Pull Quote: ‘…there is nothing inappropriate about instituting a genuine people’s coalition, but to manufacture a ‘shell’ coalition and thrust it on the people is an insult to Guyanese; and that is why there may be psychological confusion, because APNU is PNCR, and the PNCR is APNU without any new foundation, albeit there is a shell lurking in the shadows’
ELECTION campaign seasons are prime time for self-styled electoral experts to emerge from the woodwork to take one more shot at the political games, and indeed, these long shots become iterative at each election. These so-called connoisseurs mainly inhabit planet print, with a few on the electronic media sidewalk. Interestingly, these electoral pundits have all the answers for this country’s ills, without even factoring in an evidentiary baseline; apparently, they see no room for scientific integrity. That is one unfortunate facet of this season; nonetheless, very soon, election results will bring this kind of empty political rhetoric to an abrupt end. Meanwhile, other matters of this election season are upon us, and we need to address them.
For instance, rummaging through this election season, too, there is the not-so-recent appearance of a masquerade, where A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) does a weekly catwalk, unable to shed itself from the People’s National Congress Reform (‘PNCR-ness’). Indeed, I previously referred to APNU as a shell, and to project it as a meaningful coalition may be an insult to the Guyanese people’s intelligence.
Nevertheless, there is another dimension to this APNU, and that is the more serious matter of whether PNC members and supporters would want to psychologically cast their vote for ‘plain-Jane’ APNU rather than their beloved PNCR, albeit, APNU is a thinly-veiled PNCR grouping. Psychological confusion and the aura of sustaining PNCR’s sentiments may run amok on Election Day.
You see, there is nothing inappropriate about instituting a genuine people’s coalition, but to manufacture a ‘shell’ coalition and thrust it on the people is an insult to Guyanese; and that is why there may be psychological confusion because APNU is PNCR and the PNCR is APNU without any new foundation, albeit there is a shell lurking in the shadows.
Members and supporters already may be seeking clarification on their vote as they cope with their strong PNCR sentiments. Perhaps, APNU’s top-tier supposes that PNC members and supporters genuinely know that a vote for APNU is a vote for the PNCR; even so, this is a mere supposition.
Large pre-electoral coalitions tend to do better in disproportional election systems, not proportional representation systems; for this reason,  Andrews and Jackson (2005; Boix, 1998) argued that  come Election Day, one of the great uncertainties facing pre-electoral coalitions is how voters, especially their memberships, would cast their vote?
To answer this question, I would interpret Gschwend & Hooghe’s findings, published in the European Journal of Political Research. APNU party elites would expect PNCR voters to come along their way, but this would happen only if APNU has parties with fairly similar ideologies; and this certainly is not the case with APNU, as Guyana Action Party (GAP) and Working People’s Alliance (WPA) are poles apart in ideological thinking, and then to insert the PNCR into the race only compounds the ideological disparities. Possibilities of supporters’ desertion of APNU are greater in this scenario.
And then, even if there is ideological congruence, there could be a case where there may be dislike for a coalition partner; the dislike may be related to the party’s history, the party’s image, the party’s prior experience with power. Nevertheless, ideological dislikes are not related to ideological congruence among the coalition partners; they are different things.
Supporters of smaller parties tend to have a hard time remaining loyal to their parties, particularly, if there are attractive high-profile candidates in the political race. For this reason, APNU elites have to promptly attend to the small parties’ leaders and supporters’ wishes, since they tend to be the first deserters. If supporters of small parties are able to discern that the largest party makes some concessions to their party on party programme, then they may see this as a signal that their small party is securing some political leverage.
At this time, there is a paucity of research on how members and supporters would respond to a new coalition. At any rate, disproportional representation systems favour large pre-electoral coalitions; nonetheless, Guyana has, for all intents and purposes, proportional representation that may not favour APNU as a coalition grouping.