Dear Editor,
President, Jagdeo and the PPP have had 16 years to heal the wounds of the past and bring Guyana into the 21st century, free from the racial divisions which have hamstrung the country and its development. When President Jagdeo stated recently “we have to change the political culture of the land,” he opened up an opportunity to begin a debate on what has plagued the country and kept it from realising its potential. Here’s hoping that this debate will begin and that it will be done in a non-partisan way, where statesmanship and not parochial pontificating will prevail. It is time for healing and not name-calling and blame-mongering.
Dr Jagan was a Guyanese first and foremost, and it besmirches his legacy that the political party that he founded and led has forgotten and betrayed his dream of a united Guyana. The time for African/Indian/Chinese/ Portuguese/Amerindian, etc, Guyana is over. It has been the bane of the nation.
It is time to recognise that diversity is a strength if it is properly harnessed. This is the strength of the country. Playing the game of divide and rule is destructive and is only of use to those who put personal political ambitions and gains ahead of the good of the people. The next leader of the PPP must have the courage to take a clear stand on this. He/she must have the will and the fortitude to define what is wrong and what must be done. He/she must stand for a united Guyana and lead the way in uniting all Guyanese. This will not be easy. There will be those in the party who will resist in order to protect their selfish interest. These must be revealed for what they are – the enemy of the people. Racial healing, electoral reform and accountability must be the order of the day.
The next leader must clearly ensure that the party reflects the diversity of the country. He/she must co-opt, recruit and attract representatives from these groups. He/she must remove any doubts and any apparent racial, religious, regional and gender bias. It is time to move on.
PR, the colonial tool that has been used to divide the people, must be changed. When PR was imposed on Guyana, it was meant to ensure failure. Posing as a more democratic means of choosing representation, it was instead a means to exacerbate the racial/ religious differences. Guyanese had lived together in peace and friendship for years. In the villages, the estates and the cities, people lived, worked, prayed, partied and went to school with each other. (I attended Central High in the fifties. I met my best and lifelong friends there. We went to each other’s home, ate each other’s mother’s cooking and dated each other, and it did not matter whether your name was Fung/Lam/Prashad Singh/ Odie /Dublin/Wong/Edwards/ Fernandes or Daniels or Mangar.)
Guyana needs to adopt an electoral system that is truly representative. There are some strengths in PR – greater mathmatical accuracy – it allows for small parties to have a voice and it allows for party control and thus discipline, etc, but it deepens cleavages and divisions, leads to a multiplicity of political parties and thus to minority or coalition government which tends to be unstable and incoherent (held hostage by the demands of junior partners in order to survive… the tail wagging the dog). Bad governance is the result. There must be a wedding between PR and single member by plurality. There is no need to increase the number of seats in the legislature. Here is what can be done. Half the seats can be elected by PR and half by first past the post. There are 10 administrative regions and each is allocated a number of seats (rep by pop). These can be chosen by first past the post. The other half will be shared on the basis of popular support and distributed according to party list. In this way, a more representative and a more accountable government can be elected. The regions will have a voice, the people are more accurately represented, the parties can still exercise discipline and you have a government that is more legitimate, more accountable and more able to govern.
Let the debate begin.
Yours faithfully,
Ishwar Prashad
