IF you examine the political deportment of both the PNC and the AFC over the past two years, there is no strategy to capture the attention of the Indian people. In fact, the past two years have seen the crass and insensitive attitude to Indian bashing from within the PNC itself and their surrogates like Rickford Burke and David Hinds.

Why is this so? My contention is that because of the oil economy and the increasing popularity of Irfaan Ali, both the PNC and AFC realised that it has to be the next time around, but it cannot be in 2025, meaning that they gave up on winning the 2025 election or even creating a minority PPP government.

What the PNC is facing is survival, and for the AFC, extinction. Both parties then have fallen back on the position of retaining the African vote. For the PNC, it is survival time. It has 31 seats and is likely to lose about six or seven of those seats, with the majority going to the PPP.

If the PNC is going to exist, the leadership, in particular Norton, knows that winning is out of the question, but retaining the African vote has to be the overriding consideration. So, the PNC had adopted three strategies for 2025. One is to speak to issues relating to African Guyanese only. Two – try to steal the racist thunder of the lunatic fringe by either endorsing their racist sentiments or outright refusal to condemn their pathological racism.

It is for this reason that not one PNC person in the PNC’s hierarchy has rejected the constant racial drum-beating of David Hinds. Never before in Guyanese history has someone so crossed the line in racist sermons as Hinds. But the PNC as a party cannot and will not chastise Hinds because of the complexity the PNC finds itself in.

As a historical party with a huge following in Guyana, the PNC knows that the morally right thing to do is disassociate itself from such poisonous extremism. But Hinds continues to preach racism because Hinds knows the PNC is in no position to reject his diatribes because if it does, it may jeopardise its traditional African vote.

The third strategy of the PNC is not to rescue its Indian cadres who face subtle racial abuse inside the PNC. What the PNC reasons is that coming to the rescue of several high-profile Indians does not make sense since those Indians will not bring in votes anyway, so why rescue them at the expense of facing the wrath of traditional PNC voters?  For this reason, an entire school of big Indian names inside the PNC have gone.

What we have been seeing from the PNC the past two years is the politics of consolidating the African votes, and this will continue until the very day of voting. The PNC is simply worried about the substantial loss of seats in November, so from now until November, the appeal will be to the basic instinct – race. But the rawness of instinct will become rawer as November approaches because of the birth of new parties and the AFC, all of which are fishing in PNC’s African ponds.  Simona Broomes can only get traditional African votes. The AFC could only get traditional PNC votes. If Team Mohamed joins the election campaign, he too will be targeting PNC voters. Team Mohamed will not get the Indian people’s votes.

What happens then is that these new parties, plus the AFC, are creating a headache for Norton because they will be targeting PNC constituencies. We come now to the AFC. The AFC stalwarts have given up on cross-racial voting; that is why Nigel Hughes and Terrence Campbell sound like David Hinds.  Nigel got a rude awakening on April 29, the day after the Monday mayhem on April 28.

The very next day, April 29, Hughes himself denounced the violence, then the very next day did a volte-face. He walked back every word he used and barefacedly told the press that it was the PPP that sent agents provocateurs to loot, burn and beat. Why did that happen?

Hughes was no doubt accosted by his party leadership with the advice that he cannot be seen criticising African people because those are the people whose votes the AFC needs, and it was pointed out to Hughes that Norton, the day before, had blamed the violence on the PPP.

What Hughes did was to quickly run to copy Norton. The 2025 election is going to see a complete appeal to African people by the AFC because the party is facing extinction. Without a coalition with the PNC, the AFC will not get any seats. What the AFC will be doing is to copy the PNC playbook and, like the PNC, use the Adriana Younge tragedy to stay alive.                            

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.