Mar­sha Mokool

While the news of the much tout­ed al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate the Prime Min­is­ter and some Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters was blast­ing through the lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, the elec­toral ma­chin­ery in Guyana went in­to full op­er­a­tion last Mon­day, as Guyanese flocked to the polls in what would prove to be a his­toric elec­tion.

Eth­nic vot­ing pat­terns

I had the priv­i­lege of wit­ness­ing the elec­tions first hand, as an of­fi­cial In­ter­na­tion­al Ob­serv­er of the Mis­sion of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS). The ac­tu­al vot­ing on Mon­day re­flect­ed a high lev­el of or­gan­i­sa­tion and a well-oiled elec­toral ma­chin­ery. Un­doubt­ed­ly, Guyana's democ­ra­cy has ad­vanced con­sid­er­ably as elec­tion staff, par­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives and vot­ers alike, ex­pressed deep faith in the elec­toral process. Guyana's pop­u­la­tion of 762,498 is ex­treme­ly di­verse with two ma­jor eth­nic groups, sim­i­lar to that of Trinidad. In­do-Guyanese con­sti­tute 43.5 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion and have re­mained pre­dom­i­nant­ly rur­al while Afro-Guyanese com­prise 30.2 per cent and con­sti­tute the ma­jor­i­ty of the ur­ban pop­u­la­tion. The re­main­ing 16.7 per cent are di­vid­ed in­to a num­ber of dif­fer­ent groups in­clud­ing Mixed, Chi­nese and Amerindi­ans, amongst oth­ers.

The eth­nic dis­tri­b­u­tion of the pop­u­la­tion has giv­en rise to eth­nic vot­ing pat­terns as the two ma­jor par­ties, the In­do-dom­i­nat­ed Peo­ple's Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (PPP) and the Afro-dom­i­nat­ed Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Con­gress (PNC) have tra­di­tion­al­ly been racial­ly aligned. The PPP has evolved in­to the Peo­ple's Pro­gres­sive Par­ty/Civic (PPP/C) and the PNC is now a coali­tion of par­ties known as A Part­ner­ship for Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU). The two oth­er small­er par­ties con­test­ing the 2011 elec­tions in­clude the Al­liance for Change (AFC) viewed as a mixed race par­ty pret­ty much like the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) in Trinidad and The Unit­ed Force (TUF). The pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for the PPP/C is typ­i­cal­ly In­do-Guyanese while the prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date is Afro-Guyanese and vice ver­sa for the PNC (now AP­NU).

Pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion

Un­like most of the oth­er an­glo­phone Caribbean na­tions which fol­low the Win­ner Takes It All West­min­ster par­lia­men­tary po­lit­i­cal mod­el, Guyana is a se­mi-pres­i­den­tial par­lia­men­tary re­pub­lic which fol­lows the sys­tem of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Vot­ers are ex­pect­ed to cast two votes in the elec­toral bal­lot-one for the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and an­oth­er for the re­gion­al elec­tions. The vot­ers vote for a par­ty, not a can­di­date, as on­ly par­ty sym­bols are op­tions ap­pear­ing in the bal­lot. At the na­tion­al lev­el, Guyana elects a uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture known as the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly which has 65 mem­bers. Since 2001, the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly has com­prised 25 mem­bers who are elect­ed via pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion from ten ge­o­graph­ic con­stituen­cies. Forty mem­bers are al­so cho­sen on the ba­sis of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion from Na­tion­al lists named by the po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

Each of the ten re­gions sends at least one MP to the na­tion­al par­lia­ment. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of seats is based on the size of the pop­u­la­tion. Of the 25 seats for the ten re­gions to the na­tion­al par­lia­ment, Re­gion 4 (George­town) has sev­en Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment. Berbice and West De­mer­ara have three seats each while the Es­se­qui­bo Re­gion, which is Re­gion 2, has two seats. In ad­di­tion to re­gion­al seats to the Par­lia­ment, each re­gion has its own ad­min­is­tra­tion and a num­ber of seats for each re­gion, some­what like our Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment sys­tem. Whichev­er par­ty wins a ma­jor­i­ty of votes re­ceives a ma­jor­i­ty of seats and as such, con­trols the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the re­gion. The re­gion­al MPs are dis­trib­uted based on votes won. The par­ty that wins the most votes gets at least one seat and the oth­er seats for the re­gions are di­vid­ed based on votes.

In last Mon­day's elec­tion, out of a to­tal of 475,496 el­i­gi­ble vot­ers, 346,717 votes had been cast re­flect­ing a 72.3 per cent vot­er turnout. The PPP won Re­gions 1, 2, 5, 6 and 9 while the PNC won ma­jori­ties in Re­gions 4 and 10. The oth­er re­gions are di­vid­ed in the votes and as such, the par­ties will have to share gov­er­nance in Re­gion 4 as oc­curred af­ter the 2006 elec­tions.

The re­sults of the 2011 elec­tions shows the PPP/C, now led by Don­ald Ra­moutar, win­ning 32 seats, four less than it had in the last Par­lia­ment. The Op­po­si­tion Part­ner­ship For Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU) has 26 seats, a gain of four, and the Al­liance For Change (AFC) holds sev­en, a gain of two. The PPP/C amassed a to­tal of 148,976 votes, AP­NU a to­tal of 116,305, the AFC a to­tal of 31,489 and TUF 781 votes. The PPP/C leads the com­bined Op­po­si­tion of AP­NU/AFCF/TUF by 401 votes but now has a mi­nor­i­ty gov­ern­ment, the first since Guyana achieved self-gov­er­nance from Britain in 1953 and in­de­pen­dence in 1966. The PPP had won con­vinc­ing­ly in the 1992, 1997, 2001, and 2006 elec­tions af­ter the PNC had dom­i­nat­ed be­tween 1968 and 1992.

Com­pro­mise or new elec­tions?

So what do these re­sults mean for Guyana? It sug­gests that the PPP/C has won the pres­i­den­cy and the gov­ern­ment but would find it dif­fi­cult to gov­ern with­out a ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment. There is a hung Par­lia­ment which will re­quire po­lit­i­cal com­pro­mise in a di­vid­ed na­tion if the coun­try is to be gov­erned. The Pres­i­dent ap­points the Cab­i­net and in­her­its all the pow­ers stat­ed in the con­sti­tu­tion-a po­si­tion per­haps more pow­er­ful than that of the US Pres­i­dent and he can­not be ques­tioned in court. But now, both op­po­si­tion par­ties are de­mand­ing a role in gov­ern­ment in ex­change for their sup­port.

The new PPP/C Gov­ern­ment will not be able to pass bills in the As­sem­bly with 32 seats. The Op­po­si­tion may even con­sid­er pass­ing a no con­fi­dence mo­tion and the PPP/C can­not de­pend on the Op­po­si­tion be­cause a law passed a few years ago by the PPP/C made it im­pos­si­ble to vote against one's par­ty's wish­es. So it will be im­pos­si­ble for any­one in the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port the PPP/C un­less there is an agree­ment be­tween the PPP/C and one of the par­ties be­fore a vote is tak­en. The Gov­ern­ment could lose the vote of no con­fi­dence lead­ing to the for­ma­tion of an­oth­er gov­ern­ment un­der the pres­i­den­cy of Don­ald Ra­moutar who has been elect­ed Pres­i­dent. The Pres­i­dent can al­so dis­solve Par­lia­ment any­time and call an elec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Pres­i­dent and the Cab­i­net shall re­sign if the Gov­ern­ment is de­feat­ed by the vote of a ma­jor­i­ty of all the elect­ed mem­bers of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly on a vote of no con­fi­dence. Then, the Gov­ern­ment shall re­main in of­fice and hold an elec­tion with­in three months. The Gov­ern­ment would then re­sign af­ter the new Pres­i­dent takes the oath of of­fice fol­low­ing the elec­tion. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of a new elec­tion looms in the not too dis­tant fu­ture as politi­cians in our re­gion have hard­ly dis­played the ma­tu­ri­ty nec­es­sary for col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­pro­mise. Be­sides, the eth­nic cleav­ages run long and deep in Guyana, even with a his­to­ry of racial vi­o­lence. The PPP/C finds it­self in a pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion as an­oth­er elec­tion may yield sim­i­lar re­sults.

It now has to re­flect on why it lost and how to re­cap­ture vot­ers who de­fect­ed to the oth­er par­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly the AFC which made in­roads in­to tra­di­tion­al PPP/C ter­ri­to­ry. Un­der­stand­ing such de­fec­tion may hold the key to ex­plain­ing the PPP/C's de­clin­ing sup­port in the 2011 polls.

Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad is a Lec­tur­er in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence/In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Dep't of Be­hav­iour­al Sci­ences, UWI, St Au­gus­tine.