Bisram’s polls cannot be taken seriously

Dear Editor,

I refer to Vishnu Bisram’s letter captioned ‘NACTA poll puts PPP in lead‘ in the Stabroek News of October 31. I have written before that Mr Bisram is very closely associated with the PPP and therefore his polls cannot be taken seriously; other writers have also written on what he produces in the guise of polls. I watched in 2001 and in 2006 where he started the PPP low and showed them gathering momentum as we got closer to the election, making the nonsense he produces as polls self-fulfilling prophesies – ie, galvanising the PPP supporters to vote for the losing PPP (according to his polls) whilst demotivating the other parties taking part in the election by showing them as declining and the PPP as gaining ground.

On the Sunday before the 2006 election, ie the day before the 2006 election, the front page of the Kaieteur News declared that the PPP was the clear winner according to Mr Bisram, by a landslide. So on election day 2006 I called Mr David de Caires and asked him if he had gotten this poll and why he did not publish it. He told me that he thought that it would have been prejudicial to do so [so close to an election] and that he had not paid for it; he paid a small amount for the other polls from Bisram, but not that last one.

It just appeared in his fax machine at Stabroek News, and he disregarded it, so who paid Mr Bisram for that poll? What I do know is that in a country like Guyana, the Kaieteur News had no right to publish that result; it was not scientific and it was prejudicial to the process, ie, why go out to vote if you are told that you have already lost, and they should not do it again.

I have also said before we should not be publishing this biased, agenda-riddled nonsense. Not even as letters, since they have the same effect and have proven in the past to be biasing the voters in this country under the guise of being a truly scientific poll.

The current poll produced is far from scientific, since it makes some assumptions which are erroneous. For example he is assuming that his sample is 45% Indian; 30% Africans; 16% mixed; 8% Amerindian and 1% other races. This is utter hogwash, and it is why we have to question these polls and the agenda in publishing them.

The 2002 national census tells us that our population is divided thus: Indians 43.5%, Africans 30.2%, Mixed 16.7%, Amerindians 9.1%, others 0.5%. Net migration at mid-year since 2002 is as follows: 2002- 6.28/1000; 2003- 4.16/1000; 2004- 2.07/1000; 2005- 7.51/1000; 2006- 7.49/1000; 2007- 7.47/1000; 2008- 7.45/1000; 2009- 7.44/1000; 2010-15.83;2011-14.32/1000.

The first number is 2002-6.28/1000; this means that in 2002 for every 1000 people living here, 6.28 persons left and did not come back, so if our population is 745,000 (rounded off to the nearest 1000) then in 2002 6.28 x 745=4,678 persons left our shores and never returned. This 6-7 /1000 rate continued until 2010 when the migration rate doubled to 15.83% ie 15.83 x 745= 11,793 left and did not return. And in 2011 14.32 x 745= 10,668 left and did not return, so massive amounts of people are leaving this paradise created for them by the PPP, in extremely large numbers, and it‘s escalating. This raises the eternal question, why vote for the PPP at all?

According to Mr Bisram’s numbers – and we have the 2002 census results on the internet – Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese have been migrating; some people say more Indians than other groups, but we have no scientific evidence to support this contention, therefore we have to assume that between 2000 and 2011 more than 60,000 people left Guyana not many of whom were Amerindians. So now we have to deplete the percentage of the population by at least 60,000 people of all ethnicities except the Amerindians, so the end result would be that the Amerindian percentage of the population could now be as large as 11-12%. This forces us to diminish the other groups because of the level of migration among them. Death minus birth rates are not assumed by me since this is complex enough and would require a new census.

But back to Bisram. Any poll which claims legitimacy must assume these facts, ie that the other races are migrating but the Amerindians are not, and may now conservatively be 11.5% of our population. And the Indian % must go down from 43 % to between 40-41%. So Mr Bisram’s very first assumption that we have 45% Indo-Guyanese in this country is complete nonsense and so is the assumption that the Amerindian population is only 8% when the 2002 census told us that it was 9.1%.

I have said it before and I am saying it again, publishing these questionable polls by a known PPP supporter parading as an impartial pollster is misleading and dangerous.

Also we have a lot of undecided people here for this election. I find it hard to believe that 17% of the people here are really undecided one month from elections, which are after all nothing more than racial censuses.

Yours faithfully.
Tony Vieira