WE will never know what Guyanese are interested in, who they trust, who they are skeptical of, who they are wary of, who they think are detestable, which social dimensions of Guyana hold their interest etc. The reason for this is the lack of scientific polls.
When you do a scientific survey, you come close to a real reflection of how people think. This is because your samples have to be a demographic reflection of the nation. If you survey only older folks, you will go wrong. If you survey only rural folks, you will go wrong. If you survey only urban residents, you will go wrong. Once done scientifically, surveys gauge the likes and dislikes of a nation.
Importantly, the questions are the key. If your questions are slanted in a certain direction, you will go wrong. Who shares out the questionnaires is important too. Humans tend to be less suspicious of women. You can put that down to human nature. If two men go into a yard and hand out the questionnaire to a housewife and her two daughters, they will quickly fill the form so the men can leave. What happens then is that they do not stop to think about their answers. If two neatly dressed young ladies enter the same yard the housewife and her daughters will be less nervous and more accommodating.
These are things that are important in doing a scientific survey. When that survey adheres to required criteria, you have a very close reflection of what goes on in a country. The only problem that besets a scientific poll is the time lapse. If the survey is completed two weeks before a national election then it can be misleading because things happened in those two weeks that made people change their minds.
The University of Guyana does not do surveys as other universities do. One of the reasons, and perhaps the only reason, is funding. A poll in Guyana will be expensive because this is a comparatively large country (all CARICOM nations can fit into Guyana) and the staff will have to be many.
What is terribly atrocious in this country is the unmodern mentality of our rich companies and wealthy families. The commercial banks, the insurance companies and some unimaginable rich families could employ academics to do surveys and the money spent will be dropped in the ocean. But those people, given their mentalities, will never be so patriotic in a million years.
I thought, Nigel Hughes lost a glorious opportunity to be the presidential candidate on an APNU+AFC ticket for the 2025 elections. He is a wealthy man and would have gotten financial assistance from a billionaire like Terrence Campbell to do a scientific survey about whether people wanted him, Aubrey Norton or an outsider to be the candidate.
Norton would have had to back down once the survey showed he had zero support and zero support he had. But the PNC executives had no poll results to use to pressure Norton. It is questionable that Norton would have accepted the results of the samples but the results would have put pressure on him. Why Hughes did not go that route is a mystery. Maybe he and Campbell felt they didn’t want to spend that kind of money.
If that was the reason, it cost them dearly, especially Hughes. A coalition with either Campbell or Hughes or a woman without baggage who did not belong to a political party would have dented WIN considerably. I believe sincerely, that Irfaan Ali made the PPP unbeatable but a coalition with a presentable personality would have stolen considerable votes from WIN.
In analysing the politics of 2025, one must always remember the words of Bharrat Jagdeo at one of his post-election press conferences. In accounting for WIN’s showing, Mr. Jagdeo said those voters did not want to vote for the PPP and neither did they want to vote for the PNC. This explains the devastation of the PNC and that devastation came about entirely because of Aubrey Norton. If ever there was a time when a candidate should not have entered an electoral contest, it was Norton in Guyana in 2025. You can’t blame Norton. Psychology prevents the cricketer, footballer, singer and politician from seeing that their time has come.
One of my favourite politicians in the entire world is Jeremy Corbin of the UK. But I knew Corbin would have been devastated in the British election. He should not have contested. Kamla Harris’ psychology prevents her from seeing that she is a born loser and should never ever think about being the American president. To be continued.
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.
