(John Stuart Mill dealing with the question of fallibility in human affairs in his essay on Liberty)

Is useful debate possible in an ethnically divided developing country with no established independent intellectual class or traditions? As the quote from Mill indicates, at the best of times people debate with a degree of unfairness and inaccuracy by misrepresenting or ignoring the arguments of their opponents. There is also the problem that those involved in the debate often don’t know the facts or only know some of them, haven’t done the necessary work or research to get to grips with the issue and have no habit of reflecting or checking before they make statements. In an ethnically divided society, there is the further problem that all issues tend to be refracted through a racial prism which colours the interpretation of facts.

Take the issue of African marginalisation, a sensitive issue on which strong views are held on both sides ranging from those who argue that there has been a deliberate policy on the part of this government to discriminate against Africans to those who argue that there is no marginalisation and that indeed the position of the African in terms of health, housing and education has improved under this government which has not practiced any form of discrimination. There is a yawning chasm between these views but the truth of the matter is that no one can give a definitive answer without carrying out intensive investigation into a number of issues. These would include the levels of poverty in 1992 and 2002 in rural and urban areas, the rate of unemployment then and now, the quality of education and health care available then and now, the effect of the IMF structural adjustment programme bravely instituted by then President Hoyte in his last three years when the economy was in a state of collapse and which led to some new investment and development but also impacted adversely on the urban working class which was affected by currency depreciation, a substantial trimming of the bloated public sector, removal of subsidies and so on.

And even after assembling the bare information and the statistics on jobs, housing and so on some level of interpretation of the facts would still be necessary.

For the debate to be fairly joined one would have to start with a proper definition of the problem. How do you define marginalisation, how do you measure it? Does it include issues like the loss of political power in 1992, the loss of high level public sector jobs due to privatization before and after 1992 and so on.

Unless the debate is approached in good faith and in a spirit of objective enquiry there can be no proper understanding or fact finding.