Cross-ethnic voting has emerged
by Dr Prem Misir
The polarisation at election times in Guyana...is politically superficial, not national, and is devoid of sustainable impact.
GUYANA is racially polarised between Indo and Afro Guyanese!
This is a tiring and familiar, but unwanted and unsubstantiated battle cry heard at election time. After elections, this so-called polarisation evaporates into protracted hibernation. It lacks sustainable impact between elections.
If, then, 'polarisation' is a mere electoral phenomenon, how do we classify and rate it? We know that racial polarisation is symptomatic of ethnic conflict.
However, racial polarisation and ethnic conflict are two distinct scenarios, and ethnic conflict is a pre-condition for racial polarisation.
Polarisation refers to an increasing separation, a rise in inequality in wealth and income, which are becoming more concentrated on one end of the spectrum and sparse at the other end.
Polarisation, in effect, implies considerable inequality between two groups and where one group may exercise dominance over the other group. The imposition of inequality and dominance on a group creates the threshold for schism.
But the amount of racial polarisation in Guyana, or any society for that matter, is determined by the level of ethnic conflict.
Keeping in mind that ethnic conflict may be socially constructed, how, then, can we determine and explain the state of race and ethnic conflict in a society, such as, Guyana?
Marger (1997) feels that the response lies in the answer to four questions:
* What are the types of inter-group relations?
Based on the responses to the aforementioned questions, Guyana, as a multiethnic society, is deeply divided if it is characterised by hostility and violence; unequal and different treatment; prejudice and discrimination used to sustain ethnic inequality; and assimilation and/or cultural genocide.
On the other hand, Guyana, as a multiethnic society, is not deeply divided if it is typified by cooperation and accommodation; relatively similar treatment; minimum ethnic inequality; and pluralism.
What happens here in Guyana is that without working out the level of ethnic conflict, some people definitively conclude that racial polarisation permeates the entire social fabric of the society.
Some questions these people need to examine prior to making a determination on racial polarisation are:
* Is there residential segregation? These are only some of the questions that have to be answered before we can pronounce on racial polarisation.
In an evidentiary sense, both groups have comparable socioeconomic status (SES), their SES being collectively indexed through education, occupation, and income.
Both Indo- and Afro-Guyanese are well represented on the three indices.
The SES of an Indo-Guyanese largely determines his/her class position in the society. For instance, an Indo-Guyanese with a low SES will have a low class position, and vice versa.
The same line of argument holds for Afro-Guyanese, or any other ethnic group. If we agree that both groups have comparable SES, then this comparability does dilute the polarisation argument, as polarisation, by definition, will provide access to resources for one group and not to the other.
The battle cry of racial polarisation, however, continues apace.
But this calculated and mean political rhetoric about racial polarisation creates and galvanises one ethnic group's perceptions about its supposed dominance to the other ethnic group, and vice versa.
However, these perceptions could be false, due to a comparable SES for both groups. These false perceptions mainly emerge during the elections season.
Notwithstanding their falsity, these perceptions are real for their holders, and eventually influence their behaviours. So in one sense, then, we can argue that racial polarisation in Guyana is a perception.
This perceptual polarisation, in the context of comparable SES for both groups, is born not out of one group spewing racial hatred, imposing inequality, and dominance, on another group.
But it is born out of a political subterfuge enabling political aspirants to gain advantage at electoral times. Guyanese voters need to be cognizant of this!
The polarisation at election times in Guyana, therefore, is politically superficial, not national, and is devoid of sustainable impact.
But let me make it clear that pockets of racism and institutionalised discrimination prevail in Guyana, as they do in any other multi-ethnic society.
The 'polarisation' argument is further advanced to demonstrate that Indo- and Afro-Guyanese will vote for the People's Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/Civic) and People's National Congress (PNC), respectively. But this argument can be stultified in another way through reviewing ethnic voting patterns at the 1997 elections.
Most Guyanese would agree that both elections in 1992 and 1997 were based on democratic principles. Given that democratic principles were applied, and given that we use the 60 per cent rule for determining voter population, then some miniscule crossover ethnic voting occurred in 1997.
This conclusion is supported by the mathematics of votes by ethnicity. Let us further explore this notion.
The population by ethnicity in 1997 was as follows:
SOURCE: Guyana Statistical Bulletin. Bureau of Statistics, June 1997
Based on the 60% rule, the 1997 general elections should have the following voters by ethnicity:
Indo Guyanese 224,595 In the 1997 elections, PPP/Civic received 220,667 votes, PNC 161,901 votes, TUF 5,937 votes, and the AFG 4,783 votes. Comparisons of voters by ethnicity with the votes obtained by the main party demonstrated some miniscule cross-ethnic voting pattern.
While the differences between voters by ethnicity and votes obtained by parties were small, they were significant, given the small total population. Cross-ethnic voting is healthy for Guyana's political development.
In any event, sustained cross-ethnic voting will eliminate the superficial polarisation prominently played out by 'race' politicians at election times.
These are political candidates using the race card.
Some people continue to view the PPP/Civic and PNC/Reform as grounded in ethnicity.
This belief, however, resonates with a past that traps its holders as prisoners. In these people's judgements, it's as if the social demographics have remained constant.
Demographics are always changing. For instance, in 1997, 56% of the voters were aged 35 and under, and in 2001, this percentage has risen to 60. In effect, young people constitute the majority of the electorate compared to any previous elections.
An increase in the mixed population is another significant demographic that has changed and is changing. How the young people and mixed population respond at election times must impact the ethnic base of the two major parties.
If we refuse to accept the nature of this impact, then we reject the reality of change.
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