IF the possibility exists for the PPP to lose its majority in future election contests, it will definitely not be in 2025. The national trauma that accompanied the 2020 election is too fresh in the souls of the Guyanese people for them to vote for parties that attempted to achieve permanent power through the rigging of the 2020 general and regional elections.

I don’t know which third parties are being hatched for next year’s election. We can discount Glen Lall’s party; that will go the way of CN. Sharma. We can surely discount the WPA even getting ten votes.
I cannot see a strong showing for ANUG; maybe in the future but not now. The Stabroek News revealed a new formation will be announced shortly. We have to wait and see who are in its line-up. That line-up better be people who have shown courage to have spoken out against the five months of election conspiracy.

The Achilles’ heel of all contesting opposition parties for next year’s poll will be their answer on the 2020 election. We had veteran trade union leader, Norris Witter on the Freddie Kissoon Show. Mr. Witter spent an hour denouncing the government on the wrong things he believes the government is doing.
Then in one moment of brutal opportunism, Mr. Witter displayed a partisan mind that had to convince viewers that he had no clue as to what is right and what is wrong, and that such values only exist in his mind. Nearing the end of the interview, Mr. Witter was asked about the attempt to corrupt the legal results of the election. He simply said: “I don’t know about that.”

Simply put, the horizon on what is right and wrong is what Mr. Witter put on it and not what objectively exists on the horizon. Mr. Witter knew about the bad things the government is doing but denied the bad things other people do. This is called convenient truths and it is the most definitive way of describing people and such people should not be listened to.
It is for this reason the PNC and AFC will be devastated at the poll next year. You can get up on the pulpit and deliver the most intellectually sparkling denunciation of the government then you watch your attendees in the face and tell them that there was no rigging in the election process in 2020. You will not get their votes.

The attempt by the APNU+AFC to continue in power after they lost the election went on for five months. Those were some of the most tragic moments in post-Independence Guyana. There was the ubiquity of despair, desperation, and depression. It will be a mere five years next year when the election campaign is in full swing. People will not forget that.
I am contending that the 2020 election disaster is going to be the destructive weakness in the election campaign of the PNC and the WPA. Except for Michael Carrington in the AFC’s leadership and Dr. Maurice Odle in the WPA’s leadership, there is no current politician in APNU, AFC and WPA that is prepared to say that APNU+AFC legitimately lost the 2020 national poll.

This is where voters will make their decision. Voters are not going to give their ballots to political parties that deny election rigging for one reason and one reason only – human nature. They are going to harbour the fear that if a party can deny that it tried to rig the election in the past, then if it gets into power tomorrow, who says it will not rig.

The trauma is still in people’s mind about what took place in 2020. This is an insurmountable hurdle, an impassable road, an impossible task for the PNC and AFC. It will not be a problem for ANUG. It decried the attempts to rig the election in 2020. It will not be a problem for new born parties if they accept that APNU+AFC attempted to subvert the will of the Guyanese people in 2020.

Here is my incontrovertible position on the 2025 election. I think the PPP will win because the tragedy of 2020 is still in the air and it is not lingering about, it is graphically present. What happened in 2020 will take time to evaporate and it will not dissolve in people’s mind in a year or two to come. When the campaign begins to swing around July to November, the PNC and AFC will face its moment of reckoning. No amount of sermonising about bad governance will get the PNC and AFC into government in 2025. The waiting will be long because people will not easily forget.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.