Reflections on inclusive governance
Editorial
Stabroek News
September 3, 2002
The idea of more inclusive governance has come more to the forefront in the last fortnight since the leader of the People’s National Congress, Desmond Hoyte, said at its recent Congress that it was an idea whose time had come. That was a reversal of the party’s previous position, indeed the party had not taken on board ideas for shared governance that had been put forward during the recent process of constitutional reform. For the first time, therefore, one of the two main parties has put the idea of new forms of governance in the front of its official agenda. The executive committee of the party will presumably when it next meets, discuss in much more detail possible models for shared governance with a view to arriving at a clear picture of what model it wishes to put forward for consideration by the PPP/C and other parties if talks on this topic get going.
The response of the PPP to Mr Hoyte’s speech through various spokesmen has been varied. It has been argued that the reforms already agreed for new wide ranging parliamentary committees and for a committee to jointly manage the business of parliament and for a number of important new commissions like the Ethnic Relations Commission themselves constitute a major step in the direction of shared governance and that these should be implemented as soon as possible.
There is merit in this argument, though of course implementation has been long delayed for several reasons and this needs to be urgently addressed. They also note that the issue of shared governance was not raised during the long tenure of the PNC in government. Others have pointed out that the dialogue between the two leaders had led to some positive achievements and have called for the dialogue to be resumed. Mr Hoyte has refused to do this until all that was agreed previously has been implemented. But the ruling party has not so far made what might be termed a formal response to Mr Hoyte’s new opening.
Reports indicate that a committee of the PNC/R’s executive had done some research on forms of more inclusive governance and was scheduled to make a report to the recent congress. Time did not permit and that report will presumably be presented to the executive committee when it convenes. There are many issues to be considered but for the moment we highlight two which we believe to be of crucial importance.
In the first place, good faith is required and a willingness to play by the rules if any system of governance is to succeed. Let us take the example of Fiji. Under its present constitution, adopted in l997, the prime minister is required to appoint a cabinet that includes opposition members in proportion to their number in parliament. It will be recalled that in May 2000 businessman George Speight and some followers seized parliament and held prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry, the leader of a coalition government, and his ministers hostage for two months. The military stepped in and ended the crisis but did not restore Chaudhry to power. Elections were held in September 2000 and Laisenia Qarase, an indigenous Fijian, was elected prime minister. Under the constitution he should have appointed eight members of Mr Chaudhry’s Fiji Labour Party to his cabinet but he refused to do so. The Labour Party filed legal proceedings and the court ordered that the opposition members be included in the cabinet. Qarase still refused and an appeal was filed which is to be heard this month. Clearly, Mr Qarase and his party had acted in bad faith by agreeing to a constitutional arrangement which they later disregarded.
Without good faith, the whole business of negotiating new forms of governance can become little more than opportunistic manoeuvring to gain power.
The other issue is the question of a minority and a majority. Shared governance does not ‘solve’ or do away with that problem. For example, if there is a power sharing cabinet decisions still have to be made after suitable deliberation. In some cases it may be possible to agree on what is to be done but in others this may not be possible and the majority will decide. If the minority will not accept the majority decision the power struggle will reassert itself in the joint cabinet. One can seek to overcome this problem by giving the minority veto rights on some issues but if that is overdone it can easily lead to gridlock, as has of course happened now with the appointment of parliamentary committees.
In other words, without some level of cooperation and a good faith acceptance of rules no system of governance will succeed. There have to be compromises in the national interest, if one party keeps moving the goalposts in its own interest there will be ongoing instability, whatever form of government is temporarily agreed on.
It may be that this is a watershed in the affairs of the nation and that experiments should be made. But the participants must come to the table after proper reflection and in good faith. They must seek practical solutions that can work.