Endangering democracy
ON THIS day that marks the assassination 19 years ago of the renowned Guyanese historian and political activist, Dr Walter Rodney, at the height of a struggle for democracy and justice, there is a serious threat to democratic governance and respect for the rule of law in Guyana. This threat is being well orchestrated by the main opposition People's National Congress (PNC) and its known loyal activists acting in their respective `trade union' role to destabilise a legitimate, democratic government under cover of an industrial relations dispute. If the PPP/Civic government of President Janet Jagan does not carefully read the warning signals, while continuing to exercise restraint in the face of excessive provocations, including hurling of bombs and physical attacks on the police and journalists, then it would only have itself to blame. Any impartial observer of what started six weeks ago as a strike call by the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) in support of a 40 per cent pay hike, would find it difficult, on the basis of prevailing evidence, to avoid separating the strike from politics, anti-government, destabilisation politics. The rhetoric clearly points to a plan to frustrate, weaken and even topple the government. Not just the President of the GPSU, Patrick Yarde, who is also President of the now seriously ruptured Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC), but also the acting General Secretary of the GTUC, Lincoln Lewis, seem to have little interest in hastening the process for a practical resolution to the money dispute that has had public sector workers off their jobs for the past six weeks. By Friday last week, as this was being written, a mediation team involving representatives of civil society, including the private sector, labour movement and religious organisations, was finding out to their deep disappointment what the government had to face for some weeks before it invited independent mediation: That is, the representatives of the unions speaking for striking public sector workers, GPSU and the Federation of Unions of Government Employees (FUGE) - particularly the former - are most evasive in the search for compromise to end the strike that has already cost the nation more than G$1B, not to mention the worsening climate for racial harmony and economic development. While Yarde finds time to travel and raise funds, non-unionists whose hostility towards the PPP/Civic administration is no secret at home and abroad, are calling the shots, even when legitimate union officials are present at off-and-on-negotiations with the government. Last Monday, the Chancellor of the Judiciary, Cecil Kennard, faced with disruptive activities by protesting strikers who were preventing the courts from functioning, warned that "the Rule of Law and the dispensation of justice cannot, nor must not be held hostage in the current industrial dispute ..." He called on the police to do their duty and ensure that the courts are able to function. A surprisingly low police profile - even amid escalating violent protests, including padlocking of the gates of ministries and attacks on non-striking workers and even the police - was quickly replaced with a more visible presence of the police By Thursday, when the Prime Minister, Samuel Hinds, warned that the government would "soon have to act to restore the usual economic and social activities", this was immediately interpreted by spokesmen for the unions as an excuse to frustrate workers right to strike. And the GTUC's Lewis found it convenient to avoid attending a meeting of the mediation team. There is a striking similarity in the anti-government rhetoric of GPSU President Yarde and his colleagues like Anwar Hussein and Raymond Gaskin with that of Desmond Hoyte's PNC. For example, while in New York in March, Yarde was interviewed by a community newspaper, `Caribbean Life', in which he used language similar to that of the PNC's leadership to attack the PPP government as being "ruthless, vindictive and discriminating". Knowing then of forthcoming negotiations for pay increases, Yarde steered himself directly into the political issue of constitutional reform for new elections in 2001 and came forward with a warning that "all hell will break loose on July 18, if there is no new constitution by July 17 (this year)". Why such a threat from the President of the Public Service Union who is also currently head of the Trades Union Congress? And why such a threat of national disorder when he is aware that spokesmen for the Constitution Reform Commission have been reporting on the significant progress being made? For whom was he speaking? While union officials, including Yarde, absented themselves from negotiation meetings with the government, Hussein, Vice-President of the GPSU, was boasting how his union "will not talk to anybody unless workers could be assured of the 40 per cent pay increase ..." Significantly, he also made the threat that although "the union might stand to lose its leadership, it is for the government to say whether they want to be thrown out ..." For his part, PNC leader Hoyte was urging the striking workers to "escalate their action" and "hit the government where it hurts". He forgot, apparently how governments of the PNC had responded to the wages and salaries of public sector workers. Hoyte's statement was officially drawn to the attention of the CARICOM Secretary General, Edwin Carrington, in a letter pointing to violence in the strike by the Guyanese Trade Minister Michael Shree Chan. Carrington was to publicly condemn the resort to violence and urge the parties to the pay dispute to "embrace the principles of compromise and realism". But the PNC's organ, `New Nation', reflecting the party's own agenda in an editorial attacking the government as a regime "without shame", urged the workers against any compromise. It told them "they have nothing to lose but their poverty", and suggested that if they fail now, then "the next item on the government's agenda will be a "cleansing' of the public service". If there are mixed signals about the agenda of some of the union leaders and advisers, there can hardly be any doubt about the agenda of Hoyte's PNC which is on record as threatening to make the country "ungovernable". Ironically, the country is the very one that the PNC had reduced to "one of the 20 poorest nations in the world" and made Guyanese public sector workers the "lowest paid in the Caribbean" during its unbroken 28 years of rule based on institutionalised electoral fraud. The question of immediate relevance is what shift in policy can be expected from the Guyana Government in the face of continuing violence, threats to law and order and a convergence of anti-government interests under the guise of an industrial relations dispute? 
|