First, I take strong umbrage with Dr Joey Jagan who contemptuously wrote in his letter, ‘Shared governance is what we really need,’ (SN, February 8), that the Alliance of Change’s “five seats in Parliament following the 2006 polls under the present constitutional arrangements, is really a ticket to nowhere.”
The present constitutional arrangements are not inherently bad because, in most Caricom countries, almost the same constitutional concept obtains with no major problems. The difference with Guyana is that Guyanese don’t vote for a party whose manifesto best resonates with their views on the day-to-day issues; they vote race because the PPP and PNC decided a long time ago that they represent the two major races of Guyana and so they prey on the fears and insecurities of what each thinks is its support base.
Without the race card, the PPP and PNC will be rendered virtually irrelevant, and so rather than anyone blaming the constitution exclusively as the main reason for the man-made dilemma in Guyana’s politics, or even aiding and abetting the PPP and PNC in remaining relevant by talking up shared governance between the two, we should encourage Guyanese voters to send a strong message to the PPP and PNC that the problem is not the constitution, but the polarizing politics of the two parties. But after reading Dr Joey’s letter, I don’t think I can count on him to send even the PPP a strong message that its own agenda and modus operandi have not delivered in the last 17 years after the pathetic performance of the PNC for 28 years.
I used to read his many tirades of the so-called Gang of Eight that hijacked his ‘father’s party’ and have been leading it the wrong way, yet this is the same party that he thinks is worthy of engaging in shared governance. Even he will admit that the PPP today is a far cry from what it was under his father, so unless the party undergoes some serious reforms in leadership and operating principles, it is doomed to repeat its mistakes.
And for all the noise Dr Joey loves to make about his father being a political fighter and great leader of the party, what does he think of his father not having a succession plan in effect at the time of his death in 1997? Guyana needed a strong leader to continue the fight for its economic revitalization after all the PNC did, but when Dr Jagan (Sr) was on his death-bed, he allegedly scribbled a note handing the presidency/leadership of the country to his wife who was not even a cabinet minister and actually elected not to serve the cabinet. What kind of succession planning was that? Did it not lead to what he called the Gang of Eight and the current state of affairs in the PPP, its government and the country which he finds atrocious and complains bitterly about?
Someone once said that the hallmark of a great leader is not the number of projects built or goals achieved, but when he or she moves on, he or she must raise up great leaders to ensure continuity of those features and factors that made that leader great in the first place. If there is one thing Dr Joey’s father failed at is in the area of successful leadership. What’s the point of building a house only to have someone else come along and break it down or damage it? The PPP has been severely damaged during the Jagdeo presidency!
I also wish to point out that despite being formed only a year earlier, the AFC still managed to win five (the matter of the sixth is in the High Court) seats by competing in the 2006 election under the same constitutional arrangements that he somehow thinks don’t favour the AFC, but may favour either the PPP or PNC. He should tell us how a one-year old political party could win five parliamentary seats in Guyana when, traditionally, the seats have been largely split between the PPP and PNC?
Is it not possible that, despite present constitutional arrangements, those voters who voted AFC represented the pioneers of breakthrough and breakout politics aimed at ending the PPP-PNC stranglehold on the nation? And while post-election data indicates that those AFC voters were drawn from the PNC’s so-called ethnic support base, post-election data also indicates that a significant portion of the PPP’s so-called ethnic support base refused to vote.
2006, therefore, was a year in which we saw unusual voter apathy despite the President declaring Election Day a national holiday, and if the disgraceful performance of the PPP in the last 17 years – that is matched only by the equally disgraceful failure of the PNC to keep the government in check – is any indication of what could obtain in 2011, I wouldn’t be surprised if the AFC makes greater inroads into the PNC’s so-called base and even make a raid on the PPP’s so-called support base. If Dr Joey doesn’t know then someone needs to tell him quite bluntly that neither the PPP nor the PNC truly represented their so-called constituencies in the last 10 years, and even though the AFC is new and barely tried and proven, voters may still wind up voting for the AFC even out of frustration with the PPP and PNC.
This brings me to my second and last point: shared governance. Dr Joey seems to be of the opinion that shared governance is the way to go in Guyana, with the PPP and PNC being the major players. Well, let me say, on behalf of all Guyanese who do not believe the PPP and PNC should ever engage in shared governance, that given their individual failure to be truly representative of the people they claim to represent and their failure to engage in genuine reforms aimed at making their parties more transparent and accountable to the nation, shared governance would only be a recipe for more of what we are already witnessing.
The same way you cannot put new wine in old wine skin lest it burst, you also cannot throw shared governance (new wine) into an old bottle (old wine skin called the PPP and PNC). For the PPP and PNC to ever be involved in any shared governance arrangement would require they both be subjected to a higher political authority or a powerful independent referee to keep them in check, and the only authority or referee capable of doing that right now is a third political party which can beat them both and then decide to give shared governance a try. And even then, that third party would have to be extremely careful not to be undermined or backstabbed. Besides, there is no real clamour among the people for the PPP and PNC to come together in the interest of the nation, because the people are aware that they do not truly represent their interests.
Meanwhile, I have long said that the only way the PPP would consider shared governance now that it is in the driver’s seat is if it strongly believes it will lose an election. At that point, it will throw a monkey wrench in the electoral process, make all sorts of spurious claims and allegations, and even create conditions conducive for public uncertainty before publicly declaring that in the best interest of peace and stability it will engage the PNC in shared governance.
Shared governance should be an ideal only after it has been declared by all and sundry that the nation is incapable of being effectively governed in unity by one political party and so all parliamentary political parties and civil society stakeholders become joined in an effort to save the nation. In short, shared governance should be the result of a grassroots desire and not the result of political parties deciding, as PNC Leader, Mr Robert Corbin, says it should be. And since it is the people, not the politicians, whom shared governance would affect the most, then to determine whether the shared governance experiment should be given a try, the government and Parliament should put this concept to the people in the form of a referendum. Let the people, not the politicians, decide their own future, for the government is by the people, of the people and for the people.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
