“This is clearly a wipeout,” said a jubilant Bharrat Jagdeo following the announcement of the local government elections, “[We have] made phenomenal inroads in APNU strongholds.” Inroads, yes, but a wipeout, no. The full context of these inroads will not become clear until the turnout in key opposition areas is known. Of these, Georgetown is far and away the most important owing to the size of its voter population which dwarfs that of any other municipality. In 2018 the turnout here was 28%, considerably lower than for the country as a whole at 36%. As it is, this latter figure represented a more than 10% decline from the 47% of the previous local government poll in 2016.
This is the first local election held under a PPP/C government since 1994, and while it was expected that its own base would come out in relative strength, what was not so clear was whether a weakened opposition on the heels of a lacklustre campaign would be able to persuade sufficient numbers from its base to enter the polling booth at all. The three areas which most concerned it were Georgetown, Linden and New Amsterdam, and it held on to all of them, albeit somewhat shakily in the case of the last named.
Of the ten municipalities, Freedom House maintained control of its own traditional five quite handsomely, namely, Mabaruma, Anna Regina, Rose Hall, Corriverton and Lethem. APNU did not contest the last-named for technical reasons which it cited. But what would have given the ruling party considerable satisfaction was the fact that in terms of the number of councillors returned, Mahdia and Bartica, both opposition townships, were tied.
Bartica, by far the larger of the two would have represented a particular achievement no matter what the turnout, since it has always been a traditional zone of PNC support. Yet the PPP/C received 183 more votes in the election than did APNU. This is, of course, a mining town, and the government has been trying its best to accommodate miners in all the mining areas, even at the expense of the interests of the indigenous population. That aside, as we reported the ruling party has made special efforts in Bartica in recent years, led by Ms Gail Teixeira.
Mahdia is altogether a smaller municipality, and although as mentioned there is a tie in the votes, PPP General Secretary Jagdeo has said that his party won the popular vote there. It might be mentioned that in 2018 the AFC candidate won Constituency 4 there, but this time around her party did not contest the poll anywhere in the country.
In the three opposition heartland municipalities, the New Amsterdam result is perhaps the one which the PPP would find most gratifying. This newspaper reported on Wednesday that unofficial reports indicated a 738 vote difference between APNU and the PPP/C. The latter was therefore able to secure six of the fourteen seats on the council. This contrasted with the ten seats APNU previously held, with the PPP/C having three seats and the AFC one. While the ruling party used crossover candidates to persuade voters to change their political stance just as they did in Georgetown, the results were not an unalloyed success except in one instance.
Linden, of course, was to prove a much more serious challenge for the PPP/C, although it is here in particular that voter turnout had a healthier aspect than in the last local government election. As we reported, Gecom’s official declaration of results showed that the PPP/C obtained an increase of 2,000 votes compared to 2018, while APNU secured an even larger increase of 4,396 as against what obtained in the previous local poll. The results contained little to buoy the governing party; the opposition party managed 14 seats in total, and the PPP/C two on the proportional representation list. It lost the constituency seat it held in 2018.
It has been suggested that the popularity of Regional Chairman Sharma Solomon and party activist Vanessa Kissoon played a role in the APNU victory. That said there may be a possible additional factor too. This is an area where in the past the AFC had a following, and in 2018 21% of the ballots cast in the town went to that party, which as a consequence secured two seats. It has to be asked how these earlier votes were deployed, if at all.
This question would also apply to other areas. While the national percentage of the vote for the AFC was 4.3 in 2018, it rises to around 8% in the 27 Local Authority Areas where it contested. Its strongest showing in 2018 was in Kwakwani, where it secured 25% of the votes cast.
The question also may have some limited relevance in Georgetown too, where the PPP spared no effort to try and effect a change in residents’ traditional voting habits. In 2018 the AFC garnered 3,059 votes as against the PPP/C’s 7,050 and APNU’s 18,127. It was enough to give it two seats on the council. Previously the ruling party held 7 seats to APNU’s 21, while the new disposition gives the PPP/C 11 seats and APNU 19. While it remains an undoubted victory for the opposition, it must still qualify as a cause for concern when they review the results.
For all of that the governing party’s tactic of recruiting former APNU councillors and activists did not in the end prove all that helpful to them, or in the case of Georgetown, not helpful at all. For all of former Mayor Patricia Chase-Green’s efforts, for example, her protégé in Tucville-North Ruimveldt whom she had taken round the constituency in her campaign for the PPP/C was roundly defeated by APNU’s candidate.
While Mr Jagdeo said his party had increased its Georgetown votes from 7,050 in the last local government poll to 12,553 in this one, it has to be said that as in Linden, APNU also increased its votes from 18,127 in 2018, to 20,839 on this occasion. It remains to be seen whether the turnout figure in Linden and Georgetown is higher this time around than it was the last time, and in the capital’s case in particular, whether it corresponds to the national average.
What was not unanticipated was the fact that the ruling party won a large majority of the NDCs – 56 out of 70, according to Mr Jagdeo ‒ while APNU’s total correspondingly fell from 23 to 14. The opposition did not contest in some NDC areas. The PPP General Secretary also added that his party had won several new Local Authority Areas in this election.
Although not all the data are available yet, there are some preliminary conclusions which can be drawn. The first is that independent candidates who one would have thought might have appealed to former AFC voters or those just tired of the big parties, seem to have been eliminated. We appear to be back to a two-party political situation. The evolution of a third force which began in 2006 and continued to 2015 has come to a dead-end, for the time-being at least.
The second is that no matter the blandishments thrown at opposition supporters in a situation where their party is weak and largely inactive, these will not be sufficient to shift core support. The ruling party needs to adjust to the fact that the opposition is not going to fade away soon, and should rework its national strategies taking that into account.
As noted earlier, we do not know the turnout figures as yet, although the PSC has said they were low. When that is the case, it is never a good idea to assume the results of a local poll will necessarily have national significance. The votes of only a third or so of electors cannot be extrapolated to indicate how 70% or more of them would cast their ballot in a general election.
