A grouping of civil society organisations will lobby all parties contesting the upcoming polls to commit to a post-elections process to reform the political system in order to ensure genuine inclusivity.
The electoral system should be used to seek binding pledges and commitments from all contesting parties to agree to the creation of a formal mechanism after elections in order to reform the political system in the direction of securing genuine inclusivity, says one of the proposals out of recent consultations conducted by the ‘Facing the Future’ initiative.
The initiative, which is a grouping of civil society organisations, yesterday said it had generated a programme of activities based on the conclusions of a three-month preparatory process that set out to identify what has been preventing citizens from contributing to a more inclusive, prosperous and secure future here. This is part of a year-long discourse to engage political parties and citizens on issues preventing citizens from realising their potential in Guyana.
In a statement, the grouping said the 14 sponsoring organisations and other interested civic bodies would over the course of the year implement proposals that have emerged out of the process, as they “represent an opportunity and a challenge for Guyanese from all walks of life to contribute to a united future.” The grouping noted that implementation of the activities will be undertaken in as public a manner as possible to avoid misinterpretation and mischief, in order to enhance transparency and to emphasise the importance of citizens expressing themselves on issues of importance to them.
The sponsoring organisations are the Amerindian Peoples Association, Church Women United, Commonground, Community-Based Rehabilitation -EBD, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Guyana Council of Churches, the Guyana Human Rights Association, the Guyana Islamic Trust, the Guyana Society for the Blind, the Guyana Workers Union, the Institute of Development Studies, Rights of Children, Red Thread, and the Vilvoorden Women’s Organisation.
According to the statement, the preparatory process, which involved a cross-section of Guyanese, concluded with a week-long visit by distinguished constitutional experts Dr Yash Ghai, Dr. Jill Cottrell and Dr. Bertie Ramcharan, who have wide experience in societies challenged by ethnic diversity. Drs Ghai and Cottrell, who are from Kenya and Dr Ramcharan, who is Guyanese, held a series of conversations with representative opinion from ethnic, religious, business, women, youth and student sectors as well as political parties. They also inter-acted with individuals at a public lecture and a panel discussion, which provided input for the proposals that emerged.
‘A political class’
The ‘Facing the Future’ consultations found that a political class comprising both major races exercises power by manipulation of ethnic vulnerabilities, making for a political system that fails to make adequate room for all citizens to contribute to development. “Its members, to differing degrees oblivious to a growing sense of injustice and dismissive of effort to engage in dialogue, have grown complacent over the need to modernise political life,” the grouping said.
It added that resistance to modernising political life is reflected in a reliance on ethnic loyalty as a substitute for public policy, an unwillingness to address either fundamental or minor flaws in the electoral system, the absence of legislation governing political parties and the failure to provide integrity in political leadership. “This lack of incentive to modernise, united to limited interest and less capacity of this class for analysis or reasoning, defines the nature of the challenge for securing political change,” the grouping said.
It noted that the present political system fails to acknowledge adequate space for citizens to elaborate their concerns about the present or ideas for the future, thereby increasing the responsibility of civil society itself to explore new and more effective ways of communicating both among themselves and with the relevant authorities. In particular, it highlighted the significant number of young people who expressed “widespread unhappiness and frustration” both with the present and what they perceive of the future and it said this situation “increases the responsibility of civic society to provide space, guidance and leadership for their energies.”
In this vein, the grouping said that it is proposed that a vision for the future of Guyana needs to be elaborated, along with the principles that should guide the process and the way in which it should be realised. “The elaboration of such a vision should be highly participatory, reinforce the importance of citizens expressing themselves and be as public as possible,” the grouping said
Further, it noted that civil society should create a constitutional forum or peoples’ constitutional commission, to stimulate discussion and encourage development of the new forms of political life required to translate to reality the vision of the future.
Diluted
Additionally, while noting the need for post-electoral reform of the political system, it was noted that civil society must remain vigilant until such a process is completed, given past experiences of reforms being diluted at the final stages of the process.
Another proposal is for the mounting of a national public conversation on ethnicity, which it said should be assessed carefully. “Such a discourse would aim at demonstrating how the technique of politicising ethnicity has been used for generations by the political class to mislead people of all races that ethnic differences were the major obstacles to progress,” it explained.
Moreover, it said racial harmony should be mobilised at community levels to counter the traditional politicising of ethnicity by unscrupulous politicians. “Such activities should promote genuine and mutual respect between communities, replacing the ‘pacification’ campaigns being launched to prolong acceptance of a discredited electoral system,” it added.
Meanwhile, the grouping emphasised that in order for civil society to play a facilitating role in bringing to fruition this programme of activities, it should avoid any inter-mingling of roles which might debilitate its effectiveness. In this regard, it said it should be made clear, for example, that civil society does not include business or profit-oriented bodies; political parties; or organisations related to the police or military. Rather, it said civil society includes religious bodies, professional organisations, NGOs, community-based organisations and sports and cultural organisations. All organisations defining themselves as civil society should also subscribe to strict impartiality with respect to political parties, it further stated.
The conclusion of the ‘Facing the Future’ consultations are in sync with a study examining the Political Culture of Democracy in Guyana, which found that only about half of the Guyanese population is satisfied with how democracy is functioning here. The study, conducted as part of the 2008/9 AmericasBarometer series of surveys under the Latin American Public Opinion Project, also found that ethnic tensions remain between the two dominant ethnic groups in the country, Afro Guyanese and Indo Guyanese. It said one of the primary characteristics of Guyanese democracy is political competition based on ethnicity and it cited voting preferences at the 2006 general elections, noting that 68.7% of Indians voted for the PPP/C while only 3.7% of Afro-Guyanese voted for it, and 75.1% of Afro-Guyanese voted for the PNCR compared with 1.7% of Indo-Guyanese.
