By Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

LGE 2023 results are out – the PPP won big; the PNC-led APNU took an old-fashioned thrashing. While there has been a sprinkling of requests for recounts from the PPP and the PNC-led APNU, there have not been any significant complaints about the conduct of these elections. The PPP came out of LGE 2023 as the big winner since they won 66 of the 80 Local Authority Areas (LAAs), including seven of 10 municipalities, and 906 of the 1,206 local government seats.

The PPP won 83 per cent of the LAAs, 75 per cent of all seats available and more than 70 per cent of all votes cast. The PPP not only strengthened its hold on its traditional strongholds, but it has massively made inroads in areas where the PNC usually celebrated almost 100 per cent votes in the past. By any measure, this is a wipeout of the opposition.

On the other hand, the PNC has wounds to lick. In 2018, the PNC controlled five of the 10 municipalities. For LGE 2023, the PNC lost its municipal strongholds of Bartica and Mahdia where Local Government Elections have never been competitive.

It nearly lost the municipality of New Amsterdam where it has held office continuously since the formation of the PNC. The PPP which had won only one of the seven constituencies in 2018, was able to win three constituencies and increased its seats from three to six in LGE 2023 and came within a few votes to win another, which would have made it a tie in New Amsterdam.

In Georgetown, the PPP increased from seven to 11 and with a recount in one constituency could very well end up with 12 seats. In Linden, the PPP increased from one to two. The PNC has put up a bold face and celebrating victory in these three towns. But the PNC celebrate only because they must have anticipated losing in some of these strongholds. Their celebration is relief that they held on, “clutching at straws”.

The PNC wounds are deep. In NDCs where they usually win easily, they lost some and barely held on to others. In LGE 2023, they won in only 14 LAAs (three municipalities and 11 NDCs), compared to 24 in 2018. In addition to the municipalities of Bartica and Mahdia, the PNC lost important NDCs, such as Fyrish and Macedonia/Joppa in Region Six, Plaisance/Industry in Region Four and Matthew’s Ridge in Region One. In fact, the PNC controls no municipality or NDC in six of the 10 regions, with none in Regions One, Two, Three, Seven, Eight and Nine.

Who could have imagined that the PPP would have meaningful votes, even if not enough to win, in Mocha, North Ruimveldt, Victoria, Golden Grove, Manchester, Lancaster, Den Amstel, across Linden, etc.? The PPP nearly walked away with Kwakwani. These results would have been political hearsay just months ago. It is, in short, a wipeout, a blowout, a knockdown, a thrashing. No matter which adjective is used, the PNC is badly wounded and is in the political ICU. This is already Aubrey Norton’s legacy.

Once the dust settles, LGE 2023 will be seen as the most consequential local government elections in Guyana and in CARICOM. Many analyses are about to emerge, many have already been published in Guyana’s local newspapers and in social media Op-Eds. Some of the commentators who are rabid anti-PPP analysts have buried their heads in the sand, insisting that the PPP lost because it failed to win the municipalities of Georgetown, Linden and New Amsterdam, in spite of the fact that the PPP made massive gains. No matter how the pundits and the many real and fake analysts spin LGE 2023, it would be difficult to find another local government election in Guyana’s and CARICOM’s history that could match the consequential results from Guyana’s LGE 2023.

In 1999, President Bharrat Jagdeo posited that Guyana needed a political dispensation that is built on trust. At the time, uppermost in his mind, was trust among political opponents that provided an environment of open discourse on what is best for Guyana and the Guyanese people. He knew that if the political groups or parties could engage in a milieu of trust, our diverse population will be able to move forward as one people, with the quality of our ideas and our proposals for development being the determining factors at elections, and not the color of our skin, not our ethnicity or race or religion.

President Jagdeo, at the time, knew that trust among political parties must be built on a structured foundation created by the constitution. The amended constitution that followed created the space for engagement that would have built the trust that President Jagdeo promoted. Almost 25 years later, utilisation of the structural foundation to institutionalise trust has not materialised. The PNC at every turn has frustrated the process. The Rights Commissions, the constitutional re-definition of consultation in governance, the creation of parliamentary sector committees and the National Procurement Commission, etc., were part of the trust initiative.

In 2020, President Irfaan Ali began to build on President Jagdeo’s legacy. He focused his attention on the second tentacle of President Jagdeo’s trust building initiative. This second prong was taking the government to the people. President Jagdeo had taken cabinet meetings into the region and began an unprecedented engagement with communities. President Ali elevated the engagement with the communities, becoming the consummate people’s president, inspiring people, engaging them in community development, providing on-the-spot remedies to community problems, addressing personal welfare matters, like education, health, housing and water. He also celebrates faith, plays, clean-ups, cooks, sings and dances with people in their communities, even if he is out of tune and out-of-step. He promotes a one-family approach. He talks openly and unabashedly about love and unity, about all of us being one family, about One Guyana.

The people of Guyana have responded to Bharrat Jagdeo’s leadership of the PPP where he has made Freedom House the home of people of all ethnicity, race, religion and other groups. Bharrat Jagdeo has dispelled the lies, myths, rumours that the PNC and PPP haters have made their life’s mission to spread – that the PPP has dungeons and trap doors at Freedom House for Afro-Guyanese. Bharrat Jagdeo has proven to people across Guyana that the PPP is a big house that is accommodating to people of all races, religion and from all ideological backgrounds. President Irfaan Ali has made government accessible to all. He not only sends ministers and government officials to the communities; he goes himself. President Ali is seen by people, no matter who they voted for, as the people’s president. His One Guyana message resonates across ethnic, religious, ideological and political borders. The majority of Guyanese trust the president.

LGE 2023 establishes clearly that people are inspired by President Ali’s One Guyana platform. While it would be impossible to have 100 per cent consensus, LGE 2023 shows that in just three years, Guyana is inspired around a common mission, a common goal, One Guyana. Huge dents and holes have been poked into the ethnic, racial and ideological barriers. More and more, people have moved to ideas and policies, track record of performance and the quality of promises made. Blind political loyalty is out of the window. Earning people’s loyalty is now the obligation and the imperative of political leaders and political parties. LGE 2023 shows that the PNC has missed the boat; the PPP is on the right trajectory. Cheddi Jagan’s 1953 movement has been recreated, revitalised and re-engineered by the PPP’s General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo, and President Irfaan Ali. Far from being an albatross, our diversity is becoming our most valuable asset.