THERE isn’t a day that passes in this country that the PPP isn’t confident that it will win the next general elections due in months’ time.
The PPP knows two things about Guyana that no one in the PNC, AFC, and WPA even reflect on. Before we discuss how the PPP is ahead with these two types of knowledge, one can single out the WPA for the most pathetic decline in political epistemology.

The WPA recently announced its new executive with David Hinds as presidential candidate. In a recent WPA executive meeting, Clive Thomas, at one time one of the leading intellectuals in the CARICOM region (Prime Minister, Michael Manley once asked Thomas to advise him), made a most backward, racially driven statement that shows how far he and the intellectual quality of the WPA have declined.
The above paragraph here is to reinforce the point that none of the anti-PPP opposition parties knows what the PPP knows.
So what does the PPP know. The first thing is that Guyana’s sociology has changed beyond recognition from the 1960s and 1970s. We do not have a huge ethnic majority gap in Guyana that can automatically win elections. No ethnic group is even in the percentage of 40 percent of the population.

If you are going to win an election, your compulsory pathway has to be multi-ethnic strategies. The taboo for any party is to avoid racial rhetoric or racially programmed language. It is a recipe for disaster. The PNC, AFC and WPA by some bizarre irrationality accept participation in national elections but do not accept that they need multi-racial votes to win the very elections that they contest.
Everywhere you look inside the PNC, AFC and WPA it is the pyrotechnical exhortations on race. It is so insane that you want to believe something psychological has happened to these people. Indians in the PNC keep leaving and it is as if there is the silent wave of “good riddance.”

The AFC reconstituted itself under Nigel Hughes and two problems were instantly born. One is that Hughes’ direction after his announcement that he had quit politics was in the area of Afro-centricity. From 2020 until the present moment, anyone examining Hughes’ politics would see it has no multi-racial grammar. It was, therefore, surprising when I read that he wanted to lead the AFC.
The second problem is that the success of the AFC was based on the multiracial support it got from Guyanese with its multiracial image when it was born in 2005. In today’s AFC, all the top positions in the party’s hierarchy are African Guyanese. Finally, the recent revelation by Clive Thomas in a WPA executive meeting on African Guyanese voting for the PPP and the sadistic racial advocacy of David Hinds and Tacuma Ogunseye are a huge act of electoral self-destruction.
To think with this kind of furniture in their political house, these people will actually be contesting power in which they have to win 51 percent of the ballots. Even if every African Guyanese registered to vote gives their vote to a PNC-AFC-WPA alliance, it would only be 29 percent.

So the PPP knows that it has no competition and that it is going to win in 2025 because the grand coalition of PNC, AFC and WPA cannot get cross-over votes. It is a colossal impossibility that even 100 Guyanese Indians will vote for this grand coalition. I would advise you if you are a supporter of the grand coalition not to jeopardize your mental health by thinking your party can win in 2025. That is another impossibility.
The second thing the PPP knows and its strategy is geared towards this in its 2025 campaign is the changed demographics of Guyana today. We have about 75 percent of the population between the age of 18 and 45. They have little interest in

politics. They do not know about PNC versus PPP, Jagan versus Burnham. They do not care to hear about who is an Indian and who is an African.
They live in a Guyana that has no resemblance to 1997 when Desmond Hoyte initiated “mo fyaah/slo fyaah.” Over 50 percent of the population is between 17 and 19 and do not know who Demond Hoyte is. You cannot use 1980 election strategy to win over such people in 2025.

These young people do not read newspapers, do not follow political narratives and believe their country has come of age with oil. The only party in Guyana that recognises this changed landscape and is engaging is the PPP. While the PPP is busy occupying this landscape, the PNC, WPA and AFC are busy telling Guyanese about apartheid in Guyana, and young Guyanese ask: “who or what apartheid is?”

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.