By Palash R. Ghosh: Subscribe to Palash's RSS feed
December 12, 2011 10:06 AM EST
The small country of Guyana on the northern coast of South America differs from the rest of the continent in many ways. It was founded by Dutch and then British empire-builders, rather than the Spanish and Portuguese who carved out most of Latin America, and its population is largely made up non-indigenous people -- primarily East Indians and black Africans. Indeed, Guyana may be considered more to be part of the Anglophone Caribbean realm.
In the recent elections, Donald Ramotar became president, providing the ruling People's Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) with its fifth straight victory. Ramotar is closely linked with the former president, Bharrat Jagdeo, who was barred by the constitution from running for a third term.
However, PPP/C -- which is principally supported by East Indians -- lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in almost two decades. The principal opposition parties comprised A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) – which is backed by the nation's black African population -- and the Alliance For Change (AFP), a relatively new organization seeking to break Guyana's traditionally racially polarized politics.
International Business Times spoke with an expert on Guyana to discuss the nation’s recent elections and the society as a whole.
Lallbachan Christopher Ram, chartered accountant and attorney-at-law, heads Ram & McRae, a leading Guyanese firm of chartered accountants which he founded in the mid-1980s.
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IB TIMES: The People's Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) won its fifth consecutive election in Guyana this past week; but they narrowly lost a majority in parliament (National Assembly) to opposition groups. Is it fair to say that politics in Guyana breaks down entirely along racial lines?
RAM: That is mostly true. The traditional bases of the respective parties are: PPP/C – Indians; A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), which made up mainly of the Peoples National Congress-Reform Party (PNC-R) and a number of smaller parties and groups -- African Guyanese; and a much smaller party, The United Force (TUF) -- which historically drew its support from Amerindians and a small urban capitalist class.
The Amerindians were seen as the swing vote and were heavily courted by the PPP/C with gifts and promises. The results of the elections show that they did not vote solidly for the ruling party and indeed one of the Amerindian regions was won by the Alliance for Change (AFC), the only party that has cross-over appeal.
IB TIMES: Discuss the AFC.
RAM: The AFC has an interesting history. The party was formed months before the 2006 elections by three individuals – Raphael Trotman, a black man who broke off from PNC-R; Khemraj Ramjattan, who was expelled from the PPP/C; and Sheila Holder, a middle class black woman formerly of the Working People's Alliance (WPA), a left-wing party established in the late seventies by leading intellectuals including Dr. Walter Rodney who is widely believed to have been killed by the PNC in June 1980.
When Trotman left the PNC-R he brought with him some support but that was partly because the PNC-R had leadership problems and had sent mixed signals about its participation in the 2006 elections. It is felt that most of the 28,000 persons who voted for the AFC in 2006 were disaffected Blacks who supported Trotman and who had called for the PNC-R to apologize for some of the party’s excesses when it ruled Guyana for twenty-eight years.
In 2011, many of those people went back to the 'new-look' APNU and based on the results of the elections, it appears that it was mainly Indians who supported the AFC. Some of that was probably due to the fact that the Presidential candidate of the AFC was not the black Trotman but the Indian Ramjattan who also managed to bring on board Moses Nagamootoo, a leading member of the PPP/C, who enjoyed personal popularity among the Indians, particularly in one of the PPP/C’s strongholds of the Berbice region.
IB TIMES: How much progress has the new party, Alliance for Change (AFC), made in trying to break the deadlock in ‘racial voting’?
RAM: Enough to cause it to hold the balance of power in the National Assembly. It received just over 10 percent of the votes in the November 28 elections while the PPP/C received 48.8 percent and the APNU, 40.3 percent.
IB TIMES: Voter turnout in this election was quite high (73 percent). Is that unusual or typical for Guyanese elections?
RAM: That is about our historical average – except in 2001 when, uncharacteristically, there was a 91 percent turnout.
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