New analyses
Editorial
Stabroek News
August 11, 2002
The position of the governing party has been consistent over the years. As far as they are concerned, democracy simply means free and fair elections, and the winner then takes all. The Guyana situation, the argument goes, is no different from one where the electorate is more-or-less ethnically homogeneous. The party rejects the propositions that the society itself is split along ethnic lines, that the PPP is not a multi-ethnic party, that it does not represent all ethnicities in the country, and that disaffection in the African community has its origins in the fact that an 'Indian' government is in office.
And as for the matter of why the nation is in the middle of a tempest, the answer according to the PPP is because of the actions of the PNC which is misleading its supporters. Were it not for them there would be no turbulence around the Guyana ship of state, and there would be economic development for all.
It is at best a patronizing view of the 42 per cent of opposition voters - the majority of whom go to work every day, are law abiding citizens and have never taken part in a protest - to say that over a period of forty years and two generations they have naively allowed themselves to be manipulated by the PNC.
Is the PPP seriously suggesting that only its - mainly Indian - supporters have political sense, and that most other voters are fools and cannot see that they are being used by an opposition whose ends are nefarious? Does it not occur to the governing party that there is some problem here which they are not analysing correctly?
And there is something else as well to which the PPP has closed its eyes, namely, when the PNC loses control of its constituency the vacuum which is created provides an opportunity for the radicals to move in. If nothing else, the current situation supplies ample illustration of this. In other words, the PNC has exploited the sense of alienation in the African community when an Indian government is in power, but it has not created it.
But even supposing for the sake of argument it were the case that making the PNC 'behave' was the solution to the underlying political problem, over four decades the PPP has come up with no idea as to how to achieve this.
All of which does not mean to say that the PNC has operated rationally either.
It has bullied, intimidated and blackmailed, and like the PPP, it has not acknowledged the root of its problem - at least not in public. Instead of admitting a demographic deficit which would prevent it from coming into office in the foreseeable future and dealing with that, it has tilted at windmills.
Instead of recognizing the inevitable alienation of one group or the other which occurs whenever either of our ethnically based parties is in office, it places all the blame for current African disaffection at the feet of the actions of the present government, which while it has had a role to play, is not the sole underlying cause of the problem. Has the leading opposition party forgotten so quickly the sense of oppression which the Indians felt during its long years in office, including the first four years in the coalition when it was legitimate? Aside from the morally unacceptable nature of the violence employed by the PNC supporters, and the fact that other alternatives were available to the party as means to an end, it is simply not clear what the end actually was. Given the parameters, exactly what is it that the PNC wants? Its leadership is not so unsophisticated as not to know that achieving power by force is not an option, and that it will be constrained by the hemisphere to act within a democratic framework, so how does it see the future? Where is the haven for its constituency and the nation?
As we appear to be slipping almost inexorably into a state of anarchy the concept of shared governance has made its reappearance. The real opportunity to do something radical about our constitution was allowed to slide during the process of constitutional review which preceded the last election. That is no argument, however, for not continuing to adjust the framework of the state to respond to our situation, something which is still possible through the agency of the Constitution Reform Committee.
Mr Hoyte has made it clear in the past that his party was not in favour of a shared governance model, because, among other things, it was dangerous in any democracy not to have an opposition. His point is well taken. It might be added that given the level of distrust between the two major parties, we can almost guarantee gridlock if we were to make the leap of faith to this arrangement.
However, what can be said is that the present model is not working, and will not work, and that somehow we need greater 'inclusiveness,' to use the PNC's favoured word. (The PPP also uses the term, but they mean something different by it, i.e. as little change as possible.) Exactly what is to be encompassed within the concept of inclusiveness, and the precise nature of the checks and balances in the system which would be necessary in a constitution which reflected greater participation on the part of minorities, is something which would have to be worked out.
In a very general sense one would hope that as a starting point both parties would accept in principle the decentralization of power - a viable local government system, for example, a vibrant Parliament, autonomy for as many bodies as possible so that when there is a dispute, the central government is not automatically involved, etc.
In other words, an incremental approach to minority participation in governance may be the way to go, so we can test out what works and what doesn't, and so that we can accommodate any future developments which are at present unseen, or at any rate are perceived as improbable now, but may not be so in the future. Incremental, however, should not equate with painfully slow.
What stands in the way of forward movement is the parties themselves - the absolute obsession on the part of the PPP to exert as much control as possible in the system, despite the fact that the situation has already slipped away from its grasp to the point where the state itself is under threat, and the bullying mentality of the PNC which has not worked out a future for the party, or a modus operandi of how to get there without the use of its traditional tactics.
We wait to see whether these two old foes can arrive at new analyses of the situation, and together guide us out of the maelstrom.