Dear Editor,
I commend the forthrightness of Leader of the Opposition PNC, Mr. Robert Corbin, when he renewed his call for shared governance in his New Year’s message to Guyanese. But being forthright here does not necessarily mean he is right!
Not that we did not know shared governance has long been the party’s post-92 mantra that entailed street protests that often turned violent and destructive, but what we found deeply disturbing was the party’s apparent willingness to go from one extreme of creating an environment conducive for violence and destruction to one in which it is virtually ineffective as the main opposition in the face of troubling machinations of the Bharrat Jagdeo-led PPP government. It skipped the middle ground of being a robust political opposition that can generate support among the disillusioned and depressed throughout the land.
I have written quite a bit about the shared governance notion some want introduced into Guyana’s political culture and I am pleased to have read the almost identical positions of the AFC’s Raphael Trotman and GAP-ROAR’s Everall Franklin on the issue. First, it is true that there is way too much distrust between the two major political players – the PPP and the PNC. And second, it is true that the concept has to come from the ground up and not the top down. A ground up push means the people, not the politicians, really want the concept, and if the people are behind it then it stands a better chance of working.
But what is also quite clear from their observations about the current state of affairs is that the PPP government is definitely not in the mood for inclusive governance, let alone shared governance, given the way in which it’s governing. While it is true there can be no shared governance if the PPP and PNC do not trust each other, it is not just about distrust between the PPP and PNC; it is also about disrespect by the PPP regime towards other parliamentary parties. It is about the government’s downright disrespect for the parliamentary process!
Editor, we may well be witnessing an emerging crisis of eroding public confidence in government on all levels and in all three branches (executive, legislative and judicial), because the executive branch is determined to dominate the political landscape, including making the legislative branch a rubber stamp; the main parliamentary political opposition is determined to do nothing to upset the executive branch in the hope of one day getting to share governance, and the judicial branch seems unable or unwilling to force the executive branch to respect the rights of the people or adhere to the laws in the justice system.
We may not merely be heading for another autocracy, but a form of controlled chaos that would allow the government to tell the people that only it has the solution to the chaos! At the end of the day, it is the one aim of the PPP government: to become the PNC by another name.
History will not be kind to Messrs Jagdeo or Corbin as elected leaders if they allow this country to continue down its present path, because neither of their approaches is in the best interest of the people; but in their personal interests. It’s unfortunate that after over 50 years of personality politics, which produced no beneficial result for the people, we have personality politics continuing to trump the priorities and principles of the people.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin,
Queens, New York
