IF you monitor what American presidents, Cabinet Secretaries and legislators say, you will find, without even one exception, all, not a majority, but all incessantly use the term, “what the American people want.” Measuring that statement can only be done by a poll.

It is when the scientific poll is done then you know what a population wants from its government. Do the American people approve of their president so zealously supportive of what Israel is doing in Gaza? Do the French people endorse president Macron’s bias in favour of Israel? In France, there are 500,000 Jews as against six million Muslims.

In the US, there are frequent polls testing the popularity of politicians. At the moment, Biden’s approval rating is less than Trump. In Guyana we do not have polls. For some esoteric reason, UG does not do scientific surveys. How popular is the PPP government? How popular is Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali. Only a tight scientific poll can give us scientifically based numbers.

But in June 2023 there was a poll on the popularity of both the government and Dr. Ali. As an academic, I am contending that the June 2023 local government election is the indication arrow of how Guyanese feel about Dr. Ali. It is the only data base to date that contains the measurement of governmental embrace by the population.

I am not concerned in the least with and will pay no attention to the claim by the opposition and Stabroek News bribes that were offered by the government to get votes. There is no and there will be no scientific proof of how people vote based on bribes they get. For religious, cultural, ethnic and ideological reason, people can vote against a party that has bribed them to vote for it. That happened in the 1964 election in British Guiana with the United Force, the party of the capitalist class at that time.

Secondly, the absurdity of the claim reduces it to hilarity. The PPP would have had to spend billions to get votes and in a country like Guyana where verbal diarrhea is a constant feature to be observed in certain sections of society, by now hundreds would have passed on the word openly that they got a “small piece” from Mr. Persaud and Mr. Singh to vote.

It came as a destabilising shock to both the Stabroek News and the opposition that the PPP’s performance was actually phenomenal. Unable to mentally digest the success particularly in Georgetown, the bribery factor was born. I think all of the PPP’s detractors had their expectations cruelly lacerated for two reasons.

One is the element of narcissism. The Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) in this country believes that its words are gospel and that they penetrate society. Therefore, 365 editorials and 1,000 letters from the same cabal from August 2020 to June 2023 were sufficient ammunition to damage the credibility of the PPP. The other reason is that both the MCC and the opposition and Kaieteur News too believed that their anti-oil lamentations over the same period would have made the PPP unpopular.

The MCC, the Stabroek News, the Kaieteur News and the opposition haven’t even the remotest clue as to how the Guyanese people feel about the oil industry. A survey done tomorrow would reveal almost a hundred per cent acceptance of the oil and gas industry. Guyanese in and out of Guyana believe and accept that finally, Guyana has a resource that will bring in lots of money that will do well for Guyana that even sugar could not have matched.

The financial, economic and scientific truth about the oil industry not withstanding poor contract or lopsided contract, or whatever contract, Guyanese accept that their country will be getting colossal sums of money for the next 40 years and they welcome it. They know that oil is bringing a future to Guyana.

The results of local government election in 2023 have proven that the government’s popularity is widening. The results were not normal but extraordinary. In every conceivable area of Guyana where the opposition has strongholds the PPP did well. The researcher has to find explanation for facts. The results are factual and facts have to be explained.

My explanation is that the politics and personality of Dr. Ali and the performance of the government have contributed to the expansion of the PPP’s votes in the LGEs in 2023. Given those results there is the strong possibility that the PPP can capture the Georgetown City Council in the next round of LGEs