Dear Editor,
Guyana is an absolute power kind of country thanks to several factors. Generalized ignorance, lack of education, miseducation, fatigue from constant struggle, plain laziness and nonchalance, racial apprehension, docility, the cut-and-run mentality, the don’t-give-a-damn mindset, the hero worship of money and power (illegally secured or not), the plight of poverty, etc. That said, the biggest factor that aids the absolute power mentality is race and more specifically race politics. This is a country where political power is the real power. Those who win power get it all. Government directly and indirectly employs a massive chunk of the population. It owns major industries.
The 1980 Burnham constitution has made the presidency and government untouchable. Government collects the most wealth in this nation with one of the most draconian taxation systems on earth. In every facet of life in Guyana, government plays an overarching and dominating role and meddles with impunity.
Since 1992 this power has unfairly transferred and re-distributed taxes and revenues from poor and middle class hardworking Guyanese into the hands of a select few using a corrupt and failed procurement and contracting system. It is the nation’s greatest wealth redistribution scheme. So how do we fix this absolute power disaster? Firstly, education is key. Start teaching our children about democracy in schools. Secondly, democratize our communities from church boards to RDCs. Thirdly, fix political parties. They are the heart of the problem. They are corrupt, failed, flawed, broken, close-minded, groupthink-dominated and horribly authoritarian organizations.
They deny their members from speaking out on their totalitarian tendencies. They practise no real internal democracy. Their memberships are small yet they cannot ever hold full open leadership primaries. Nor have they ever reformed themselves to allow more democratic decision-making. See the PPP’s Stalinist show of hands voting method and the proposed merger of the party leader and opposition leader roles in the PNC for reference. Unless political parties reform themselves in a serious manner this nation is doomed. Without reform, the political parties will always get an abundance of yes-men, sycophants and self-aggrandizers. They will continue to drive quality away.
Fourthly, constitutional reform is paramount. Remove that Burnham constitution, reduce the powers of the presidency and separate powers more distinctly. Give such reforms some teeth to bite huge chunks. Fifth, electoral reform is necessary. Change this racialist parade of tomfoolery we call the electoral system and look at alternatives for accountability such as mixed voting systems where we use both first past the post and also proportional representation to elect Parliament. That will allow more independents and political independence to emerge. Sixth, institutional reform is critical. Clean up the institutional mess where many in this country cannot even blow their noses without dealing with some incompetent government nincompoop who can barely spell his name, creating a bureaucratic mess for the sake of maintaining his government-created appeasement position and to remind people of the might of governmental interference.
Create a new organ of state called the Audit Organ as a separate and distinct organ from the executive, legislature and judiciary and give it absolute power to hunt down and destroy corruption. Sixth, get overseas Guyanese to return home in large numbers to help with executing these reforms. Frankly, Guyanese at home cannot get it done alone.
They are too caught up in, trapped by and benefit from the system to even know how to begin to change the system. The few good people in Guyana are just too few. These are just a few solutions. These solutions must operate together. If we don’t change somebody else like the Brazilians will come in and change it for us. And we won’t like it and before we know it, we will become interlopers in our own land.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell