I believe Johnson, Trump and Granger will lose
There are three elections coming up soon that are important to Guyana. Two are from nations, which Guyana has been traditionally linked to and there are close interconnections between the three countries.
The UK and the US have intimate relationships with Guyana because of history and migration.
I believe either before October or shortly after October, the UK Prime Minister will call a general poll. He became PM not through the ballots of the electorate. Should he face the voters, he will lose. My guess is that the Labour Party will have the largest bloc in Parliament but not a majority.
Why will Johnson lose? When he championed Brexit, voters had no idea what Brexit entailed. Then after two years, they saw what Breixt would be like. They will frown on it in a general election. Since the referendum to leave the EU, the people of Britain have seen what kind of politicians the Brexiters are. They didn’t know about their duplicity before. They will reject them at the poll.
Trump lost the national vote but won the presidency through the Electoral College. I don’t see a repeat of this. The gargantuan fact staring Americans right in the face is that this man who promised to bring new leadership to benefit the lower income classes has failed miserably to do so. The Trump phenomenon fizzled out like a damp squib. The Trump phenomenon came and went. My strongly held opinion is that he will lose.
Here in Guyana, I cannot see Granger securing a parliament majority. I will go so far to say that is an impossibility. What I am uncertain about is the figure. But the more I break down the voting pattern through demographic analysis, I more see this election being closer than what it was in 2015.
Let us put aside any consideration of election rigging and look at a credible voting system. For Granger to win beyond the 4,500 votes that separated him and the PPP in 2015, he needs to improve on the 2015 performance on every demographic front. Here are the crucial factors I believe will bring about a loss for Granger.
The PNC (forget about the APNU), reached 50 percent in 2015 because the AFC brought in a percentage that moved the PNC from 43 to 50. This effect was a 7 percent contribution of the AFC.
I read the GECOM tabulation of polling station results throughout the country. I will recommend it to analysts who will be called upon by radio and television to offer their predictions as the campaign heats up.
Those tabulations proved that the 7 percent came from Indian constituencies formerly devoted to the PPP. The results for Linden and Amerindian areas are opaque and will remain so forever because one does not know and will never know if Lindeners voted for the PNC or the AFC. One can guess, and my guess is that the choice went to the PNC.
My theory (I would like to see a rebuttal) is that PPP supporters chose the AFC and that is what brought the 51 percent. I am contending most vehemently that 7 percent is gone and gone completely. Those supporters will en mass return to their traditional voting pattern thus swelling the PPP numbers. There are two formidable factors in any consideration of the shape of the result of the upcoming poll.
One is the loss of the AFC to the PPP in the home village of Nagamootoo and Ramjattan in 2015. The standing of both men, in my estimation in Indian constituencies has dropped to horrible levels. Can they win in their hometowns this time? I doubt it.
Secondly, it is not only logical but borders on commonsense to argue that if a major party in government with seven ministers including the prime minister and twelve parliamentarians cannot win even one local government authority out of 88 throughout the territory of Guyana, then it has no electoral support.
It is my deep belief etched in my mind that the AFC had its day, and the dialectics have swept it into history. No one in Guyanese seriously believes there is a viable entity named the Working People’s Alliance. It came, took the country by storm and then it died. I honestly think the AFC has followed the same pathway.
The electoral demise of the AFC is an essential factor, which the analyst must consider in the configuration of the upcoming election. It is this columnist’s thinking that the loss of the 7 percent will cause the APNU+AFC platform to lose the minority presidency in 2019. I may be wrong but this is how I see it.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)
