WIKILEAKS have come and gone; perhaps, a few are still waiting their turn to arrive in Guyana. At any rate, over the last week, WikiLeaks have provided much-needed excitement in an otherwise drab election season.
Nonetheless, in the next few weeks, WikiLeaks will sustain its stardom among the new opposition, as these cables provide fodder for its election campaign at the expense of what the citizenry may really want.

And, indeed, the gullible folks have bought Wikileaks cables lock, stock, and barrel, misunderstanding the real possibility that the cables could very well be partisan and subjective interpretations of events; and this is exactly what WikiLeaks cables largely are. The excitement, at least, for now is over. Hence, we return to the business of elections.
Here in Guyana, there is the usual hue and cry that people vote ‘race’, not ‘policies’, notwithstanding that as yet, there is no scientific poll pronouncing on the bases of people’s  votes, or some other objective and rational mechanism that would definitively determine such bases.
And how evidentiary-based is the view that ethnicity/race of the person determines that person’s vote? Furthermore, if that were the case some time ago, is this view then not subject to a ‘static’ and not a ‘dynamic’ treatment; societies do change, then is this view not bracketed away from the dynamics of change in this society?
Could people not vote for a party without that basis being ‘race’? And how do we definitively determine that a person’s vote is on the basis of ‘race’ vis-à-vis that person’s vote for a particular party?
Again, if we do not definitively know the basis for the vote, rather than prematurely concluding that the vote is a ‘race’ vote’, how about considering other factors that may influence the choice of vote?
Could it conceivably be the case that a voter votes on the basis of his acceptance or even endorsement of a party’s platforms? How come for some people it is problematic to accept the affirmative to this latter question, yet these same people are able to conclude definitively that people vote on the basis of ‘race’ without a shred of evidence? Therefore, is this line of thinking that people vote ‘race’ not a biased pronouncement in itself? Is there nothing else attractive to voters about Guyana’s political parties, other than ‘race’?
We could start with the governing party [People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C)] to unravel this question and others posed in today’s Perspectives. Look! A lot of this has to do with our concept of ‘representation’. Can we say that representation exists when the political representative satisfies voters by endorsing and engineering policies voters want, or that the political representative adopts a policy the voters would like to have in retrospect?
And a fundamental claim of democratic theory is that democracy induces governments to be representative; for instance, Dahl (1971) spoke about the responsiveness of governments to its people; Riker (1965) argued that democracy enables governments to become responsible to its citizens; and Schmitter and Karl (1991) posited that democracy is a kind of governance where governments are accountable for their behaviours by their citizens.
Notwithstanding that this is a claim, evidence for its veracity must be pursued, in the same way that those who say that Guyanese voters vote on the basis of ‘race’ must provide evidence pertaining to their conclusion.
Furthermore, there are people who fail to recognize that voters transmit their preferences through signals at elections, opinion polls, and other types of expression. These signals are mandates at elections, where they add up to a variety of platforms among competing parties. For instance, through the PPP/C’s community meetings, the people provide signals for the adoption of particular platforms; and the party that ultimately accedes to power would then formulate and implement these policies.
Indeed, at the end of the ruling party’s term in office, in theory, the people will make a judgment on that party’s outcomes; that is, whether that party effected what voters want.
And as I write this piece, it constantly crosses my mind that those who flippantly indicate that people vote ‘race’ may be misjudging voters, and, indeed, may be insulting their intelligence and integrity on the basis of their vote.
Apparently, these flippant people’s assertion that people vote ‘race’ may be their own perception, and not voters’ perception; and what evidence is there to show that their perception is not different from that of the voters’?
Returning to the matter about ‘representation’, it is possible to say that ‘representation’ really is a link between preferences about policies that voters desire during election campaigns, and what happens to these voters’ preferences at the end of the winning party’s term in office (Przeworski, Stokes and Manin, 1999); hence, to know whether a government is ‘representative’ is to know whether that government has responsiveness, reliability, and accountability.
Przeworski, Stokes and Manin (1999) explained that a government is responsive when it adopts policies that voters signal as their preferences; a government is reliable when it follows policies that it promotes during the election campaign; and a government is accountable to the people when people can differentiate between representative and unrepresentative governments, and can pursue sanctions to retain the representative government and remove the unrepresentative government.
Folks could determine how representative the PPP/C government is vis-à-vis its responsiveness, reliability, and accountability. Folks can determine whether the PPP/C government is responsive through perusing voters’ concerns as inserted in the 2006 PPP/C’s manifesto, and the number of concerns addressed at this time (2011). Folks can find out whether the PPP/C government is reliable vis-à-vis whether it executed policies it promised during the 2006 election campaign.
On both of these fronts — responsiveness and reliability — computations will show that an acceptable percentage of people’s concerns were sorted out between 2006 and 2011; nonetheless, there would have been times when in the interest of voters, the government may be perceived as unresponsive, because it deviated from what voters wanted; and this would have happened as a result of external economic shocks and natural emergencies.
And folks can establish, too, whether the PPP/C government is accountable to the people by virtue of the fact that people have the capacity to issue sanctions, which they effect at election times.
And as Fearon (1999) reminded us, voters do not, generally, vote to sanction incumbents, but vote to have good governments. People want to see good outcomes for themselves and the society. Hence, when it comes to forming good governments, it is hardly likely that there is a viable alternative to the PPP/C.  How so?
Look at the PPP/C’s accomplishments. There are those who would posit that there is widespread corruption and narco-trafficking, and that may very well be the case, as is the case in most countries; it is not a mere national problem, but it is a problem of worldwide proportions requiring worldwide interventions.
Nevertheless, let people administer a force-field analysis; a tool that uses levels of analysis, varied classes of data, and the dynamics of stability and change, to assess the PPP/C government’s performance.  Should they conduct this exercise, I believe their minimum rating of this government’s performance has to be ‘satisfactory’.