Despite just winning one seat at the just-concluded local government elections, the Bartica Independent Green Alliance (BIGA) plans to continue working towards achieving the goals outlined in its manifesto, according to Chairman Holbert Knights.
While there were 6,912 persons registered to vote in the new Bartica municipality, only 3,397 persons or 49% cast their ballots.
Of that number, 2,132 votes were tallied for APNU+AFC, 853 for the PPP/C, and 375 for BIGA, while there were 37 rejected ballots.
In the First-Past-the-Post contests, APNU+AFC won eight constituencies and the PPP/C won one. In the Proportional Representation contests, APNU+AFC won six seats, the PPP/C won two seats and BIGA won one seat.
The outcome, however, has not daunted BIGA.
“In terms of BIGA, we are here. We are not going anywhere. We intend to continue towards achieving quite a lot that we have in our manifesto because a lot of it are social programmes and we know once we have funding we will pursue the programme,” Knights told Stabroek News yesterday.
Knights said even though BIGA was not able to make a significant impact in the polls, it intends to work with the winning party in order to improve Bartica, which was its intention all along. “We have already congratulated them and we wished them well and we fully respect the will of the electorates,” he said, while emphasising that BIGA is still fully committed to improving Bartica.
While Knights stated that BIGA was actively discussing its political future, it is now going to pursue obtaining Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) status. “We are going to continue pursuing improving certain services as well as directly assisting the needy and less fortunate,” he added.
Knights noted the poor voter turnout, which he linked to inadequate voter education, among other things. “I would think that it was expected because we just came out of a very bruising national elections battle for both sides and because local government elections, the concept, is relatively new to most of the voters,” he said.
“Gecom [the Guyana Elections Commission] should’ve been able to do a lot more to inform and educate as to the process and why it is necessary,” Knights added, arguing that the Commission should have played a much more active role in educating the masses about the importance of local government elections.
“When you look at the voting pattern, there was no indication that it was a local government election because as far as I know persons were not adequately informed about the process and especially with regards to the constituency representatives,” he further said.
He pointed out that many persons still did not understand the difference between the proportional representation and the First-Past-the-Post systems.
“It was rather unfair of us to have to do most of Gecom’s work during our campaign. People needed to be more educated about the local government elections and that is where the low turnout stemmed from,” Knights said, while stating that if persons were properly educated about the role of the polls in the community, the voter turnout would have been greater.
“If you choose a strong constituency representative and the same time you are able to choose your party of choice, at the end of the day you have a council that is fully competent. I’m not saying that the ones elected are not competent but I am saying that persons were not fully aware of the difference between the two votes,” he pointed out.
Speaking on voting based on party loyalty, Knights said that the issues cannot be addressed if the same environment and culture prevails.
“There is this grand perception that independent groups will not be able to access funding for projects from the government and otherwise. The notion out there is that the government will ultimately have to decide whether or not a project will be funded by an NDC or municipality,” Knights said, while calling the situation one of the major difficulties that was brought to BIGA’s attention by people on the ground.
He said that while there have been many visible changes taking place since the change in government that they are all happy about, lots of people were concerned whether those changes would continue if the government were to lose the local elections. “People were worried about there being a continuation with the projects if the government wasn’t in control. People need to be a lot more educated on the functions of the NDCs and on the process of the different voting components,” Knights added.
He said that while they did their best given their circumstances, the elections resulted in a very cohesive group of persons being formed in BIGA and they are going to continue working on their ideas.
Speaking on behalf of the APNU/AFC coalition, winner of Constituency 6 Carmel Williams said that the results were not surprising. “I knew it was going to happen. I wasn’t scared. At least in my constituency, I would’ve went door-to-door and house-to-house and I listened to the people and asked them what they would want for their communities,” Williams told Stabroek News.
She said while there was almost a 50% turnout of voters, one of the issues encountered would have been people moving and not being able to make it back in time to vote.
“I know a lot of persons who used to vote PPP and so on and people said we are seeing development already and we are going to give you our votes based on that,” she pointed out, while adding that persons did not vote for party but for development. She said she is just happy that the polls are over so that people can focus on implementing their plans.
When the PPP/C candidates were contacted for comment, they said they were not ready to speak.
