Posted October 30th. 2007

Ethno-racial voting patterns in Guyana since 1955 have been taken as a given by most observers of the country's politics. But there are those who argue that ethno-racial voting is a myth. They contend that people vote for the PPP and PNC because they perceive that those parties represent their interests. The central question is this--if people vote for the parties in defense or promotion of their "interests," are those interests individual or collective? Further, are the citizen's individual interests separate and unrelated from his or her group interest?

The most puzzling part of the discourse on ethno-racial voting patterns, however, is the view that the PPP gets "crossover" African votes because the party's percentage share of final votes is about ten percent more than the percentage of Indians in the population at large. There is a major weakness with this argument. First, it assumes that the breakdown of the voting population is the same as the wider population. This, I suspect, may not be true. Second, and more importantly, it assumes that voter registration and turnout is same in both communities. This also may not be true.

Some people may ask why am I raising this issue-what does it have to do with anything of importance? Well these arguments are at the heart of at least one party's firm decision not to take a more inclusive approach to governance-an approach that they are more likely than not to regret.

The AFC's Dilemma

Some observers are taking the AFC to task for not doing more. They correctly claim that the AFC has gone silent. The AFC, through the pen of Ms Holder, has responded by pointing out that it has been doing quite a lot. But both the AFC and the critics miss the larger point. The AFC cannot objectively be much more effective than it is for two major reasons.

First, it is quite difficult for opposition parties in the Caribbean to meaningfully contribute to national decision making; they are the victims of "democratic exclusion." Ms Holder herself complained about this when she was MP for another party. The AFC made a deliberate choice to become a conventional party and seek change solely through the conventional system of winner-take-all elections. In doing so it locked itself in a corner with little or no room to maneuver. It deliberately chose "democratic exclusion," including exclusion from the media which it now complains about. At one point the AFC declared itself a movement, but movements don't choose the electoral arena as their chief battle ground. Perhaps those who are now surprised at the AFC's situation believe that the party is a movement.

The PNC is the only opposition party in Guyana with the capacity to wriggle itself out of such a corner. But even the PNC's capacity to do so has been seriously diminished since the 2006 election when it was forced to follow the AFC's lead and contest an election that the opposition should not have contested. Elections under the present circumstances reinforce "democratic exclusion" or what Professor Freddy Kissoon calls "elected dictatorship." Any party with any political sense should recognize that the objective is not to fight elections as an end in itself but to fight for new and democratic conditions for elections so that they become solutions rather than the problem they are now.

A second reason for the AFC's ineffectiveness lies in the reluctance and/or inability of opposition party leaders across the board to use the little space in the system to undermine and expose it. The point I am getting at is that despite the inherent exclusionary nature of the present system there is still some space for the opposition to slow down the pressure. You would not change the system but you can soften it enough to make it less resistant to change. But this requires an understanding of politics and society beyond chat and intrigue. It also requires a large vision beyond winning an election. The AFC has five MPs, more than any "third party" has had since 1968. How come the effect is less than those in previous parliaments that only had one or two MPs? Ms Holder must know that she did more in one month as an MP in the last parliament that she has done in one year in the current parliament.

David Hinds lectures in Caribbean and African Diaspora Studies at Arizona State University in the USA. His writings on Politics in Guyana and the Caribbean can be found on his GuyanaCaribbeanPolitics.com website.