Dear Editor,
Your recent editorial ‘Power and Hubris’ (November 21) was an excellent treatment of the local politics or ‘governance- as-process,’ that we have experienced over the past fifty years. Your presentation of the idea that political power in a Guyanese context, will inevitably corrupt as it intoxicates, is taken in conjunction with David Hinds’ assertion in his latest letter in SN (‘T&T’s wiretapping, canal clearing and authoritarian rule’ Nov 23) that “the culture of maximum leader-authoritarian rule has long taken root in the region.”
We have had, then, laid out for us, the lineaments of the political culture that we experience, as well as one theoretical framework for its study.
The late Lloyd Best had insisted that the operative model (in the way power was perceived or exercised), particularly in Trinidad but generally in the Caribbean, was that of the “crown colony governor.” It is, he argued the model which we inherited and then perpetuated. It was a model that brought with it the expectation of a natural dirigisme in both the economic and political realms. And, we suppose, the subsequent expectation of a government that would be both omnipresent and omniscient. Ears always to the ground and fingers permanently on the buttons of every activity everywhere… And thus capable of the sort of micro-management that requires for its conduct the creation around the leader of a sort of “court,” and all that it brings in its train. Especially the network of influence and information that would exist in parallel, but essentially paramount, with respect to the civil service establishment.
In the case of Trinidad and Tobago which you cited in your editorial, it is to be noted that the PNM had almost as long a tenure in office as the Burnham PNC. This was in part also ethnic politics, and so comparisons or lessons are illuminating. The PNM became the target of charges that it was systematically discriminating against Indians and using the government to empower its co-ethnics. In both Guyana and Trinidad governments would change and the racial identity of the rulers with it.
But does the eventual change of government bring with it a change in political style and a weakening of the authoritarianism, or a modulation of its expressions? Perhaps.
Change, in the context of ethnic-derived governments means the replacement in the halls of power not only of a different set of genes, but importantly, most often a different set of cultural reflexes. Voting for a different party means voting for a different mindset and often a distinctive paradigm of empowerment. A paradigm that may not uphold the ‘lil w’uk’ as the main access to social and economic security or progress, as perhaps is still the case in the Afro-Guyanese culture. But one that would, as it appears to be in the PPP’s case, visualise government as also (though not only) a process of empowering its own victimised co-ethnics through the transfer to them of some economic opportunities and resources. For many, however the party may conceive its mission, PPP governance is perceived as essentially concerned with the transformation of power privilege, and access, into money. In a way that appears unimagined by the PNC as party, as people and as culture. This is an essential difference.
In Guyana the PPP would exercise power differently from the PNC in other ways. The utilisation of “authority” would figure among them.
The PPP is not, in our estimation “dictatorial” in any general sense of the word. And if it is authoritarian at all, it is an authority derived from its security as the legally elected party. It is an authority which is then employed and dispersed in such selected channels and areas of influence that support and promote its cultural project and paradigm of empowerment. But it is an authority laced with insecurities that prevents its release of the stranglehold it has on the Chronicle or on broadcast legislation. And it is a form of insecurity that it shares with the former ‘Burnham version’ of the PNC.
The PPP and the PNC both seemed to have been fundamentally insecure in their authoritarianism. The issue of press freedom to investigate and criticise, which your editorial pointed to, is the example in point. They both seem, in office, to have had this unfulfilled need for assurance and to having their spirits buoyed. They over-react to criticism even as they seem to feel duty-bound to spread same when out of office. And while both parties are known to have been petty in their retaliation against critics, thus reinforcing the image of an ignorant authoritarianism, they are both cautious in the uses of lethal violence. But they are not immune to the temptation to use it.
Efforts were made by the PNC to win hearts and minds, and the violence with which it is associated was by no means blind. But almost surgical in the precision of its choice of victim. No one from the PPP hierarchy. And lethal force was used mostly with respect to the WPA (when the violence was fatal), that it saw as having first drawn steel.
Similarly the PPP did not set out on a murder and mayhem campaign in which PNC or other opposition figures were targeted. But, according to its accusers, seems to have limited the scope of its operations to the dispensibles with the funny false names spreading disorder in the name of a vague Africanism from which people such as Kwayana distanced themselves. The modus operandi of the parties may have similarities, as does the exercise of authority.
But there are differences also, since the authority seems to be less public, pompous and certainly less nineteenth century in its manifestations under the PPP. And more concerned with confirming its hold on those parts of the government that was and is available to it after the half century of Afro-Guyanese occupation of the civil service and the 28 PNC years in government.
The difference in the exercise of authority, we may argue, springs from its anchorage in distinctive paradigms of empowerment. The PPP, with all its opposition years talk about balancing the armed forces does not seem urgently interested in these jobs. It has therefore had to find ways to offer opportunities to its following.
For example, the PPP seems to have imposed its authority in activities such as the dispensation of contract, scholarship, ambassadorships, better wages and conditions for sugar workers, etc. The comparison with Trinidad is therefore all the more interesting because we saw, with the Panday government, the posture was of one hand on the reins and another in the cookie jar.
We thus have to ask ourselves what exactly each party is saying when it considers power or power sharing. What cultural model will it bring in its train.
The two parties are agreed on one thing however. It is that the anglo-antillean model of society will perdure. None of the libations to African culture or the evocations of Indian dignity will budge the stone of Christian-European values that sits like a monolith among us. It is easier for the ruling party to introduce ‘human rights’ type bills, so popular in the West, dealing with issues such as gender discrimination or homosexuality, than it is for them to decriminalise bigamy that is allowed by a substantial portion of its supporters. The divorce laws, as anachronistic as they were, sat here for decades after independence, even though they violated local belief and practice.
The parties have other priorities. The parties are therefore essentially micro-managing micro-changes in the society. They are yet to have the courage or imagination that liberates us from the essentially colonial thralldom to a eurocentric order that remains the default mode for our administration.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
