The Indian middle class voted against the PPP in 2011

Mr. Ralph Ramkarran wrote that the AFC drove its way into the PPP’s working class space in Berbice and received electoral support from such a class in 2011, thus reducing the PPP’s majority. Mr. Ramkarran felt the PPP retained Indian middle class embrace and he wonders if the Indian middle stratum will punish the PPP in the forthcoming general elections next year.
The statistics do not corroborate these findings of Mr. Ramkarran. The AFC got three seats from Berbice and three from Region 4. It meant that all those votes could not have come from the proletarian constituencies only. The PPP lost a substantial amount of Indian middle class voters in 2011 and that is likely to increase in 2015. It should be mentioned that contrary to what Mr. Ramkarran posited, in 2006 all the AFC votes were not from the African electorate. In 2006, too, the Indian middle class gravitated to the AFC, though in less numbers than in 2011.
Everybody talks about the changing ethnic demography that has adversely affected the PPP’s percentage in 2011 and that will doom them forever, because the Indian majority is a thing of the past. Be that as it may, the Indian middle class began to be alienated from the PPP from 2006 onwards, but certain factors stood in the way of an exodus. First, the 2006 poll came too close after the bloody drama of Buxton.
The 2002-2005 crime syndrome deterred the Indian petty bourgeoisie from going to the AFC, because memories of the violence were too fresh. Secondly, the AFC was born just literally months before the 2006 election. It didn’t have time to showcase its personnel and values. If the AFC had more time, it would have received more Indian middle class ballots, because Raphael Trotman was seen by that class as a decent Black man that they could work with.
By 2011, the Indian middle stratum had bolted. First, Jagdeo was a gigantic reason. The Indian middle class saw Jagdeo as a crude, ill-mannered corrupt man that was in billions of ways different from Cheddi Jagan. This class may go back if the PPP can produce what the Indian middle class wants, a politician that behaves like Cheddi Jagan.
Unfortunately for the PPP, it hasn’t got such a person, but the AFC has one in Moses Nagamootoo.  Nagamootoo should meticulously monitor his security arrangements as the next general elections draw near. Secondly, in 2016, a large contingent of Indian activists moved into the AFC, thereby giving the Indian middle class an alternative to the PPP. There is no reason to believe that this will not continue from here on. Thirdly, with Nigel Hughes replacing Trotman as an African that is trustworthy, the Indian petty bourgeois will be less uncertain about backing the AFC.
There are other factors apart from the ones outlined above; another is the man himself, Donald Ramotar. There is no way a politician like Ramotar can win back the Indian middle class. Simply put, Mr. Ramotar just doesn’t have it to captivate even the upper working class level of Indian voters. It will take Herculean efforts to work on Mr. Ramotar and time is not on his side – the 2015 election is months away. What analysts need to know is that apart from decreasing Indian numbers in the population, Indian culture itself is changing, and rapidly so.
Cheddi Jagan was a god to semi-literate and illiterate rural Indians. He could have fooled, cajoled, manipulated them and they wouldn’t have known what hit them. This is the nature of such people not only in Guyana but all over the world. The East Indian of the Cheddi Jagan era is dead and gone. The East Indian of Guyana in today’s world is a youth with a Samsung Galaxy S5 that he/she uses the entire day listening into and seeing what the world is doing. He/she is not cannon fodder as what they were in Jagan’s days.
There is no way a Clement Rohee, Donald Ramotar, Roger Luncheon, Gail Teixeira, Komal Chand, Indra Chandarpal, and company can even talk to them, much less persuade them.  But it is these same has-beens who will be leading the campaign trail in 2015, with Bharrat Jagdeo in the middle making things even worse.
There is a growing number out there who believe the PPP will lose a majority again in 2015. I beg to differ. My analysis is based on the faults of the AFC’s 2011 campaign. If they could learn from the previous mistakes, like the neglect of Region 3 during the campaign, the PPP will lose outright in 2015.