We have just celebrated 40 years of being a republic. Nevertheless we must acknowledge that Guyana, like few other countries, still remains burdened with an array of handicapping legacies of the post-colonial period.
By far the most crippling legacy is our archaic system of government. This winner-take-all system, by definition, produces a significant population of ‘losers.’ And if we are to stay in the idiom – the losers get nothing. As long as the dynamics of the winner-loser relationship continue to be played out in ethnic terms we will have a permanent group of people who perceive themselves as marginalized and less than equal. This has been and will continue to be a recipe for economic underachievement, instability and crime. Guyana has not become the second poorest country in the hemisphere by chance. As a nation we have failed to observe and be honest about what works in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural environment and what does not.
We have failed to introduce a political system that suits our own best interests given our permanent heterogeneity. To this extent we have been the architects of our own progressive deterioration.
Amazingly some of our ‘thinkers’ continue the pretence that a system of governance transplanted from a more sophisticated and evolved political culture dating back to Edward I’s Model Parliament of 1295 can somehow succeed here in Guyana. Others want change but are unwilling to make change. And of course the few beneficiaries of the present governance system want business as usual. We have to ensure that in 2011 a new dispensation is given the opportunity to make the constitutional changes that will in time deliver us from the jaws of total disaster as we fast become an amoral and lawless society. This side of the 2011 general elections there is a willingness to embrace coalition government and put in place an alliance of compatibles including opposition parties, civic society and prominent persons here and in the diaspora.
The motivation to forge such a broad alliance for victory at the upcoming general elections stems from a diagnosis that division is a major cause of our national decline, and that unity will be part of national recovery. Power to the alliance!
Yours faithfully,
F Hamley Case
