‘Wi likkle but wi tallawah’

Declaring her party as “small but mighty”, Presidential candidate for The Citizen’s Initiative (TCI), Rondha Ann Lam, was accompanied by a humble procession of party members as she submitted the party’s List of Candidates at the Umana Yana last Friday, on Nomination Day.

Citing several challenges in attracting the minimum requirements for both the general and regional List of Candidates necessary to qualify the party to be on the ballot paper for both elections, the party decided to forego the regional elections this go around.
The party’s procession gathered in front of Tower Suites and walked the length of Main Street into High Street to the Umana Yana to submit the lists to the Guyana Elections Commission. (GECOM)

The party will be contesting in the minimum six geographical constituencies in the general elections, and successfully submitted the lists with some 12 other parties on Friday. Hence the party relegated itself to contesting elections in Regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Ten.

“We’re very confident of making ballot today, we’re very pleased with the hard work of the TCI members and now we’re off to present our list to GECOM. We are small but mighty. We’ve been on the ground collecting signatures, doing everything we need to do, and we’re ready for this,” Lam expressed.

The party was hopeful of coalescing with some other small political parties prior to Nomination Day, however that never materialised, with many of the smaller parties being confident that they are better off divided. Nonetheless division did not help those parties get numbers, and many of the small parties had to settle for contesting either the general or regional elections, incapable of meeting the requirements to contest both.

“We have been in conversations with almost everybody. We have not ruled out anything. We have not reached the stage of arriving at any modalities,” party executive, Ruel Johnson, explained.

“It is unfortunate that we couldn’t come to an agreement with any party. At the same time, I believe a multiplicity of parties contesting is what we want to present. From the beginning we told all the smaller parties we are going to build our brand, but then time ran out.”
To contest the general elections, political parties had to submit a National Top-Up List of Candidates with at least 40 members, backed by no less than 300 nominators; in addition to at least six Geographical Constituency List of Candidates that collectively come up to at least 25 candidates. The six Geographical Lists requires at least 150 nominators per list. In the general elections, parties contest to win seats in Guyana’s 65-seat National Assembly, where laws are made and decided upon.

TCI is one of 11 small political parties contesting the upcoming elections, and like the other small parties, TCI was challenged to work with limited financial and human resources, and struggled to grasp candidates and nominators in many of the hinterland regions. The party had to decide to forego contesting these regions altogether.

Johnson explained that not many citizens are quick to chance joining a new political party, and the challenges were many. “One is logistical. Even though we contested primarily on the coastal region, it’s a long coast. Second one is a socio cultural one in that people are afraid to engage in politics, which is part of the reason we formed, which is to encourage citizens to participate more. In the long term that is a socio-cultural burden that people have to overcome, and that’s one of our primary goals,” Johnson explained.
Nonetheless, he says the party remains optimistic.

“We provided the minimum, but we’re good. We’re optimistic. We’ve gotten a sense of an undercurrent of change that people want. But we like numbers, we like precision so we are going to do polling and that is going to assess how we project going forward,” Johnson said.

Johnson, who is also the party’s communications officer, noted that since the party does not have funds to conduct rallies or reach too many communities, members will be doing mostly walkabouts and community meetings with citizens as it campaigns in the lead up to March 2.

The party is still to organise how they plan to go about that, or what communities they will target. The party has no prime ministerial candidate, or any plans to name one, and does not plan to release a manifesto, however, Johnson said the party will look to release a party plan on the country’s Republic Anniversary on February 23. TCI is one of several new political parties that were formed in 2019. TCI was launched in October 2019, pushing for greater citizen and youth involvement, the legalisation of marijuana, and constitutional reform, among other things.