Political co-operation is recipe for national cohesion -Nagamootoo
By Patrick Denny
Stabroek News
February 8, 2003
The spirit of the constitution favours coalition and consensus building and therefore no proposal that could contribute to the political parties working together should be dismissed out of hand.
“Those who have a tendency to dismiss coalition building summarily without considering its merit are doing so without looking contextually at the reformed constitution.”
This is the view of attorney-at-law Moses Nagamootoo, who chaired the parliamentary committee on constitutional reform, and is a member of the PPP/C central executive committee.
Nagamootoo’s comments were made in an interview with the Stabroek News in the context of his conception of shared governance which he said, “is an imperative” and “it cannot be avoided” whatever name is given it - power-sharing, shared governance, inter-racial governance or shared responsibility.
And because consensus or coalition building is the intent of the recent amendments to the constitution, Nagamootoo is of the opinion that anyone “who thinks he can avoid it is trying to escape from the nation’s destiny”.
“The constitution is not saying that you must have executive coalition ... but the constitution is saying that you can have coalition building because the process of consultation and agreement is in fact coalition building. ... if we don’t work together then nothing happens.”
Nagamootoo saw the constitution laying “the foundation for a new ethos within which you could bring about consensus; within which you could bring about co-operation.”
“The reformed constitution provides a protocol for consensus building through consultation and agreement where the elected government can do or not do certain things or make or not make certain appointments without the advice and/or agreement of the major parliamentary party”.
Nagamootoo added that looked at from a narrower basis “it is a radical characterisation of our democracy that the government must govern with the consent of the people which in this case means not only an electoral mandate but the active involvement of all the people through the opposition party.”
He observed that this inclusiveness is at one level participatory, because “the 40 per cent loser is allowed to get into the act of governance, and at another revolutionary, because 40 per cent is not reduced to zero - ‘Her Majesty’s loyal opposition,’” which is “an outdated, irrelevant and borrowed model of democracy.”
Nagamootoo said too that the process of consultation and co-operation has its own dialectics in the society. “The supporters who see their leaders working together, consulting and agreeing and disagreeing if they have to disagree, within the spirit of the law are not going to go and rebel in the streets or cause war when you are consulting.”
So the ethos, he observed, is one that would favour consensus and coalition building.
Nagamootoo observed that the parties might want to take coalition building into coalition as a political form of administration as “the constitution is crafting an ethos and if you have political will it will accelerate to a form.”
The constitution had the framework and “you now have to give it the form,” he explained, adding that his remarks were not in relation to any proposal by any political party.
Nagamootoo argued that Guyana intrinsically belongs to all of its races and if they cannot live in harmony then the nation is doomed, adding that if the PPP and the PNC together represent “the greater interest of the nation i.e. ethnic/racial loyalty, then the co-operation of the two parties and formula to work together cannot be avoided”.
“PPP/PNC co-operation is a recipe for national cohesion,” Nagamootoo asserted, adding “what form it may take and how to achieve it must remain an open issue for debate and a decision for the people.”
Howeve,r he observed, “a proposal whenever put must have a sense of timing and it must not be seen as an attempt to eclipse an electoral term.”
“As a goodwill gesture the proponents for shared governance ... should let it be clear that its operation is intended for the future and (it is) not a ploy for a premature change of government.”
About his conception of shared governance, Nagamootoo explained that for him it is not an “opportunistic engineering of numbers” in terms of sharing the spoils of office” but has to be “a sharing of the collective will to do good for society and enhance the welfare of all the citizens of the country represented by the components of that society - the political parties.”
Nagamootoo contended that structurally, there is shared governance in Guyana as there is bipartisan governance at the level of the neighbourhoods, municipalities and regions. Politically, the geographical space is divided with the PPP running some regions and the PNC running some.
“Whichever party is in power, the opposition party in the other tier does everything to frustrate its plans.. to prevent it from looking good.”
The structure involving the central government and the other tiers must be complementary in working for common objectives in the interest of the nation.
“That is a basis for the new political culture. But if you lack the political will to make it operate in the interest of a new political culture it does not matter how much more you engineer with the constitution and how much more you become like Solomon ... you could divide the country in fifty parts or a hundred and fifty parts. If you don’t have the political will to make each of the parts work towards the benefit of the whole you will have a hostile, acrimonious, competition.”
Such a competition would not be in the interest of the nation except those “who dey pon top” and he said “that is the antithesis of the new political culture” that the constitution is intended to promote.
Expanding on earlier remarks in the Guyana Chronicle in which he observed that even if “shared governance” was a transient idea it was worth exploring even if to “buy time”, Nagamootoo said it was not meant that it should be opportunistically embraced by the government. But he insisted that he did not intend that discussion of the concept should simply be a ploy to buy time.
He explained that the comment was made in the context of government utilizing a strategy to ensure political stability and its need to employ a tactic to support it.
“A political party like the PPP which is a responsible party must create space for new ideas or even old ideas in new circumstances. It cannot and must not dismiss any proposal however unworkable some aspects may be. It cannot dismiss it summarily as one has to look at the dynamics of any idea or proposal in the body politic.”
Nagamootoo contended, “PNC supporters who have been fed with a slew of allegations that their party leadership is terroristic may wish to consider another image of their party and leadership as favouring co-operation.”
He argued that it would be in the interest of the PPP “to encourage a mood among the supporters of its opponent that favours co-operation and reconciliation as a higher goal of political struggle rather than confrontation and violence.”
