Tag Archives: “Proportional representation”

Guyana Elections Results 2020 – Statements Of Poll + GECOM Official Website Links -updated

Guyana Elections Results 2020 – Statements Of Poll (posted outside polling stations)

.
Official and preliminary General and Regional Elections 2020 results from GECOM will be provided when they become available.

General Elections Results From Statements Of Poll   …     READ MORE

GECOM OFFICIAL WEBSITE LINKS: UPDATED

Preliminary General Election Results- https://guyanaelectionsresults.com/general-results/

Preliminary Regional Election Results: https://guyanaelectionsresults.com/regional-results/

Unlike other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries, Guyana does not use the “first past the post system in electing its government, relying instead on Proportional Representation. There are 65 seats in the National Assembly’              Continue reading

The Struggle for Recognition of the Indigenous Voice in Guyanese Politics – Janette Bulkan

September is Indigenous Heritage Month in Guyana

By Janette Bulkan – University of British Columbia , Vancouver , Canada

ABSTRACT: In Guyana’s racialised geography, Amerindians live in scattered villages in the vast hinterland that covers 90% of the country. Amerindian iconography is appropriated in statemaking, even while Amerindians themselves are consigned to a patron–client relationship with the dominant ‘coastlander’ society. In the late 1950s, Amerindians made up only 4% of the national population but voted as a bloc in the national elections of 1957, 1961 and 1964, rallying around Amerindians, coastlanders, reserves, mining, Venezuelan land claim, Rupununi Uprising, proportional representation, government-organised non-governmental organisations,
Guyana Action Party the first Amerindian member of the legislature.            Continue reading

Israel: Parliamentary Riffraff – Uri Avnery

Parliamentary Riffraff 

Uri Avnery

WHEN I first entered the Knesset, I was shocked by the low standard of its debates. Speeches were full of clichés, platitudes and party slogans, the intellectual content was almost nil.

That was 52 years ago. Among the members were David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Levi Eshkol and several others of their kind.

Today, looking back, that Knesset looks like an Olympus, compared to the present composition of that non-august body.

AN INTELLIGENT debate in today’s Knesset would be as out of place as a Pater Noster [Our Father] in a Synagogue.    Continue reading

BBC Radio British Guiana politics in the 1960’s – radio documentary

BBC Radio British Guiana politics in the 1960’s

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tj74v/Document_30_08_2010/

Mike Thomson investigates how Britain undermined British Guiana’s democratic process as the colony inched towards independence in the early 1960s.   BBC Radio

In the last of the current series Mike Thomson investigates how Britain covertly manipulated the democratic process in its South American colony, then known as British Guiana in the run up to its independence in 1966. Mike discovers new documents which show that they deliberately scuppered the outcome of their own conference organised to determine the country’s future.

On the face of it the conference, held in London in October 1963, was designed to confirm the constitutional future for what was then British Guiana. Publicly Britain encouraged the country’s Prime Minister Dr Cheddi Jagan – who had been fairly elected in 1961 – and the leader of the opposition Linden Forbes Burnham to agree terms for independence. However, behind the scenes, the documents reveal that the British were working to a different outcome – to ensure that agreement was never reached.    Continue reading

New Year Reflections and Wishes – By Eusi Kwayana

New Year Reflections and Wishes

By Eusi Kwayana

May the New Year bring new efforts to allow the Guyanese people to achieve what we deserve. When a religious personage of the Hindu faith, Swami Aksharanda, recently addressed the broad Hindu community in the context of a festival, he spoke prophetic words. He called on men to respect ALL WOMEN. If every religious faith called on its men to respect ALL WOMEN, there would be a chance of growing respect for all women. That would be the beginning of a great change.

 I am personally grateful for all support in many non-political ways from ordinary Guyanese wherever I happen to be. In particular they organised to help sell my modest books. Their support was given whether they agreed with my views or not. To the extent I have the capacity to give back in return, I do freely volunteer my time and services where I am, though it is not home.  Continue reading

Recording Guyanese political history – Nigel Westmaas

Recording Guyanese political history: Memory, `archives’ and narrative overlook

By Nigel Westmaas

This essay is concerned about the politics of memory.  As Guyana’s newest political (elections) season unfurls there will be  numerous references to events, concepts and phrases that support attendant political narratives, that is, Guyanese political history as mainly defined by the two mass political parties that have been at the helm of the country’s political life since 1953. This contemporary concentration on a convenient nomenclature of Guyana’s political history that devolves primarily on the narrative of the two dominant political forces is hardly surprising given the grasp these organisations have held on national political consciousness up to this point.

The nomenclature of  events and concepts by which the two main political parties (the PPP and PNC) define  and control the narrative of “modern” Guyanese politics include:  the “1950s” and “1960s”; “Disturbances”; Feed, Clothe and House the nation”; Enmore Martyrs”, “First Past the Post “ system; ”Sun Chapman” and the preceding Wismar incidents; “ Power-sharing”; “rigged elections”;  “Partition”; “Proportional representation”; and “paramountcy of the party”.  These favourites in the local political lexicon, as important as they are separately and collectively, sometimes uncritically legalize the philosophy and actions of one main party or the other in the representation of Guyana’s political history. This dominance leaves in its wake silences or ill attendance to other political narratives, past and present and the need for a thoughtful search for an improvement in our political narrative and culture.    [more]

%d bloggers like this: