The March 2001 Elections: An Analysis of the PPP's Performance

September 2001: It is common knowledge that the PPP's electoral strength in March 2001decreased from 1992. It is possible to argue that this would have been the pattern but it was interrupted by a slight improvement in 1997 and this could be attributed to the national outpouring of sympathy for Cheddi Jagan who died in 97. Why after eight years in government with power possessed by all its leading stalwarts, and with two years of national mis-behaviour by the PNC, the PPP pulled in 53% which is two percent less than what they got in 1992 and seven percent less than what they said in the campaign that they would got gotten? I will bifurcate my answer into two frameworks. I refer to the first as systemic, the other as the behaviouristic.
Before doing that however a caveat is in order. If you look at population statistics as recorded by the Bureau of Statistics and used by the 1999 Guyana Survey of Living Conditions, then the PPP did well in the 2001 elections. The East Indian population stands at 48%. This mean that even if you argue that the PPP picked up all the Indian votes, it still got 5% non-Indian support. The controversy here is that who comprise that 5%? Are they Africans or part of the 18% of the population that is classified as mixed? The other side to this is to argue that it didn't get all the Indian votes therefore it pulled in a significant amount of non-Indian Guyanese.
The Systemic Framework
It was not possible for the PPP to maximize its electoral power in the 1997 elections because five years were too short a period to come up with fantastic achievements. In this respect, we ought to be more sympathetic to the PPP. Even though economy and society expanded under Hoyte from 1998 onwards, the Herculean task given to the Hoyte and Jagan regimes to fumigate the Guyanese stables left by Burnham was impossible. The Burnham dictatorship virtually destroyed Guyana's political economy. What happened then was that between 1992 and 1997, people's expectations were out of control, and when realisations didn't occur, the government got blamed. I think this reasoning is applicable to the election results for March 2001. Between 1998 and 2001, economic growth was stultified because of political instability making for frustration of voters who took it out (electorally speaking) unjustifiably on the PPP.
The behaviouristic framework
An analysis of the election statistics does not tell an exciting story for the PPP even though there was a build up on the showings in non-PPP territories, eg, Linden and Bartica from 1997. If the PPP hopes to win the election next time (though this might be a foregone conclusion given the memories that will be there in relation to the PNC's and channel 9's post election behaviour and the growing stature of Jagdeo), it should start looking at the significance of these figures. In Berbice East, despite the construction of a university, Ravi Dev picked up more votes than in his own region, West Demerara. C.N. Sharma snatched valuable East Indian votes in region 4 that were traditionally PPP's. Despite Nokta's ubiquity in the Amerindian areas, a totally new actor to Guyanese politics, Paul Hardy, won two seats. And major infrastructural works in non-traditional PPP areas since 1992 didn't yield anything encouraging on March 19. Several factors explain these changing circumstances.
First, the PPP should have received a stronger electoral output among Afro-Guyanese voters. Between 1992 and 2001, there have been visible, tangible and meaningful improvements in the economic make-up of African Guyanese which point in the direction of Government's spending. We need cite only two examples- house lots and salary increases. The accepted explanation that ethnic groups prefer to see such generosity and patronage coming from their own ethnic leaders does have plausibility. But politics and life are not static phenomena. I contend that this aspect of the election results has to do with the Burnhamistic methodology that the PPP has embraced the last thirty years.
Stealing people was the name of the game under Burnham. Burnham, when he wanted an Indian face, he never looked at the business, professional, journalistic and academic communities. He looked inside the PPP and got what he wanted. The PPP has been practicing this perversion ever since. But it is a manifest non-starter. Opposing ethnic groups see that person as a traitor and of low quality. The person then finds it impossible to talk to much less influence the views of the particular ethnic community. Translated then into actual politics, the PPP's Afro-Guyanese converts could not have explained to African Guyanese the positive things the PPP had done for them. An interesting case is Dr. Jennifer Westford. She was never in politics, and Barticans see her as one of their own. The election results in Bartica showed a marked improvement for the PPP from 92 and 97. What is the point? Credible people bring credible results. Subsumed under this causal factor too is the complete absence of ingenious PR work from the PPP's top Afro-Guyanese cadres. This is a major headache for the PPP which it has to work on urgently. It is either the PPP hasn't got astute Afro-Guyanese personnel to talk to the Afro-working class on the benefits they have received since 1992 or that the ones they have don't want to. This will be a separate analysis that is forthcoming.
Secondly, the votes for Dev and Sharma. These men got PPP votes for different reasons. In the case of Dev, he built upon the insecurity the Indians felt in 97and 98 and with the PSU strike in 99. You can hardly blame the PPP for this aspect of Dev's establishment But the PPP certainly contributed to the final concretisation of Dev in the body politic of Guyana. In fact, if wasn't for channel 9, Dev would have gotten more seats. Dev comes across to Indians as a version of Jagan -- modest, sober and Ghandian. He is also seen as someone who has intellectual reach. It is a combination of these motifs that has catapulted Dev into the imagination of Indians which is in sharp contrast to someone like Paul Tennassee who Indians thought was more noise than substance. West Indians like their politicians with these traits. The Hamilton Greene leadership challenge fiasco makes an intriguing study of leadership types in the West Indies. If Dev was flashy, known for nocturnal excesses and was less educated, he didn't stand a chance. It was natural then that his appearance would have caused electoral damage to the PPP. But that damage was partly self-inflicted. The episodic harassment of Dev and his supporters by PPP cadres was a dangerously childish mistake. It cost the PPP. And the deft Dev didn't fight back. He just waited for sympathy and he got it at the poll.
In relation to the votes for Sharma, this is where the PPP's disappointing deportment since 1992 is known to almost everyone in the world who knows about Guyana. The glorious PPP under the glorious Cheddi Jagan came to power after three decades of political battles. But this historical party became ordinary when in power and displayed no ideological passion for human rights causes. From 1992 to 2001, a human rights agenda was never pursued and for one reason only ­ for the PPP, democracy had returned, human rights concerns belonged to the past. The PPP was deadly wrong on this score. C.N. Sharma milked the traumas and distresses of the poor. His was the only voice they could have turned to. In 1996, I spoke to Jagan about the growing national influence of C. N. Sharma because of the multiplying problems in the country. I volunteered to operate a human rights desk in the office of the President but like all PPP leaders, Cheddi couldn't conceive of such a problem because Guyana was a free country after 1992. When I spoke to Moses Nagamootoo in 1999 about a stint with the Guyana Government in the area of a human rights office, he said the powers that be were not interested in that type of process. There can be no doubt in my mind that if C.N. Sharma was an educated man who didn't have the failings we know he has, he would have brought about a minority PNC government in March because he would have made large inroads into PPP constituencies.
A gargantuan gap developed between the PPP's performance as it settled into power after 1992 and what people expected of its political style. For an endless number of Guyanese, this was a great, historical anti-dictatorship movement that had hobnobbed with the political stars of the world of struggle. It must be remembered that the PPP was never seen by Guyanese and outsiders as just your run of the mill West Indian party but one born out of fierce struggle against British colonialism and post-colonial authoritarianism. The expectation was then that once in power, the PPP administration would be of a Mandelan, Ghandian, blend in which a unique political culture would appear on the horizon. Instead the PPP supporters got the politics of ordinariness and banality. There is a perception that the PPP leaders that Cheddi have proteged are not like him. This must have had some bearing on how people voted. Here in Guyana, because people vote for race reasons and not on social issues, such type of politics may be with us until the next election unless Bharrat Jagdeo can undergo a phenomenal metamorphosis that will liberate Guyana in the process. His talks with Hoyte show that he is embracing the politics of presidential independence. One has the felling that once given the space and time, Jagdeo is going to come good and will be unbeatable in the next election.
Thirdly, the PPP lost votes among young Indians because of Jagdeo's inability to transform the PPP into a pragmatic, dynamic, modern, non-ideological party after he surprisingly acquired the presidency. This may have caused it to lose votes too among young African Guyanese. Jagdeo can hardly take comfort from the fact that his main opponent was thirty four years his junior. His two main Indian rivals consisted of a newcomer and a wild contestant and yet he failed to capitalise on these auspicious circumstances. The reason lies in the perception of many voters that he was subordinate to the traditional PPP panjandrums.
Fourthly, the PPP endured voter abandonment because of another perception, corruption. There is feeling among Guyanese that financial accountability in the government is not strong. It has nothing to do with favouritism. People don't view favouritism as a serious political crime because it is part of politics. But citizens view financial mismangement as anti-nationalist. I believe in any debate, the PPP polemicists could have withstood any accusation of marginalisation and planned discrimination but financial irregularity was/is their Achilles heel. The PPP's frenetic denial of its existence doesn't hold for the simple reason that there has not been a successful case of disciplinary action. One can subsume under this fourth variable, the factor of competence. For many voters, as they say in common jargon, the PPP ain't ready yet. This is closely related to the idea that people became fed up with the same faces in the first term who returned in the second term, and were now on the list set to return for the third term, and indeed they have.
Fifthly the PPP would have suffered a greater percentage loss if channel 9 did not loose racist tigers on Indo-Guyanese. This is where Ronald Waddel's anti-Indian boycott call becomes bizarre. Indian and African Guyanese do not vote for political, emotional and ideological reasons. The PPP and the PNC get mechanical votes. There is no huge, romantic love on the part of the voters for these two parties. People just go into the booth and mechanically cast their votes based not on racist passion but out of historical habit. Waddel is extensively off the mark when he urged an economic boycott of Indians because they voted for the PPP. He sees a political biology in Guyanese voters which in fact does not exist. There is no intimate relation between Guyanese and their two major traditional parties. Such a life is confined to a select devout, devoted few who keep the flag flying. People just vote, then immediately after, they get on with their lives and the PPP and PNC cease to exist for them. I believe this is so for most nations in the world. It is as simply as that.