Caribbean & Central America - December 2018

Guyana’s A Partnership for National Unity-Alliance for Change (Apnu-AFC) coalition government will be feeling less confident about re-election in the crucial 2020 general election after a mediocre showing in November’s local elections and the news that President David Granger has cancer (non-Hodgkin lymphoma).

The local elections on 12 November were memorable for the fact that it was the first time in 50 years of independence that Guyana has held successive local elections on the constitutionally ordained date. The last local elections, in March 2016, were the first to be held for 22 years.

The key difference between the latest local elections and those of 2016 is that the AFC did not run as a coalition partner. It went its own way, and it paid the price, proving unable to win seats in either the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) Indo-Guyanese rural heartlands or in the mostly Afro-Guyanese townships where Granger’s People’s National Congress (PNC), the main component of Apnu, dominates.

The main positive for Apnu is that it easily retained control of Georgetown, the capital, but it did lose ground, winning 21 of the seats on the 30-member council as against the 25 it won in alliance with the AFC in 2016. The AFC, campaigning on its own, won two seats in Georgetown. The PPP/C improved its 2016 performance by winning seven seats in Georgetown under the mixed first-past-the-post and proportional representation system.

Nine of the Apnu’s Georgetown seats were allocated under the PR system, 12 were straight wins in first-past-the-post contests. PPP/C received four seats from the PR system and three under the first-past-the-post system. AFC won two seats, both via PR allocations.

Analysts are taking two key lessons from the results. The first is that race-based voting remains an unshakeable component of Guyanese elections. It is a more important factor than policy. The second is that Apnu and the AFC do better together than apart.

However, the AFC’s poor showing makes for difficult coalition politics. Internally the balance of power was already shifting away from the AFC. Having gained a generous deal prior to the last national election to secure key seats in parliament and ministries in government, it has failed to make inroads into PPP/C strongholds and ended up losing ground in several constituencies where it had performed well in 2011. Now, with the local elections going badly, it will be nearly impossible for the AFC to secure promises for a similar level of power in any post-2020 government. Nevertheless, Apnu did not excel at the local polls either, and the AFC still brings to the coalition the promise of multiracial appeal and so Apnu is likely to be cautious in casting the AFC aside.

The other factor that must be making Apnu cautious about jettisoning the AFC is Granger’s illness. He is the coalition’s strongest asset, with his reputation for being clean, but it now seems highly unlikely that the 73-year-old president will lead the coalition into the 2020 election. The one asset that the government does still have, however, is the power to spend money, and although first oil from Guyana’s huge recent offshore discoveries is not expected to begin flowing until election year, the temptation to turn on the spending tap ahead of first-oil, through borrowing, has just increased significantly.