Jun 16, 2017 Source

In this age of high technology, it is easy to find out how the people in any village or Georgetown ward voted. The statement of poll in each polling station is tabulated by GECOM. GECOM then publishes a countrywide station by station voting result.
All political parties would have copies of that data-base. So the researcher can know which party won in Turkeyen, Plaisance, Enmore and so on. It is this database that generated an early uneasiness between the AFC and APNU (not the PNC alone in APNU but the WPA too).
The results in heavy Indian areas in Region Five and Region Six showed that the AFC did not do well. Many Indian AFC leaders did not outpoll Indian PPP leaders in the 2015 elections in perhaps all the heavy Indian areas. So the APNU people said to the AFC from day one; “Hey, you guys did not bring in the expected 10 percent of the vote. Of course the AFC did create the ambience that led to victory which would have eluded the APNU had they gone alone in the elections. As to the WPA; if it had contested on its own, it would not have even come near to the 300 votes Mark Benschop got.
What sugar workers do not understand and perhaps will never understand are the things swirling inside the mind of people like Moses Nagamootoo and other Indian leaders in both the AFC and APNU. Sugar workers put up with fifteen years of Jagdeo and Ramotar, watched as the industry declined, yet in 2015 went and voted for the very party that jeapordized the industry and put a high toll on the Berbice Bridge to please the minority shareholders who were private companies while it was NIS money that built the structure.
That very party that did so much wrong to this nation, lost the 2015 election by just under 5000 votes, and lost a parliamentary seat by just one vote. So now in 2017, these very PPP voters are imploring that Nagamootoo and company put money in the sugar industry to save it when the man who barely lost the election, Donald Ramotar sat on the Guysuco board for ages; the minutes of Guysuco meetings would show that he never took the side of the workers and the union itself had a leader who sat as a PPP parliamentarian for over thirty years.
Surely, Nagamootoo and Ramjattan are made of flesh and blood; you can’t expect them to be so angelic that they will say yes, we will put money into helping these areas that didn’t vote for us. Of course, they should. Because they rule in the interest of all Guyanese but at some point in the requests of the PPP’s demography to these Indian AFC and APNU leaders, this demography must understand that they are seen as self-destructive voters.
And such an attitude does not help transform Nagamootoo and company into altruistic politicians.
So the people of Industry just next door to where I live at Turkeyen are complaining bitterly that the roads in the village are disappearing and they have the temerity to say that the streets have been in such a deplorable condition for years now; they actually used the words, “for years now.”
But I just consulted the GECOM election results for 2015 and the PPP handsomely won in Industry. And in the 2016 local government elections, the PPP won in Industry.
Surely, a self-destructive psyche is at work here. You voted in 2015 for a party that when it was in power refused to rebuild your roads, then you went again in 2016 and gave them your ballot. Now you are demanding that the people you didn’t vote for must fix your muddy streets. Well, they should but reality is reality; while they govern for the entire country and should fix rehabilitate your roads, the hard reality is they may not treat your request with urgency because you are seen as self-destructive.
Let’s end with what we call the Nagamootoo paradox which can only end in ignominious humiliation for the Prime Minister. He says, yes, I will give twenty billion dollars to help the sugar industry and yes I will repair all the roads in Industry. The people of New Amsterdam and Dem Amstel are annoyed at that.
Come election in 2020, and an annoyed electorate in New Amsterdam and Den Amstel refused to vote for Nagamootoo. The people in the sugar sector and the village of Industry that he was generous too didn’t vote for him. Indians voters better face reality and quickly too.