Dear Editor,
According to your Thursday news article, President Bharrat Jagdeo told a batch of 53 students who recently completed studies in various disciplines in foreign countries, “We have to work to change the political culture of the land,” without going into the specifics of how this must or can be done.
Before I go further on this, let me point out for readers’ benefit that this ceremonial event was actually reported by both Stabroek News and Kaieteur News, but not by the state-run Guyana Chronicle, and undercut claims and charges by the President and government officials that the private newspapers focus extensively on negative news related to the government.
Getting back to the headline attributed to the President, since he did not go into specifics, I’d like to suggest three major areas that need urgent attention.
Race politics: This is the number one area of concern because from it stems all the other ills plaguing our political culture. For over fifty years Guyanese Indians and Blacks have been misused by the PPP and PNC, respectively, for support and votes to keep these two parties viable. In the process, the two major races became divided along political loyalty lines, and this was consequently manifested in social tensions, especially in run-ups to elections and shortly thereafter.
Neither party can ever unite the two major races after deliberately splitting them for politically partisan reasons. Worse, since whichever party wins government has to reward constituents for their support and votes, it is impossible for the winner not to be accused of ethnic discrimination since constituents are purely ethnic based.
To change this, parties and politicians have to focus more on social and economic issues affecting people and openly debate these issues before the people. The electorate should be encouraged to vote based on whose arguments seem to resonate more with the voters, instead of continually hyping what this or that party did or would do to a particular grouping. Time to stop generating racial insecurity and fear to whip up support and gain votes; it is not helping heal the hurts or narrowing the divide.
Representative politics: This is the number two area of concern because of its sheer dishonesty in allowing political parties to foist parliamentary representatives on the people, as opposed to allowing the people to pick their own representatives in free and fair elections for the nation’s highest decision-making forum.
Based on the current party list system that allows the party to select its parliamentarians, the Office of the President has become the highest decision-making forum, because the parliamentary majority basically rubber stamps the government’s wishes. Parliamentary opposition objections and debates are seen as ‘going through the motions’ with no genuine fight for workable resolutions.
To change this, the number of seats in Parliament should be allocated in proportion to the number of people living in the ten administrative regions. Some regions may have to be grouped as one if the numbers living there are sparse. But each region should be allowed to vote for their parliamentary representative who must constantly update constituents on issues dealt with in Parliament and should be subject to recall by constituents if warranted.
Parliamentarians should also be allowed to vote their conscience and not along party lines or in line with the President. Only then will Parliament become the nation’s highest decision-making forum, because it will reflect the voices and will of the people.
Transparent and accountable politics: This third area can easily be taken care of if the first two are adequately addressed. Except for matters pertaining to national security or current sensitive political and economic negotiations that could have serious repercussions if not handled responsibly, all government business should be the people’s business. There really should be no line of demarcation that separates what the government is doing from what the people need to know. Today, the government only lets the people know what it wants them to know, and this forces the private media to play a balancing role by engaging in investigative journalism.
To change this, however, government must make all decisions available to Parliament; whether or not Parliament discussed, debated or decided on the decisions. Second, government must pass and abide by a Freedom of Information Law that would allow Parliament, media houses and local private organizations, especially stakeholders, to access information in government’s domain.
Of greater import, if the President would allow every manager to be held publicly accountable for his or her area of responsibility, it would go a far way in helping end his micro-managing style and reducing his unnecessary concerns about negative news and their impact on his image. In fact, it will make managers take the heat directly for jobs they agreed to do for a price. Their performance, not the President’s, will be spotlighted!
Finally, it may be asking too much, but if there is no transparency and accountability in the political parties seeking to form the government, how can we expect them to enforce transparency and accountability rules if or when they run the government?
The answer to the President’s call for a change in our political culture, therefore, first rests with changes in the political parties.
Do they want to? If they do not, no one should pay attention to rhetorical remarks about the need for changes in political culture.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
