Dear Editor,
Hovering over the debate about the possible candidates for the putative APNU-AFC coalition is the spectral figure of a subject in a P Harris Stabroek News cartoon of some six years ago. One speaks of the Guyanese Indian lady in the headtie (rumal), declaring that the USA could have a black president, with the possible implication that she would not support this in Guyana.
The Indian Arrival Committe and certain sensitive souls found the caricature, with the lady sitting on a stool, objectionable. It portrayed Indo-Guyanese as being, in general, at peasant level. Unreliable, to say the least, when it came to race and politics. Or, more despairingly predictable, in their preferences and prejudice. Or worse, arrested at the level of the reflex racial vote.
A piercing letter from David Hinds and its analysis, by Sherwood Lowe, focus on the issue of the way we treat the ethnic vote this time round. Also dealing with the issue we have, worth reading and reflecting on – two columns by Freddie Kissoon a questioning Eyewitness piece on the issue in the Guyana Times, and letters and comments from many points of view. They demonstrate that the archetypical Indian figure and its essential
mentality is one of the prime issues we have to face head on. They even, in some cases, dispute the pre-eminence of a factor we all acknowledge. Racial allegiance is forceful and persistent. It is still, for many, the primary and primal instinct. Comments in the internet versions of the SN and on the web all concede one impression. The old lady in the rumal is the reality that determined the results of past elections and will determine the facts of the coming polls. As such, by some calculations, the votes that Moses Nagamootoo could bring from the Berbice constituents, will swing the elections in favour of the coalition.
Hinds’s letter summed it up. As Sherwood Lowe writes: “Dr Hinds asserts that the unspoken reasoning behind AFC’s promotion of Mr Nagamootoo is that Indo-Guyanese would not vote for an Afro-Guyanese, which explains why the AFC has not put up one of its African Guyanese leaders for the top spot.” It is as clear as that. But Lowe adds that it could also be that, beyond his Indianity and PPP origins, Nagamootoo appeals, as a person, to the electorate of his homeland.
The other interesting factor in the pre-polling manoeuvre is the insistence by AFC that it has to lead. In fact the AFC has been leading in many ways already. It is responsible for the calling of elections in response to its threatened motion of no confidence. It has taken the case of a minister to the police and found that the laws are inadequate. It has, with Nigel Hughes, prepared a constitution reform paper. In fact the party has demonstrated a dynamism that renders persuasive its demand for a leading role in the new order.
But the fact remains that the PNC-APNU has also been hard working and innovative and persistent in its criticisms of what it sees as our problems. It commands the greater numbers and as such, by a higher logic, is entitled to a role of greater significance and first choice of the top spots. But the argument is that the AFC is needed for victory. This overlooks the coalition politics of Suriname or Curaçao or countries that have a long experience with coalitions in a multi-ethnic framework and a different tradition from the semi-Westminster to which we remain attached. In those cases, generally, the minority partner negotiated top spots also, but the leadership and cabinet majority has almost been reserved to the majority partner in the coalition. Or we end up with the pre-1992 mistake of the WPA in the face of the PPP. The smaller party wished to have a final say in the choice of the candidate to succeed Desmond Hoyte as president. It appears today as a form of hubris but was, at the time, understood as the selection of a candidate suitable to the task of ensuring ethnic security for all as well as consistency with the features of the new order that was envisioned. The fact is that Dr Jagan won. He never, as was promised, had his party really share power in a significant and real way, nor did he relinquish or greatly extend beyond the ethnic boundaries (prior to the Amerindian wooing) his map of supporters. The PNC also, at the time, was hesitant and internally divided about power sharing.
If we are to have gained a lesson from the pre-1992 negotiations on the coalition candidate of the time, it is this. We have to look beyond the electoral calculations and select a candidate that personifies the changes we desire and who is endorsable by as many as is possible. However, one has to factor in that, for a change to happen, it depends on who is sponsoring the candidate and from which formation he has emerged. But if it is, in the current conjuncture, only desired to deliver a candidate to comfort and reassure the Indo-Guyanese electorate and win at least a plurality, other considerations take precedence perhaps. If the candidate is coming from the Jagan heritage of the PPP and is Indian it is seen as a double plus. In this case Nagamootoo, or even Ramjattan is acceptable. If he is merely to be Indian, but appeal to a lot of voters there is a range of candidates available. They each bring their voter support. There is, outside of the PPP but Indian, Dr Rupert, a learned sensibility rare in our politics. There is the obvious consensus candidate, Ralph Ramkarran, whose insight and courage are exemplary in our times. There are others. But the selection of an Indo-candidate is not, contrary to what we may think, the embarrassing part of our problem. The fact at which we cringe, as Kissoon points out in his last column on the issue, would be the expected Indian rejection of an Afro-Guyanese candidate and the real risk of losing Indian votes and perpetuating the PPP with both the benefits and the crises it lives. A solution could be a black from the PPP. Here, sadly, something revolting again arises as fact. Apparently that party also panders to the lady in the rumal. It may not opt for an Afro-Guyanese candidate as the PNC may never propose an Indian. Identity politics has always to deal with symbols. The person on top has to reflect the group’s sense of its identity in its primary sense – race or class or tribal and geographical origins, etc.
The story of the lady in the rumal says this of the PPP ‘s limits on its candidacies. The instinctual response to the idea that this party could, today, take its vision further, is that no one, according to a certain discourse, not Luncheon, not Sam Hinds, not Robeson Benn with a generation of PPP activists behind him, would be acceptable to Indians. The discourse that pins the negotiating stance of some is that Indians vote and have voted and will continue to vote only race. This is the bottom line of what we are made to understand. And that while they remain a majority the politics is fixed.
But I am not certain, that the type of the ‘unchanging Indian’ is a permanent and unchanging truth. I am not certain that this is eternally true, even though some of the literature on ethnic politics says that in a post-colonial situation ethnic identity deepens.
David Hinds highlights another troubling aspect of the discussion. He writes “My argument is that such reasoning ignores a major aspect of ethnicity—ethnic honour. The unintended but real subtext of this reasoning is that African Guyanese quest for equal right to top leadership must be sacrificed in the pursuit of expediency—the removal of the PPP. What is being ignored is that after 23 years of an Indian Guyanese presidency, African Guyanese are being asked to vote for another Indian Guyanese presidency. Further, and perhaps more importantly, it is being signalled to African Guyanese, that none of their own leaders fits the bill as a consensus national figure. In an ethnically competitive society, that is a very serious element.”
I feel, from my exchanges with friends and family, that Indians in Guyana are both identity conscious and very modern in their approach to politics. They will accept a non-Indian candidate with which they are comfortable. Dr Jagan could have offered, were he alive, a non-Indian as a successor, and the Indo-Guyanaese in confidence, would have gone with it.
My own feeling is that while a lot are still at the level of the woman in the rumal, for the most part that generation is past. While the recent electoral history has merely confirmed the strength of racial loyalty and the unyielding solidity of identity politics, it would be useless to ignore the fact that each of the major groups benefits from some crossover votes. It would appear then that the ideal candidate would be the one who garners the most ‘cross-over votes.’ Probably from the increasingly important ‘mixed’ category. The voter turnout, and the capacity of the candidate to galvanise and motivate voters is a key this time. In this regard the comment by Mr Ramkarran is important. He notes in his conversationtree.gy blog “There is some reason to believe that many PPP/C supporters who did not vote in 2011 or who voted for the AFC might return to the fold this time. Some are remorseful and others have bought in to the propaganda that the PNCR will return Guyana to the days of the past of rigged elections and banning of foodstuff. On the other side of the coin, the PPP will have to contend with the fact that demographic shifts are not in its favour, apathy has increased from 2011 even among its own supporters and that it has made little or no impact on the youth vote which is sizeable and growing. The Amerindian vote might be fraying at the edges, with all that slapping up that has been going on.”
What is for sure is that Indian out-immigration will increase with the new Obama laws regularising a lot of “undocumented aliens” and that the PPP’s dependence on its core constituency, will have to evolve.
It is interesting that the debate occurs in the absence of an ethnic breakdown of the last census figures. The PPP, certainly, has an idea of what it is. The PNC with its supposed network of kith and kin all over the administration, may also have an idea.
The future of the country, according to a certain formulation rests on this single factor. And not the corruption, the outrage at the scandals, the charges of discrimination, the situation of the present reminds us of what a former PNC leader said. He noted, “We cannot condone and accept the nepotism and corruption of the past year. They sought to convince our Indian citizens that they have cause to fear. There is the dishonest and opportunistic propaganda that unless the PPP government returned to power Indian people would suffer. Enemies of this country would like to see racial division and antagonism continue.”
That was Forbes Burnham speaking in 1964. The same discourse is awaited from some sources in this season. It is the reason that a bitter anticipation has re-arisen as the time passes.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
