In this election prime ministerial candidates may be important

Dear Editor,

I want to encourage voters at home to strongly demand that each candidate and party bring something tangible to the table for voters to chew on, now that we have three confirmed 2011 presidential candidates – AFC’s Khemraj Ramjattan, PNC’s David Granger and PPP’s Donald Ramotar.

Of course there will be the continued outpouring of public opinions on the candidates, but there definitely needs to be some structured debates, with questions from well-informed panellists and from randomly selected members of the public in town-hall style settings.

The tangible issues aside, it might be of transitory interest to note that, whereas the presidential candidate and his/her party previously carried the day at election time, this may be the first time in our political history the title of prime minister may be just as important as that of presidential candidate to the vote getting process.

Let’s start with the PNC and its Joint Opposition Political Partnership (JOPP).  Though this group seems to be having a problem trying to resolve its idiosyncratic impasse over their final choice for presidential candidate, let alone picking a prime ministerial candidate, the PNC’s best option to get back in government, outside of shared governance with the PPP, is to go into this year’s election with a different face.

And if the group’s consensus presidential candidate is Mr Granger, then it has to find a prime ministerial candidate to help make the JOPP a formidable face factor to voters.  Mr Granger‘s decades in the army may represent discipline, professional leadership and a hope for reforming national security, but those qualifications still may not be enough to lead the group to victory, because conventional wisdom says, if any party is going to defeat the PPP, it has to make in-roads into the PPP traditional support base of Indians. So there has to be something else that will appeal to Indian voters to make them switch loyalty.

The question is, will Mr Peter Ramsaroop, a member of the JOPP, become its prime ministerial candidate? Mr Ramsaroop has a penchant for economic development via the private sector and is pro-Western in his business perspective, but while those qualifications alone still may not be enough, he may be what the PNC/JOPP needs to win ‘crossover’ voters from the PPP support base.  Can a prime ministerial candidate named Peter Ramsaroop really be a vote-getter for the JOPP here?

Not that I support racial voting, but I am constrained to deal with a reality that says, while the last voting records show Guyanese are becoming increasingly disenchanted with racial/ethnic voting, we are not quite out of those woods as yet.

Let’s switch briefly to the AFC, which has not changed its position against a pre-election alliance with the PNC or PPP. The AFC’s presidential candidate is a renowned political quantity in the PPP traditional support base, and since     conventional wisdom says any party that seeks to dethrone the PPP must win votes from the PPP base, then this could set up a possible three-way showdown among Messrs Ramjattan (AFC), Ramsaroop (if he is the JOPP’s PM candidate) and Ramotar (PPP) for votes from the traditional PPP support base.

Over in the PPP camp, while Mr Ramotar is also a known political quantity among the PPP support base, he has his work cut out, as it is a known fact that he sat on the GuySuCo board as the corporation experienced its worst years, with PPP union, GAWU calling industrial strikes under this PPP government and the government lacking a viable diversification vision for the industry.

Mr Ramotar was also the de facto leader of the PPP when the President ran roughshod over the government and country, even alienating significant numbers of both the party’s members and the larger following at home and abroad. And when he said he intends to run on the record of the party’s achievements, he exposed himself as a man without a viable alternative vision of his own, so anything can be expected if he is the next President.

So for the first time also, the PPP could be in a situation where it needs crossover votes to be assured of outright victory, given that its once numerical majority support base has dwindled due to heavy migration or other alienating factors in the PPP.

To this end, it may have to lure Black and Amerindian voters, either by choosing an African or Amerindian prime ministerial candidate. But since it already had an African PM candidate in Mr Sam Hinds (he described himself in 1990 as a bridge between Africans and an Indian-dominated PPP government), will it now go for Foreign Affairs Minister, Ms Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett as its 2011 PM candidate to lure Amerindian voters?

If it does, this can set up a showdown of its own for Amerindian votes with the AFC’s prime ministerial candidate Ms Sheila Holder, another known political quantity within the Guyanese Amerindian community. And all of this is why I noted at the top that this year’s election may well see the prime ministerial candidates playing an increasingly pivotal vote-getting role.

But times are changing, and racial voting alone may not cut it in 2011 for any of the contesting parties, so there have be to some media covered debates, town hall style meetings and Q&A sessions with local and foreign media representatives focusing on hot button issues affecting Guyanese.

Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin