The role of ideas
Editorial
Stabroek News
July 17, 2002
For several months now the positions leading to the disagreement (often descending to the level of altercations) between Government and the major Opposition party have remained “frozen. Now, despite (or maybe because of) the very recent grave disorders there are signs of a thaw.
The Civic component of the PPP/C announced that they were meeting separately to consider developing independent positions on the issues. Almost at the same time, Donald Ramotar, the PPP General Secretary, clarifying statements made on television affirmed his party’s willingness to address any issue that addressed the present political problems (Sunday Stabroek, 9th July). For its part, the PNC/Reform has declared at the highest level its openness to ideas on inclusive government (SN July l2).
Last week, there was also the important statement by Raphael Trotman (SN, July 9) acknowledging that the PNC /Reform should accept some responsibility in terms of the disorders on Wednesday, 3rd July. What was equally important were his views on the evident failure of the current constitutional process and need to give serious thought to constitutional re- engineering.
Then in the same SN of July 9 there appeared a remarkable letter from Haslyn Parris in which he strongly asserted the need for thinking places insulated from the heavy hand of political interference or concerns about the likely political fortunes of any individual political faction.”
What is common to these several utterances is that they focus on the crucial role of ideas in dealing with conflict. This is a welcome move away from the name-calling and denunciation which has been the substance of too many recent exchanges.
To lift this discussion to a higher and more general level one might even reaffirm paraphrasing Artisotle, and in parenthesis, that it is the capacity for ideas which separates man from the rest of the animal world!
New ideas are the only peaceful solvent for frozen conflictual situations. It may therefore not be amiss to restate the conventional wisdom about negotiation. It is that positions cannot be negotiated, only interests can be. A man might demand without merit in the demand the chairmanship of an organisation; that is his seemingly intransigent stated position. But on enquiry it could turn out that his overriding interest is not in the chairmanship as such but in ensuring that his interests/objectives are maintained by the organisation. There are nearly always ways and mechanisms, other than the Chairmanship in this case, which could ensure that an individual or group’s interests are preserved.
Such reconciliation of interests requires new ideas and proposals. Indeed there can be no peaceful resolution of conflict without an openness to and infusion of new ideas/proposals.
There is much in the analysis of the current difficulties to support Mr Trotman’s contention that there is need to give consideration to some serious constitutional re-engineering to give effect to the various fears and expectations of the different interest groups.”
Many areas of the constitutional reform process,”he further pointed out, have not been implemented and even with those implemented there was still a political impasse and stand off in Parliament.”
And indeed there is a growing realisation that the Constitution Reform Commission had not come to grips with political realities but had only sought to do a patch-up job in a constitution drafted to preserve paramountcy of the party.
Trotman’s focus upon Parliament is surely right. Parliament was downgraded and sidelined during the previous administration as it was the apparent intention of the l980 constitution to concentrate power in the executive presidency. The recently concluded constitutional reform process gave insufficient attention to rehabilitating the status of Parliament which still remains sidelined as a kind of adjunct to the executive, the President and the cabinet.
It almost looks as if Parliament is seen as merely the vehicle through which the Cabinet and its ministers are created, while surely it should be the other way round. The executive should be seen as a mechanism for implementing the objectives identified by Parliament utilising the resources made available for this purpose by Parliament.
In a democracy it is Parliament which is the primary place in which group interests must be pursued and recorded through the exchange and modification of ideas in debate and out of which issue projects and programmes and legislation.
It is of the highest importance that the Dialogue should be resumed as soon as possible. But it should be clearly seen that the dialogue is a remedial measure which responds to the deficit in parliamentary power.
The democratic conviction is that if citizens see that their grievances can almost as a matter of routine be ventilated in parliament, that is a better basis for promoting social peace than strident voices on television or barricades in the streets or expanded disciplined forces.
What should be done with Trotman’s conviction, that the business of parliament needs to be revisited? It should be recalled that the Constitution Reform Commission’s specific recommendations as approved by the Special Select Committee and adopted by the National Assembly included the recommendation that provision be made for a Standing Committee for constitution reform to be enshrined in the constitution. It was also recommended that membership of that committee should not be restricted to Members of Parliament but that this committee should have the power to co-opt experts onto itself. It is clearly not possible for such a Committee to be appointed now but the important point is the intention that the operation of the constitution should be kept under review.
In the present situation could not quick agreement be reached at least to recall the Reform Commission on an emergency basis to deal with the impasse and unfinished business. After all, some of its recommendations lacked clarity.
What of the proposal that there should be thinking places insulated from political interference? A famous critic of literature once asserted that the greatness of the great creative figures like Shakespeare derived in part from the fact that great ideas were current at that time in their societies. Similarly, if parliamentary government is government by discussion it is necessary to support that process with the practice of discussion and debate, formal and informal, at all levels of society.
However, in terms of Parris’s proposal, it must sadly be recalled that one group of independent thinkers including public servants, members of the private sector and writers founded during what Martin Carter called the dark time, and calling itself Compass, encountered near tragic consequences. They felt the heavy hand of the regime when they ventured to publish their views. At least two of its members suddenly left their jobs and the country and a public servant had his contract terminated thereafter.
On the other hand and earlier there had been the New World group which had published a fortnightly journal and which led to the formation of a New World group in Jamaica at the U.W.I. which published a quarterly journal. For more than a decade the New World groups contributed political ideas to regional policies.
Earlier still in Georgetown and elsewhere cultural life turned on numerous debating and discussion groups. One group, the Young Men’s Guild, had continued for longer than two generations. This is not the place in which to begin an inquiry as to why there is today no similar level of activity.
The University of Guyana has not to any significant extent provided a focus for independent political thinking. It is not that there are no political concerns as there must be in any university worth its salt but that political thought seems subject to the same immobilisation which derives from the deep partisan divisions in Guyanese society.
Fortunately there are the lively letter columns in the press. It is a major feature in Stabroek News, but such correspondence cannot wholly take the place of face-to-face discussion. Whatever our current difficulties it is unlikely that an independent group would incur today the threats that Compass faced. It is a challenge which must be taken up as there is no substitute for independent thinking. Tony Blair consults and is advised by two independent think tanks whose views often differ sharply from his own.
Current fears and insecurity, which impinge so badly upon us, should not lull us into forgetting that the pages of Guyana’s history are full of examples where the feelings of powerlessness and despair and frustration led to strikes, uprisings, protests and disorder - situations which were likewise sometimes exploited and manipulated by an unscrupulous few.
As citizens of a small independent state, trying to develop under stress, the challenge is to develop, as other states have done in similar circumstances, mechanisms which make for social peace. This is where the need for fresh thinking comes in, the inescapable role of ideas.