First there were nineteen, then there were thirteen, then there were eleven and now there are nine. These are the nine parties which will be participating in the March 2 National and Regional elections after Gecom had approved the lists of eleven contestants. They are: A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC), the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), A New and United Guyana (ANUG), The Citizenship Initiative (TCI), the Liberty and Justice Party (LJP), The New Movement (TNM), the United Republican Party (URP), the People’s Republic Party (PRP) and Change Guyana.
Only the two behemoths and the URP will be fielding candidates in all ten regions of the country, suggesting, as said in our report on Saturday, that this has the makings of a two-horse race. The URP, despite the fact that it has been around since the late 1980s, and that it fielded candidates in both the 1992 and the 2015 elections, has never succeeded in securing sufficient votes to win a seat in Parliament. It told the state newspaper that it received 1800 votes in the first-named election, and 1100 in the second. To have had any hope of obtaining representation in the National Assembly, it would have needed 5,000 votes.
It is a real challenge for small new parties which are trying to build a base from scratch to meet the statutory requirements, let alone campaign in ten regions; both geography and finance, among other things, militate against it. They are required by law, however, to submit National Top-Up lists as well as lists for a minimum of six geographical constituencies.
ANUG, for example, will not be contesting in Regions One, Eight and Nine, which presidential candidate Mr Ralph Ramkarran was reported as saying were too hard to access. It might be noted that these are significant Indigenous areas. TNM, the party associated with personnel from the medical profession will be seeking votes in Regions Three, Four, Five, Six, Eight and Ten. For its part, TCI will only be contesting in the general elections, and has submitted lists for Regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Ten. Change Guyana will be contesting seven regions this newspaper was told.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the lists of the LJP primarily cover Indigenous areas, namely, Regions One, Two, Four, Seven, Eight and Nine. It might be argued that Region Four is not noted for its indigenous settlements; however, in recent years quite a few Indigenous people have migrated to Georgetown and its environs, although exactly how many is not known. It is possible too that any tactical voters who exist in this country are mostly found in this region, and any hope of attracting these would necessitate campaigning there. It has to be remembered too, that the leader of the party, Mr Shuman originates from Region Four, and he could not therefore be seen to be ignoring his own village.
Apart from the nine parties named above, there are two which are contesting in regional elections alone − The Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP) in Region Four and the Federal United Party (FED-UP) in Regions Five and Six.
Under the Constitution the presidency goes to the party which wins a majority in Parliament, or failing that, to the party which secures a plurality of the votes. The reality is that none of the seven small parties will obtain a plurality; they simply do not have the machinery or the base. In the case of some of them, they are barely known to the public. Barring some eventuality intervening which cannot be predicted, it is reasonable to presume, therefore, that following the poll the president will be either Mr David Granger or Mr Irfaan Ali.
What is at issue is control of Parliament and whether a small party or parties can prevent either of the major players from winning an overall majority. While there is no absolute correlation between ethnicity and political affiliation, there is a good correspondence between the two, and where this is concerned the 2012 census is revealing. The Indian population is now below 40%, while the African population is below 30%. That said, with one notable exception the PNC in its various incarnations has always registered 40%-42% of the vote where there was a free and fair poll. The assumption has been that it was the population in the ‘Mixed’ category which made up the numbers. While they are now said to account for 20% of the population, no one really knows how this group is composed. If history repeats itself, however, some portion of this 20% − perhaps the same portion − will continue to vote with the coalition.
What this means is that the two bases are not as far apart numerically speaking as they once were, although it must be added that the PPP always attracted a larger non-Indian vote than did the PNC. Both sides have opened their campaigns appealing to their traditional constituents, and while their reasoning must be that it is important to keep these solid and ensure they turn out on March 2, that will not be enough to give either of them control of the National Assembly; they both need to appeal to those voters whom the small parties are hoping to attract. That, one would have thought, would require an entirely different type of campaign strategy to the one they are pursuing at the moment.
One suspects that APNU is hoping that the AFC will bring in the ‘floating’ votes as it did the last time, but whether it can do so to the same degree as in 2015 is very much in doubt. After nearly five years it has subsumed its identity under that of its major partner, and is no longer perceived as an independent entity. It is likely that many of the small parties which have entered the lists see themselves appealing to a disillusioned AFC vote.
There has been some speculation in the press about the size of this potential vote and how it is comprised. The truth of the matter is that no one can be very sure. There is in addition a potential new ethnic factor in the form of an Indigenous party, although whether that can make any headway on such short notice when it will have to deal with nine nations living in the most challenging geographical locations in the country is very much open to question. Incumbents in government always have an advantage in Indigenous regions at election times, since they have easy access through state resources, illegal though that may be, can distribute outboard engines and the like, and make promises. Both the major parties depend on Indigenous votes to make up their totals at some level, and it will not be easy for Mr Shuman to compete, particularly if he is just sitting on the coast.
Many of the new parties do not seem to recognise that it takes time and very hard work to build a party, and even then, as is the case with the URP, it will not necessarily yield results in our situation. Yet the habit seems to be for new parties to mushroom when an election is in the offing, and before they have done serious and sustained field work. If the AFC did better than anyone anticipated in 2011, it was because its leaders were drawn from the two major parties and were very well known public figures all over the country. The same is not true for most of the seven minor parties, whose recognition factor is often a localised one professionally speaking, if not geographically speaking.
The fear of so-called ‘third force’ voters is that if the small parties each go it alone, and siphon off votes for themselves, none of them, or perhaps only one of them might garner sufficient votes to get an MP in Parliament, and there will be no preventing one of the major parties from being able to get an overall majority. There have been several letters in the press emanating from such voters, urging the small parties to unite in order to prevent this outcome. There does not seem to be any move in this direction, however, save for one, when it was announced that ANUG and FED-UP would go into alliance, although this appears to have fallen through for the moment.
It may be, of course, that some of the seven parties will pick up negligible votes, and that only one or two of them have any reasonable expectation of having representation in Parliament. That said, of course, the loss of a thousand votes here and there to small parties, which if combined could contribute to the 5,000 needed to qualify for a seat, is no doubt what is causing anxiety among those who wish to hold to account the two entities which have dominated our political life for so long.
