WHEN it comes to elections in Guyana over the past 20 years, the researcher has a goldmine at GECOM. What GECOM has done is to make available to the nation the results for each polling station.
There are entire districts where ethnic communities are concentrated. Three examples are powerfully conspicuous—South Georgetown, from the famous Le Repentir Cemetery going further south, consists of a concentration of African Guyanese.
Port Mourant is almost 98 percent Indian. And thirdly, it needs no mention where our Indigenous folks can be found. You take the statements of poll (SOPs) for these three areas of Guyana and you can tell which party lost and which party won and you make the logical deduction of ethnic cross-racial voting. That is scientific evidence that cannot be denied.
The scientific evidence points to Leonora giving overwhelming electoral support to the PPP. The President hails from that area. You cannot contradict that scientific evidence because it is there on paper, just as the SOP for Plaisance and Linden showed that Aubrey Norton lost votes in those two places, with the former being where he has lived a long time now and he comes from the latter. WIN got a huge amount of African votes and we know that because the SOPS for predominantly African places showed WIN left the PNC behind.
The 2025 general election was different from the earlier elections, omitting the rigged polls of 1968, 1973, and 1980 under President Burnham and1985 under President Hoye. In the elections of 1956, 1961, 1964, 1992, 1997, 2001, 2006, 2011, 2015, and 2020, the results closely approximated the ethnic composition in Guyana. One can say that from 1957, there was no substantial cross-racial voting that resulted in a huge gap between the two major parties. In 2006, the PNC was reduced to 36 percent but that reduction benefitted the AFC and not the PPP.
The only general election that saw phenomenal cross-racial voting was 2025. The WIN party was a huge recipient of cross-racial preferences but unlike the traditional voting patterns that the PPP has experienced and endured since 1957, the 2025 general election has broken the racial jinx for the PPP. The PPP received a large measure of African ballots that the nation has not seen in any election before.
My contention is that the politics, personality, and achievements of President Ali were the crucial factors in the PPP’s accomplishment of cross-racial embrace. I concede that oil money transformed the total horizon of Guyana, thereby allowing the incumbent to receive the gratitude of the nation. I concede that the PPP as an organisation campaigned astutely and was seen by people in a positive way. But in my analysis, the phenomenal dimension of the 2025 election results was the attitude of African Guyanese to President Ali.
The present African generation is a very young one and they broke with their previous generation by moving away from the acceptance of ethnic pandering. African Guyanese showed no interest in the ethnic sermons of David Hinds, Rickford Burke, Tacuma Ogunseye, Mark Benschop, Aubrey Norton et al. They rejected these ethnic preachers for President Ali and the WIN party.
African Guyanese saw and see Irfaan Ali as a different politician from those that emerged since Independence. They believe he is not racially biased, believe he wants to accommodate African Guyanese in the futuristic pathways of Guyana and most of all, they believe they can talk to him and he will listen. That belief system about President Ali translated into votes for him in 2025.
As he enters the final five years of his role as a Guyanese patriot, there is a huge caveat that Dr. Ali has to be sensitive about and spend the next five years working on it. It was Vice-President Jagdeo who explained WIN’s success. He said there were African Guyanese that did not want to vote for the PPP and in rejecting the PNC, they chose WIN.
Here is a theory about WIN that President Ali needs to examine. I believe by 2030, WIN is going to be severely damaged. It is going to be a shell of itself. By that time, the PNC will be almost nonexistent. When that happens, Mr. Jagdeo’s words have to come into play- He said WIN’s voters did not want to vote for the PPP so they voted elsewhere.
Those voters are African Guyanese and they are just over 100,000. Who are they going to vote for in 2030? My theory is the PPP (which will have Anil Nandlall as its presidential candidate) will attract them over from WIN if Dr. Ali spends the next five years attracting them. He will do it and he will succeed. Irfaan Ali may solve Guyana’s ethnic dilemma long before 2030. That will be the centre of his great legacy.
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.