THE definitive presidential candidate for the PPP/C in the 2030 national election is Anil Nandlall. I wanted to use the word, “presumed” but I think when you examine political trends in Guyana, I cannot see a credible challenger to Nandlall. Four years is too short a time to see the emergence of a credible, charismatic, dynamic, persuasive, mesmerising candidate within the PPP/C to give Nandlall headaches.
Since it is a foregone conclusion as to his candidacy, Nandlall should start researching the GECOM data base for the 2025 national and regional elections. It tells the story of how Mohamed Irfaan Ali came from obscurity to leave a permanent motif in Guyana’s history book. Dr Ali in a country driven by perennial racial psychology, Dr. Ali has achieved the unthinkable. Dr Ali received more cross racial votes than another party leader in Guyana in a free and fair national election.
It is one year since he won re-election, and his detractors will never go to that GECOM database. You name any consistent critic of Ali and I will bet you anything that they will not touch that GECOM database for the 2025 election. It is left up to the academics to publish the political and sociological changes revealed in Guyana’s voting pattern in 2025.
It is for this reason, I advise Anil Nandlall to research that GECOM database. It will galvanise him to want to reach the cross-racial horizons that Dr Ali walked on in 2025. To date, only one Guyanese has done an indepth analysis of that database. He is Geoff DaSilva, former head of GO-Invest and former Guyana Ambassador to Venezuela.
Mr. Da Silva’s research is impressive. And Mr. Nandlall needs to go through it with a fine teeth comb. Mr. Da Silva ought to put his research in book form. Breaking down the categories into ethnic communities, first time voters, regional voting, plurality balloting and methodological comparison with 2020, Mr. Silva showed that Irfaan Ali became a political phenomenon. The compelling characteristic that stands out in the GECOM database is Dr Ali’s brilliant achievement of cross-racial voting.
I saw the President two months after the 2025 elections very briefly. I remember saying to him that you and who you are, and what you are made of, brought victory for the PPP/C in 2025. I am not at liberty to write about his response, but Dr Ali has a penchant for evocative humour (most West Indians do), and I laughed at what he said.
Since we are on the topic of evocative humour, I think Forbes Burnham comes first in the entire CARICOM family of nations. But Ali can make you laugh. Here are some brief statistical outlays where Dr Ali’s phenomenal feat can be found. Dr Ali won 64 percent of the vote in the combined Regions of 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9. The average percentage of Indians in that combined territory is 36 percent.
In 2020, the PPP/C got 12. 2 percent of the votes of Africans and the Mixed-race group. In 2025 that percentage went up by 20.8. In 2025, the PPP/C got the same percentage of total votes cast in the 1997 – 55.3. But contextually that 2025 percentage shines brighter because you have to remember that in 1997 President Cheddi Jagan died and there was a massive sympathy vote for the PPP/C.
In 2020, the PPP/C collected 25.5 percent of non-Indian votes. That percentage went up in 2025 to 34.2. Indian existence in Region 7 and 10 is 4 percent. In the 2025 election, Irfaan Ali took home 27. 8 percent of votes cast in those two Regions. These statistics demonstrate the dialectical changes Guyana is going through.
The Guyana we know and lived in from 1950 to 1990 is gone. Politicians who do not understand that are fools unworthy to be part of modern Guyana. What these statistics cited above have shown is that as Guyana grows, as Guyana gets more modern, as Guyana demography changes, there is a new nationality named Guyanese, not the nationality we knew 60 years ago.
These changes have profound impacts on voting patterns. People in Guyana today, do not care about who is black, white or brown. They care about what their country can do for them. And if a politician can deliver, they will vote for that politician without thinking about the texture of his hair and his ethnic last name. The reason why Kaieteur News, the Stabroek News, Christopher Ram, David Hinds, opposition parties, and anti-government civil society groups and others failed to change how people voted last year was because they do not understand the new Guyana and how it has embraced Irfaan Ali.
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.
