THE loss of support from the business community, professionals and a faction of the middle class was one of the contributing factors which led to the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) suffering a defeat in the municipality of Georgetown at the recently held Local Government Elections (LGE).This is the contention of former longstanding member of the party and Speaker of the National Assembly, Ralph Ramkarran, who expressed these views on his weekly blog “The Conversation Tree”, which was published last weekend.

Two weeks ago, the long overdue LGE were held, and the PPP claimed a “massive victory” despite losing five of the nine municipalities to the APNU+AFC coalition.

Among these was Georgetown, which traditionally has invested more of its confidence in the People’s National Congress (PNC) -– a faction of the APNU –- to manage the municipal affairs.

And while the PPP, at the last LGE in 1994, manage to secure only eight of the 30 seats on the council, this year, with the emergence of new groups, the party suffered severe blows and was able to acquire only two seats. The coalition copped a whopping 25, while Team Legacy scored evenly with the PPP and Team Benschop claimed one.

The opposition party was not daunted by this though, and boasted of the fact that it had managed to win 48 out of 71 Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs), which mirror the figures in 1994 when it secured 48 out of the then 65.

This year too, the party claimed to have stamped it authority by registering 28,000 more votes than the APNU+AFC coalition.

Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield had revealed that only 38-39 per cent of the electorate voted in the elections. But the results of these elections, Ramkarran contends, should give no political comfort to any political party.

Ramkarran opined that while voter turnout was lower than that of General Elections, as occurs almost everywhere in local government elections, it is unsafe to make any enduring political conclusions from these results.
Nevertheless, he sought to examine the voting pattern in Guyana, reasoning that experiences have shown that the “rigid ethnic voting patterns” can be modified.

CREDIBLE THIRD FORCE
And this, according to him, can be fuelled when some disgruntled party supporters are swayed by what they see as a credible third force.
Referring to history, he noted that in 1961 and 1964, a section of the Indian business and middle class abandoned the PPP and voted for the United Force; in 2006, a sizeable section of the African middle and working classes abandoned the PNCR and supported the then newly formed AFC; and in 2011 and 2015, sections of the PPP’s Indian support abandoned it, some for the AFC and some by not voting at all.

And the view that Guyana seems to have been moving away from this “rigid ethnic voting pattern” was clearly evident in this year’s LGE, he suggested.

“The PPP’s total collapse in the City of Georgetown confirms what many have long suspected, namely, that the PPP has lost the support of the business, professional and some of the middle class. Located in significant numbers, though not exclusively in the city, these groups appear to have supported some other party or group, or as is more likely to have declined to vote,” Ramkarran stated in his blog.

However, this would not be easily discerned in the rural areas, where the PPP is strong, he said, adding that the overall low turnout would not indicate if any pockets of business and other middle class supporters stayed at home.

NO BREAKTHROUGH
If his analysis is accurate though, Ramkarran suggested that this would be the third successive elections that this section of PPP supporters has abandoned the party. But the results, according to him, also reflect “no breakthrough” in PPP areas of support by the APNU+AFC. Identical to 1994 were the results for the NDC, which show no penetration by the coalition in PPP strongholds.

Further, he highlighted that the results do not discourage the idea that the AFC has lost considerable ground; and if this is so, it would not be unusual for third parties in Guyana, he added.

The former Speaker, at this point, reflected on the fact that the United Force “ceased to be an effective political force” at the end of the 1960s, while “the mighty Working Peoples Alliance (WPA), which never had the opportunity to prove its electoral strength because of electoral malpractice, has faded from view, leaving only the idealism of its founders.

However, should the AFC fade and the Indian business, professional and other groups of the middle class go back to the PPP, that party (PPP) will retain the advantage at the next national elections, he opined.