Perhaps there is something to be said after all for the fact that the calendar has these convenient divisions every twelve months, so at least for a fleeting period we can pretend we are sloughing off the old year like an unwanted skin and entering on a brand new era. In any event, the partying to see out the Old Year was conducted with the expected abandon, and the New Year was heralded in the customary raucous fashion. However, all the public merrymaking notwithstanding,  not every  inhabitant – especially older people and those of a choleric humour, perhaps – would have been disposed to surrender themselves so unhesitatingly to the mass revelry. From experience they would have known that happy anticipation is a transient state; that great expectations are often thwarted; and that the new year will probably look very much like the old one – and, for that matter, like the one before that.

And so it is in Guyana. The specifics change – the elections, violent episodes, the technology, the constitution or whatever – but in their larger aspect things really do not get transformed in this part of the world. But what is unique here is that this state of ‘unchange’ has been going on for well over half a century. So when everybody noisily welcomes the calendrical transition, they might hope that the larger situation will improve, but on the basis of history they could hardly indulge any optimism that it will.

And in case they had any doubts that 2010 might be an improvement on 2009, there was the President of this land confirming their suspicions and assuring them that everything would stay the same. While ‘inclusion’ might be the watchword of those who recognize that politics has a stranglehold on this nation and that any self-respecting government has to find mechanisms which would allow for the input of all groups in the decision-making process, Mr Jagdeo was telling reporters that he would not delay dealing with “real issues” in order to win approval from a political group. As we reported in Monday’s paper he informed the media, “If you have people who don’t want to participate in national life and who feel they have to find fault with everything, then I simply have to go forward.”

He was subsequently quoted as saying “…I’m not going to wait to fix the sea defences until I have a meeting with [Opposition Leader Robert] Corbin, or someone else; I would go ahead and fix the sea defences.” Given his absurd example, either he doesn’t know the meaning of ‘co-operation’ or ‘inclusion’ in this context, which is highly unlikely, or he is being disingenuous. In his inaugural address in September 2006 following the election, President Jagdeo had made a proposal for enhanced co-operation between the political parties. There was one meeting in November of that year, but after that things came to a grinding halt, because the agenda which was to be produced by the Presidential Advisor on Governance, Ms Teixeira, never materialized. Thereafter, ‘enhanced co-operation’ was simply forgotten.

The SN report mentioned above made reference to the National Stakeholders’ Forum, which was convened by the government after the Lusignan and Bartica killings of 2008, and whose members came to accord in five areas. Among other things they agreed that the five constitutional rights commissions and the Public Procurement Commission should be appointed within 90 days, and that a parliamentary standing sectoral committee on national security should be set up. As the report stated, only two of the rights commissions have been appointed, and while the National Assembly has passed a motion to set up a parliamentary committee with oversight for the security sector it is yet to be established along with the rest of the commissions. It is hard to see these stakeholder bodies as more than window-dressing on the part of government during periods of crisis. When the immediate crisis has passed, it’s back to politics as usual.

It is true of course, that at this point in time, the main opposition is still in total disarray, and hardly seems in a position to fulfil its traditional functions, let alone rise to the occasion to ‘co-operate’ on a more sophisticated level. There is too the question of whether it commands the support among its constituents that it used to. In any case, making Parliament, for example, work as it should, depends in part on the opposition taking it seriously as an institution, and operating accordingly. Weekly press conferences are no substitute for real work on the subject areas covered by the various ministries, and for the promulgation of alternative policies which would force the government into a defensive position.

That apart, changing the way things are done here means in the first instance amending some of the structures within which we have to operate. The one of immediate concern is local government, since we are told there will be elections for the various regional bodies, councils, etc, this year. Yet a truly devolved local government system with income commensurate with its functions and not subject to central government’s whims with political blackmail in mind, is not something the administration has shown any appetite for to date. It indulged in a form of filibustering on the Joint Task Force on Local Government Reform, and then moved the discussions to Parliament, where no doubt it intends to use its majority to force through legislative amendments which still leave it in control of local authorities.

If it does do that, it will banish all doubt that the government or the ruling party ever intends to cease suffocating all initiative in this society. The quality of a democracy can be found largely in the degree of autonomy of its institutions. Especially in an ethnically and politically divided society such as this one, all groups must be allowed to feel they have some stake in it and some control over their own affairs. It is unbelievable that in 2010, the PPP still believes that keeping a chokehold on every aspect of life will produce development. President Jagdeo’s conviction that by doing what he wants – sometimes in defiance of the laws – and eschewing co-operation with any group he will be able to put us on a development path, is equally mystifying.

The PPP and the rump of the PNC are prisoners of a system which evolved half a century ago and no longer has relevance. Potentially, the local government elections could mark the first step to structural change, but that depends on the legislative framework within which they will take place. It is that which will give us the first pointer as to whether 2010 will really be a new year, or yet again another old one.