The PPP charge of ethnic bias in GECOM

guyana chronicle editorial

November 18, 2015

THE PPP General Secretary’s request that GECOM publish the ethnic profile of its employees at the last elections has once again brought the issue of ethnicity into the national spotlight.The GECOM Chairman has correctly called the PPP’s request for what it is — a further effort to tarnish the credibility of the commission, and by extension the 2015 elections. The government, through its Social Cohesion Minister, has responded with the usual charge that the PPP is appealing to race and, in the process, frustrating our shared nationalism.

The PPP’s game-plan is clear; it is doing everything it can to delegitimise the government in the eyes of PPP traditional supporters. This is the context in which the attacks on GECOM’s credibility have to be seen. The ultimate target is not GECOM; it’s the government. The problem for the PPP — and for Guyanese politics in general — is that it is difficult to engage in political manoeuvres of any kind without confronting the uncomfortable presence of ethnicity. Time and time again, the PPP has found that it is almost impossible to affirm its exceptionalism or attack its traditional opponent, the PNC, without recourse to ethno-racialism.

While the PNC has generally been restrained in its resort to overt ethnic appeals, the PPP has not exhibited such restraint. One remembers the annual Babu Jaan speeches in recent times, which have been quite graphic in appeals to ethnic solidarity and hostility. The most recent one by Opposition Leader Jagdeo was perhaps the most extreme in this regard. In that speech, for example, the ethnic identity of the PPP was, for the first time, explicitly declared.

The argument is not being made here that the PPP sets out to invoke ethnicity. Rather, it is being contended that the PPP’s brand of politics cannot be properly executed without overt resort to ethnicity. As uncomfortable as it is, the nation has to get used to that reality. Unlike its nemesis, the PNC, which seems to have disavowed the agenda of dominance, the PPP has reiterated its commitment to the politics of dominance. Pursuit of party-political dominance in our ethnic context is by definition an embrace of the politics of ethnic dominance. This is the slippery slope the PPP has embarked on.

Yet we cannot ignore the fact that ethnic representation in sensitive areas of power must be a primary concern. In this regard, the PPP is hypocritical. No government has been as guilty as the PPP was in populating the corridors of power with its ethnic constituency while simultaneously marginalising the opposite group. It is this hypocrisy that makes it very difficult to take the PPP seriously regarding many of its complaints against the government.

The larger meaning of requesting the ethnicity of GECOM’s employees is hardly hidden. The PPP wants to argue that the fact that the majority of the commission’s employees were African-Guyanese means that there was a built-in bias against the party in the conduct of the elections. Implicit in that logic is that African-Guyanese are incapable of fairness. This is one of the ugly consequences of the PPP’s tactics.

The appeal to Indian-Guyanese of their being victims of an ethnic conspiracy that is grounded in an innate culture of unfairness is hardly helpful to improve an environment for national reconciliation.