Bert Wilkin­son

Near­ly half a mil­lion Guyanese vot­ers go to the polls to­mor­row to elect a new gov­ern­ment in an elec­tions bat­tle that is shap­ing up as the most in­tense of all held in liv­ing mem­o­ry. Three ma­jor po­lit­i­cal out­fits are bat­tling for the pres­i­den­cy and con­trol of Par­lia­ment, the gov­ern­ing Peo­ple's Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (PPP), the mul­ti­par­ty coali­tion, A Part­ner­ship For Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU), and the Al­liance For Change, an up­start mul­tira­cial out­fit that has both of the two larg­er groups on the run and is like­ly to hold the key as to which one wins, de­pend­ing on which of the two it draws a larg­er bloc of vot­ers.

Mon­day's poll that al­so co­in­cides with St Lu­cia's will be the first pres­i­den­tial and gen­er­al elec­tions with­out the name Ja­gan on the can­di­dates list in 50 years as both of the PPP's founder lead­ers and for­mer pres­i­dents, Ched­di and Janet Ja­gan are now dead, leav­ing the PPP to run this time with Guyana-trained econ­o­mist Don­ald Ramo­tar, 61. The very port­ly Ramo­tar has nev­er held elect­ed po­lit­i­cal of­fice or has run any na­tion­al out­fit oth­er than the PPP which he has served as gen­er­al sec­re­tary for more than a decade. The oth­er ma­jor point of sig­nif­i­cance in this one is that bal­lot pa­pers will for the first time since the mid 1950s not have the brand of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Con­gress (PNC) of for­mer pres­i­dent Forbes Burn­ham on them as the PNC is now the dom­i­nant play­er in the AP­NU that is be­ing led by re­tired army com­man­der Brigadier Gen­er­al and re­spect­ed his­to­ri­an David Granger, 66.

The third ma­jor force, Al­liance For Change (AFC), has fire­brand at­tor­ney Khem­raj Ram­jat­tan, 50, as its pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Ram­jat­tan was a for­mer lead­ing ex­ec­u­tive of the PPP but left sev­er­al years ago, ac­cus­ing the par­ty of al­low­ing un­prece­dent­ed lev­els of cor­rup­tion and sleaze and of be­ing in bed with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al co­caine traf­fick­ers. The two big­ger po­lit­i­cal guns both say that the lat­est polls show that they are ahead. Ru­pert Roop­naraine, the AP­NU's prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date and a rev­o­lu­tion­ary run­ning mate of for­mer as­sas­si­nat­ed world ac­claimed aca­d­e­m­ic Wal­ter Rod­ney, says a poll it com­mis­sioned the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) to run shows that it will win the pres­i­den­cy but may not nec­es­sar­i­ly have ma­jor­i­ty con­trol of the 65-seat par­lia­ment.

"We have not re­leased de­tails for fear that it will be of use to our en­e­mies but more im­por­tant­ly we fear com­pla­cen­cy among our ranks so the work con­tin­ues. The polls showed us where we had to do more work. That is the val­ue we have tak­en from it," he said yes­ter­day. For its part, the PPP has been stri­dent­ly ap­peal­ing to its vot­ers to en­sure it gets 50 per cent of the votes