THE PPP/C is undoubtedly the largest multi-ethnic party in the country. It has from its inception attracted into its ranks men and women of honour and integrity drawn from all ethnic groups.Names such as Cheddi and Janet Jagan, HJM Hubbard, and Ashton Chase, who incidentally were the founding members of the Political Affairs Committee which  was the forerunner of the PPP. Later on, Forbes Burnham became part of the leadership of the PPP but his role and influence in the party was short-lived after he broke away from the PPP and formed his own party in 1955. This however did not prevent the PPP from winning a landslide victory in the elections of 1957 which saw the PPP winning 10 of the 14 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Earlier, in the elections of 1953, the PPP had won 18 out of 24 seats, a major victory for the working people in the first elections that took place under Universal Adult Suffrage, which in simple language referred to a situation in which every eligible Guyanese, regardless of income or property qualifications were given the right to vote. It was  a result of robust representation made by the PPP to the Colonial Office that the British Government agreed to dispatch to the Colony the Waddington Commission to investigate the country’s readiness for internal government and to make recommendations with a view to effecting constitutional reforms.

Among the numerous recommendations made by the PPP was the need for internal self-government on the basis of one man one vote and the introduction of the ministerial system of government, both of which were accepted by the British Government and put into effect in the elections of 1953. The PPP, as mentioned earlier, won a landslide victory in the 1953 elections but unfortunately the PPP was thrown out of office after a mere three months due to misguided fears by the British Government that the PPP was too much to the left of the ideological spectrum.

It was this perception of the PPP that was at the root of foreign intervention to destabilise the PPP governments of 1953, 1957 and 1961 and the eventual constitutional amendments to introduce Proportional Representation in the 1964 elections as opposed to the Constituency model which it was felt favoured the PPP in terms of parliamentary representation. The PPP had won 57 percent of the parliamentary seats in the 1961 elections with just around 42 percent of the popular votes, which in effect meant that its parliamentary strength was greater than its popular strength.

It is to the credit of the PPP that some four decades later it managed to increase both its popular and parliamentary strengths above the level of the 1960s, the only political party to so do. Moreover, it is today the only and largest multi-ethnic party in the country with parliamentary representation in all of the 10 administrative regions of Guyana.