PRIME MINISTER Dr Denzil Douglas of St Kitts and Nevis was still awaiting yesterday – when this column was being written – whether voters had favourably responded to his expectations for a fifth consecutive term in government of his St Kitts and Nevis Labour Party.
While the Nevis Reformation Party of Vance Emory – a partner of the combined opposition parties Team Unity – won the first of two seats to be declared for that sister island of St Kitts, a surprising decision by the Supervisor of Elections to suspend declaration of further results amid spreading political tension meant the long wait for the official outcome to be disclosed by last evening.
For his part, Dr Douglas, reputedly a veteran “Anancy” politician, remained optimistic about securing a fifth consecutive five-year term for what will be his swan song in parliamentary politics.
The first of five regional elections scheduled for 2015, the St Kitts-Nevis poll was occurring while the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago and their Caribbean cousins from far and wide were immersed in what they merrily celebrate annually and project as the “greatest show on earth” – even if the claim amuses people familiar with Brazil’s carnival.
Now that the curtains have officially come down on T&T’s 2015 Carnival and the start today of Lent, the guessing game is expected to intensify on whether Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar would risk an early poll while her popularity remains ahead of that of Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley.
That would mean summoning her “partnership” coalition of parties – dominated by her United National Congress in the 41-member House of Representatives – long before September when she is more likely to lose a prevailing winning edge to Rowley’s People’s National Movement (PNM).
More than current domestic preoccupation with T&T’s election politics is the changing political scenarios across in Guyana, where there was the dramatic launch on Valentine’s Day last Saturday of a major opposition coalition of parties to collectively oppose from one platform the governing People’s Progressive/Civic (PPPC) at the coming May 11 national and regional elections.
Well, for all the political bitterness and divisive strategies that have traditionally characterised various opposition parties in recurring campaigns to replace the PPPC in government – which has been repeatedly returned to state power with free and fair elections since October 1992 – the main opposition A Partnership For National Unity (APNU) and an Alliance For Change (AFC) finally chose to make “political love” last Valentine’s Day by forging a single anti-PPPC electoral alliance for the coming May elections.
Unlike any other member state of CARICOM, Guyana holds elections under the system of proportional representation with parties required to submit their list of candidates, as distinct from the traditional first-past-the-post electoral system with party candidates and independents competing in demarcated single constituencies.
Grouped in the anti-PPPC electoral front are APNU, which is dominated by the People’s National Congress (PNC), whose founder and leader up to his passing in 1986 was Guyana’s first executive president, Forbes Burnham, and currently headed by a retired brigadier of the Guyana Defence Force, David Granger. The AFC’s leadership comprises largely ex-PPP and ex-PNC elements.
Together APNU and the AFC’s had, as separate political entities, secured a majority of one seat in the 65-member National Assembly at the November 2011 elections – leaving the PPP’s successful executive presidential candidate, Donald Ramotar, who had convincingly won the presidential poll, to govern with a minority of one.
While the APNU/AFC anti-PPP election front was engaged last week in mapping out strategies for “national unity and economic progress”, an immediate sensitive political issue arose for consideration: whether it would be politically wise for APNU to go ahead with its leader’s already announced plan – prior to last Saturday’s political marriage with the AFC – to launch the opposition’s elections campaign this Friday to coincide with the birth anniversary of the late PNC leader and executive president Forbes Burnham. We should soon find out.
•Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean journalist.