By Nigel Hughes
The elections of 2020 have reaffirmed what we have all suspected has been the reality of British Guiana and Guyana since the abolition of slavery. We are and have always been a deeply divided society.
Since the May 1966 there has been no significant change in the voting patterns of our people.
Whether driven by fear or loyalty, our main ethnic blocks have repeatedly reaffirmed their preference to be governed by their own kind.
The historic creation of an African minority, post slavery, by the British with the importation of larger numbers of East Indians indentured labourers created deep divisions, fears and insecurities in the population.
Guyana has never really been a nation. It is a geographical space occupied now by persons of principally three or four ethnic groups. The indigenous, the Africans, the Indians, and the combination of Portuguese, Chinese and European descendants.
The numbers have always, by design, been against the Africans.
Mr. Burnham knew long before the split in 1955 and most definitely after the 1961 elections, which led to a bitter racial engagement in Guyana, that the Africans could not rely on their numbers to ever be able to determine their destiny in Guyana.
After the 1964 elections, the results of which reflected the racial configuration of the country at the time, it must have become obvious to the minority African population, whose ancestors had made the greatest sacrifice whether voluntarily or involuntarily, to create the foundations of a modern Guyana that they would be permanently excluded from the exercise of power as a result of their numbers.
This realization among the political leadership of the African community must have led to the electoral results between 1969 to 1992.
The exclusion from the reins of power and Government of the numerical majority of the citizens of Guyana, the Indians, during that period (1969 to 1992) solidified in the minds of the Indian community that the African population could not be trusted with elections and thus political power.
The death of Forbes Burnham in 1985, at the beginning of the end of the cold war, changed the dynamics.
The Indian political leadership, having learnt the lessons of Mr. Jagan’s ideological and consequently political errors of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970s, began to engage the American political leadership in Washington to press effectively for a change in the pollical landscape which would guarantee the exercise of political power by an Indian Government for the short and medium term future of Guyana.
Free and fair elections was the occasion but not the real cause of the change. The cause was the consolidation of Indian economic and political power.
Hitherto the Indian population exercised economic control while the African held political office and determined the political development of the country in a world which was divided ideologically y between the east and west.
After the loss of power in 1992, the leadership of the African community in the PNC despite all the historic evidence to the contrary, felt that they could by various amalgamations, win a free and fair election in Guyana. They assumed that elections were capable of being more than an ethnic census.
The leadership was reluctant to embrace the idea of new constitutional and economic arrangements based on the numbers of all the ethnic constituencies in Guyana.
They felt erroneously, that somehow they could protect the interests of their core supporters by winning a free and fair election when the numbers were against them as they had always been.
What was the result of this error of political judgment?
It facilitated the consolidation of Indian economic and pollical power for twenty three years while their traditional supporters were systematically and systemically excluded from the economic and political participation in the affairs of the State.
The era of Bharat Jagdeo not only consolidated the amalgamation of economic, social and political power it completely changed the order of things within the Indian community by creating a new political/ economic apex class in a reversal of what previously existed as the norm in the Indian community. It was the adoption of the philosophy that the ends justified the means irrespective of the cost to the nation.
Meanwhile the African political leadership which was wedded, for various reasons whether emotional or otherwise, to the 1980 Constitution which was created in a time when they exercised unchallenged political power and which was premised on the permanent exercise of political power by an African leadership, continued down the erroneous path of rejecting the concept of constitutional change to redistribute political power and consequently economic power.
It was late in the day when Desmond Hoyte said he had come around to the idea of a change in the constitutional arrangements in the country.
After Hoyte’s death, the political leadership of the African population continued down the erroneous path of thinking that by amalgamating with various “civil society” groups they could win a numerical majority at a national election.
Again the false assumption that an election in Guyana was anything other than an ethnic census.
This error of judgment was compounded by those who sought to argue that Mr. Corbin was not the ideal candidate and a change in candidate and approach could result in a change of the pollical fortunes of the African population.
All the time the clock was ticking and the economic consolidation of the Indian population continued unabated and uninterrupted, facilitated by those in political power who were also rapidly amassing serious economic wealth by virtue of the positions of political privilege.
The appointment of Mr. Granger as the APNU candidate, was premised on the fact that with this new image, the African minority stood a chance of prevailing in a numbers game called an election.
The creation of the AFC, with leaders coming from the two major parties, who had differences with their respective leaderships, manufactured an opportunity, for those who had become concerned about the excesses of those in power in the Indian community and those who were of the view that the African community needed new progressive leadership, to amalgamate without any other core political agenda other than to assume they could bridge the divide between the races and create a new Guyana by calling on the moderates on both sides to shift their political allegiances.
Depending on who led the AFC in the 2006 and 2011 elections, it took votes from the respective African and Indian parties.
The Indian support which migrated to the AFC did not migrate for ideological reasons or rejection of the PPP, they moved because of a combination of reasons including that the PPP had become non responsive to or dismissive of the interests of the poorer Indian supporters and appeared to be governing in the interests of a new political and economic Indian elite (the Apex class).
The African support which migrated to the AFC was a combination of primarily middle class African supporters who had become disillusioned with the direction and leadership of the PNC.
While all of the above was occurring an increasing sense of hopelessness engulfed the African population, who feared with justification, not only their inability to influence the political development of the country but looked on in horror at their continued economic marginalization under the Indian leadership.
The abuse of power, and surrender of the State to the interests of criminal enterprise which saw the deaths of hundreds of African males only served to increase the hopelessness of the African population and their lack of confidence in the ability of any state institution, even though peopled by them, to be able to protect them.
In the absence of legitimate means of redress, economic marginalization, ethnic domination, the African community began to react in a manner which they thought would best protect their interests.
The combination of a long period of incumbency and the abandonment of its base by the PPP led to enough Indian votes either staying away from the polls in 2015 or voting for the AFC which led to an APNU/AFC victory.
The African leadership in the APNU failed again to appreciate that the victory in 2015 was not a result of the minority African votes being sufficient to win an election but purely a factor of Indian disenchantment with the then PPP leadership’s approach to their traditional supporters.
They (African political leadership) compounded the error of assessment by assuming that the interests of the African community could be protected by relying on the results of a numbers game in which they were the smaller of the two larger minority groups.
This led to perhaps the most fatal error of judgment, the rejection of any form of constitutional reform as a means of protecting the minority interests of the African people and every other minority interest.
No serious attempt at a change in constitutional arrangements was undertaken. Naturally the leadership of the PPP would have no interest in constitutional change once they were the largest ethnic minority in a country in which the winner takes all the executive power.
The number count in the 2020 event called the elections could only disclose what our citizens have been telling us since independence that is we prefer to be governed by their own ethnic group and do not trust any other group to govern fairly. They have little faith in their national institutions particularly now corroborated by the actions of GECOM.
The real fear of both major ethnic communities about governance by the other is unlikely to be resolved by a mere counting of the votes.
With the prospect of the absence of any economic or political power and reminded of their recent experiences of life pre May 2015, the African population has now found itself in a position in which it is forced to defend itself against what it sees as a certain economic and political destruction in the event of a return to power by the PPP under Bharrat Jagdeo.
The PPP, on the other hand, emboldened by the support of the ABC E countries, whose apparent disregard for the real issues which underpin national life in Guyana, and led by Bharrat Jagdeo, will countenance nothing other than their occupation of the seat of the executive and the exercise of absolute power to the detriment of the African and all other communities whose interests do not align with theirs all under the guise of a free and fair elections.
This closes off meaningful engagement when it is most desperately needed.
Herdmandston and St Lucia failed not because of their aspirations but because of the absence of any oversight of the implementation of the measures agreed upon and no power to effect implementation.
Caricom has once again whether, fortuitously or otherwise, featured in our political contretemps.
Maybe a political agreement with clear oversight and power to implement by Caricom with all the attendant consequences on the issue of sovereignty, is now appropriate.
It is clear that we cannot be left to our own devises as we have consistently demonstrated over the past fifty plus years of Independence. A sad but true fact of life.
The recent post election events and our public discourses in social media have exposed our nakedness.
The issue in Guyana is RACE.
The one subject neither of the political parties has had the courage to discuss but one on which their political fortunes are reliant.
We have never sat down as nation to discuss whether we want to live together and in the event that we do, how exactly is that going to work.
A national icon once shared with me the following poignant observation.
“People who want to live together in unity, in the hope of becoming a cohesive NATION, do not speak to and disrespect each other in the manner that is now and I would conjecture has always been in my lifetime the norm. In the short history of a multicultural British Guiana and Guyana, no arbiter has sought to ask these slaves and indentured laborers if it is their desire to cohabit the space with the end result being one race one nation one destiny”.
The prospect of oil revenues has only removed the thin veneer, if there was one, that there is a geographic space called Guyana but there is no nation state called Guyana..
We are not a nation and have never had any pretensions of being one.
Our youth have voted no differently to their ancestors.
We can talk now or after the loss of more lives but talk we will at the end of the day. Whether the country will still be ours then is anybody’s guess.
A change in the constitutional and economic structures in the geographic space called Guyana is inevitable.
The discussion about how we are going to share the corn should start now rather than later.