Last throw of the dice
Freddie on Friday
Kaieteur News
July 9, 2004
The President announced that he has asked Jimmy Carter to visit Guyana to assess the current political situation. The President has requested the Carter Centre to remain in Guyana to observe the conduct of the next general elections. This is the last throw of the dice for every actor involved in the Guyana scenario.
For Carter, this may be his last diplomatic shuttle to help Guyana come out of its so-called permanent state of political instability. Carter is getting on in age, going into his eighties. By the time 2006 comes around, it may be his last trip to these troubled shores.
For the PPP, it needs Carter to be here for the election to stop a conspiracy by destabilisers who will use the election as a pretext to engineer political violence. For some sections of the opposition, civil society and the business class, it will be the final opportunity to tell Carter to emphasise to the PPP that it does not own this country, and that it must share Guyana with other responsible and patriotic stakeholders.
If Jimmy Carter comes back to Guyana, it will be a magnificent display of concern for this country. I think it would be close to being correct to say that in all the countries he has mediated conflicts, Guyana has proven the most intractable.
Mr. Carter has been badly bitten by the PPP and the PNC. I first met him at the Pegasus in 1992 through the initiative of Father Andrew Morrison. Carter is one of those persons with an evocative smile that gives off an aura of genuineness about him. He comes across as someone who is trustworthy.
He is certainly the most liberal president the US has ever had even more democratic than his nearest rival, Woodrow Wilson.
Carter may not have come to grips yet with his failure to bring peace to Guyana. I doubt very much that he expected the rule of the PPP to become what it is today. From speaking to top academicians from the Carter Centre, I know that they hold the view that the PPP has not managed power in a way, they, the Carter Centre people, had expected.
In that sense, the Centre may have felt that it can no longer contribute to a peaceful covenant in Guyana, thus its reason for leaving.
Desmond Hoyte’s mistreatment of Carter may have left a bitter taste in the mouth of this great international statesman. At the last general elections, before he left Guyana, Carter said at a press conference that the two contending parties, PPP and PNC, had agreed to a sustained endeavour that would effect political changes for a more democratic and peaceful Guyana.
But after Carter left, Hoyte repudiated that statement, in effect saying that he had no conclusive arrangement with him.
After the Jagdeo approach, Carter is reported as saying that he called Robert Corbin. It would be interesting to know what the topic was. But this time around, Carter would insist on a written agreement. If he cannot get that from the PNC in 2006, then it makes no point in coming to Guyana to observe elections because one of the main contenders in the election would not be prepared to abide by the results.
It is most logical to assume that Carter will make that demand of the PNC. If Guyana is to have a peaceful future, then our periodic elections cannot continue to be an opaque chemical about which there will be violent disagreement among observers.
There is no scientific alternative to elections. A country’s population must be given the right to vote. Once citizens have voted, the results must be respected by all stakeholders once international observers have certified their wholesomeness. Governance is another matter, which must be separated from free and fair elections.
No serious international mediator like Jimmy Carter would classify good governance as an internal issue that impinges on sovereignty, even though it is a sensitive matter which some believe should lie outside the purview of international actors. Good governance within sovereign states is a human value to which members of the global community must subscribe.
Good governance has never been practised here since the fall of the coalition administration in 1968.
With free elections, it was an anticipation that never materialized. In this sense then, the ruling PPP has failed Carter. Carter no doubt honestly believed, through all the discussions he had in the pre-1992 period, that once electoral democracy was restored, Guyana would be an example of an attractive post-dictatorship democracy.
Far from it. Guyana today is a failure in the use of election to enhance the process of democracy.
Though it would be a scandalous, treasonable untruth to say that the state in Guyana is authoritarian, it would be more to the truth to say that the Burnhamite state in both style and substance is alive in Guyana. Under Burnham, human rights abuse was the defining characteristic. Under the present PPP leadership, the distinguishing motif is corruption. How ironic it must be for Jimmy Carter that his diplomatic intervention in Guyana in 1992 resulted in a change of administration in which an unelected government proved to be more liberal and more accountable than an elected one.
When Carter comes here, the main stakeholders must insist upon him that he outlines for the PPP the compulsory requirement of good governance in the administration of the country. The new leadership of the Guyana Manufacturing Association (GMA) and the Private Sector Commission, groups like ROAR, GIHA, GHRA, opposition parties, and others must request that Carter gets a written pledge from the PPP that if it wins the next poll, there must be a national embrace. From 1992, the PPP has ruled Guyana with only PPP personnel and have chosen to distribute the resources of this richly endowed country to its followers, supporters and lackeys the way a banana republic operates.
This is coupled with the kleptocratic license that the PPP has bestowed to its leaders. You call all of this bad governance. When Carter comes here, we have to hope he gets the PPP to change. It is the last throw of the dice. If Carter does not succeed, then this country will die.