Ethnic gaslighting and calls for boycotts will not help the opposition at the ballot box

by Leonard Craig

THE political opposition in Guyana is a similar but contrasting duplex, a local elected segment alongside a virtualised cyber-sustained overseas element. The locally-based elected pretenders are so bad at their jobs, the one word descriptive comes to mind, lame-duck. What we find happening is that the cyber element sees itself as a viable substitute and life support for an ineffective elected opposition. Even the opposition’s own support base in Guyana turn to the cyber element for its vicarious political engagement.

Because of the lack of imagination among the opposition benches they have latched on to a single issue. Not because it makes sense or because the people of Guyana will benefit, but because it is easy. It is easy to exploit seething historical ethnic fears tied to our political and colonial past. Essentially, the overseas cyber opposition segment is turbo charged on stroking ethnic fears around any and every issue. This occurs to the point where even bad weather in any place dominated by Afro-Guyanese is denominated into ethnic permutations by the PPP/C to discriminate against black people. Every social media post, every forum, every public communication is a glowing ember of racially charged utterances aimed at gaslighting the nation.

This past week President Ali visited boroughs of New York City with a high concentration of Guyanese. He chose to traverse the streets, engage diaspora folks and visit some Guyanese-owned businesses in Brooklyn. This area is Afro-dominated and from all accounts, he was well received and hosted. This apparently incensed the cyber opposition elements, many of whom called for the Guyanese diaspora in New York to boycott all Guyanese businesses that hosted Dr Ali.

In essence, the implications of this boycott campaign really means that an Indian PPP leader must never be hosted or engaged in a civil manner by Afro-Guyanese. This is extreme race-based politics that only serves to further divide our people. The rhetoric in GT-NY cyber space is caustic, racially charged and hate filled. This strategy will not be successful at the ballot. The opposition will back themselves into a one-sided vortex from which there will be no escape. It will consume them at a time when the Guyanese voter is seeking creative and dynamic leadership. Afro-Guyanese would require more than ethnic appeal to get them energised to show up to the ballot box for the opposition.

In the meantime, Afro-Guyanese are engaging PPP leaders who are demonstrating, in tangible ways, that they are responding to their concerns. Can the PPP/C improve its relations with the Afro-Guyanese constituencies at home and abroad? The answer is a resounding yes. In some ways, in the past, the PPP leadership did express some measure of tone deftness to the real needs of the Afro-Guyanese constituencies. However, since Dr Ali took office, we can see that serious efforts are being made to engage, listen and respond.

A lot more needs to be done but Dr Ali’s efforts are trending in the right direction. Boycotting his efforts or those who engage him is certainly not a useful strategy at attempting to bridge the divide that has us trapped as a nation in a circular tail-catching effort to better unite Guyana.

The opposition comes to the table with an overplayed one-card trick. The card is now old and sustaining the trick is becoming more and more difficult. Pulling this race card will backfire. As more and more of the Afro constituency figure out the sleight of hand, they will ignore these card spinners, forcing them to be even louder, calling on anyone to come place a bet, risk being considered pesky blabber mouths.

One can only urge President Ali and the PPP/C to continue to engage the Afro-Guyanese constituencies, provide genuine solutions to their concerns and watch the detractors wither into a super minority.

There is no doubt that there is sincerity in the effort to reach out to the Afro constituencies at home and in the diaspora. As the PPP/C continue to engage, it will better understand some of the nuances at play in dealing with Afro-Guyanese issues that the party might have missed the mark in the past. This will pay dividends at the ballot box in 2025 as it did in the 2023 Local Government Elections.