controls the PPP has been resisting universal recommendations/demands to make governance in Guyana more ethnically inclusive.
The problem is not the existence of ethnic parties: it is existence of two large ethnic parties in a structure of governance that does not facilitate democratic expressions. The party oligarchy determines who becomes the president and the members of parliament, the presidency is taken by the party with the highest vote at the elections and the legislature can be dominated by a single vote majority party. Apart from the judiciary, whose independence is extremely precarious in the existing context, the separation of powers, a central feature of democratic governance, is dead, and the extreme loyalty ethnic voting induces means that a united public opinion to hold government accountable is largely absent.
A majority ethnically voting party will produce an ethnic dictatorship and as in Guyana, to stay in government a minority ethnic party will have the incentive to coerce others into its ranks. The only way to achieve democratic governance is firstly to accept that a political ethnic problem exists and secondly to put in place adequate constitutional/legal arrangements to facilitate the necessary inclusion. Instead, the leadership of the PPP has taken the position that the existing winner-takes-all structure is appropriate and that it is the people that must change or join its ranks.
Thus, over the last two decades, in every sphere of their lives, the PPP has been deliberately supressing and discriminating against the other ethnicities, but particularly the Africans given their numeral strength. If Norton had won the elections, what was to prevent his government, largely the product of ethnic African Guyanese, from, like the previous coalition administration, doing anything it wished as the PPP opposition stood helpless. The people must always keep their power dry, but even if we take the position, which I do not, that the no-confidence motion that brought down that coalition government was an initiative of PPP, is this or violent confrontation the civilised way to change government?
The second response raised some interesting questions and the outcome of the elections is not particularly alarming. Africans have been there before, for example in 2006, the nature and quality of leadership in the PNC was being called into question and it gave wings to the Alliance for Change (AFC). This time the schism appears to have led to the latter’s demise, but what is more important is that, to my knowledge, on the previous occasion internal contestants never went public calling upon the African community to split their votes!
In passing, we had better note here that there was never an election, particularly since 1992, when Janet Jagan failed to urge upon the PPP’s traditional Indian supporters not to split the votes. Of course, ethnic groups have moral and legal rights to their own political parties, but as noted above, the extreme ethnic loyalty that can result from this persistent kind of barracking prevents the formation of a ‘united public opinion’ without which liberal democracy cannot exist in the absence of appropriate constitutional mechanisms.
Elections are best rigged long before elections day, and the PPP and it allies – the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) included – have been indulging in all manner of pre-elections skulduggery. But even so, the PPP boast that some red wave will flip Linden and other African- dominated communities has not materialised. Linden is the archetypical African community and the PPP, which has for decades been browbeating Africans to drive them into its ranks, only received about 1,000 more votes than at the last elections. Indeed, given the regional population size, its increase was proportionately less in Region 4 which it flooded with migrants from all parts of the world.
More than anything, the results of the elections demonstrate that those of African ethnicity understand well the ethnic discriminatory tactics of the PPP and do not want to be ruled by it. Furthermore, whether the PPP and Mohamed are in some conspiracy – I believe they are – the fact that the Africans flocked to WIN is a clear indication that African political support is not entirely driven by ethnicity but also by leadership direction. That many Africans did not vote for the APNU/WPA coalition cannot be blamed on Norton, up to elections day, former members of the APNU+AFC leadership was suggesting that Africans split their votes and so the votes were split.
Where racism is concerned, Africans must be the most liberal people in the world, but that does not mean that they will not go to the hilt to protect their interest. The late South African sociology Professor John Rex argued that, unlike most racial groups, Africans tend to be defensively and not superiority racist. What the 2025 African vote showed is that they view the PPP as a clear and present danger, and since WIN was portrayed as the enemy of the PPP, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.
Therefore, it does not matter how alarming it may appear, very little occurred during the elections to affect the core issues. The problem has never been the existence of ethnic parties but the existence of two large ethnic parties,in a structure of governance that does not facilitate democratic expressions. Had he won there is absolutely nothing to have stopped Aubrey Norton from behaving even worse than Bharrat Jagdeo – if that is at all possible!
