Dear Editor,
Mr Donald Ramotar is very much an insider and has no other sensible choice but to stand by the record of the PPP/C government. What is however interesting is his claim that he intends to be his own man, although using the example of the incumbent to bolster that possibility must be very disconcerting to his party colleagues! (‘Ramotar “humbled” by unanimous selection’ SN, April 5); (‘Ramotar insists he will carve his own path if elected’ KN, April 6).
If Mr Ramotar becomes president, he will be our first real grass roots president. His biography indicates that he did not just emerge from his roots, take off to some university, join a middle class profession and climb the party ladder which may lead to the presidency. For some considerable time he actually existed at the roots and his generally convivial and accommodative spirit may well have been cultivated there and signals a ray of hope.
A glance at the pages of our independent dailies will indicate that in almost every sphere, defending the record of the government/party will be an uphill task. Mr Ramotar will remember that a major opposition contention against the PNC was that it could not claim to have developed Guyana simply by pointing to some projects it completed, such as the Linden and Corentyne highways, the Canje and Demerara Harbour bridges, the National Cultural Centre, housing schemes, schools, hospitals, etc. What was not factored into this kind of an approach was that the PNC was in office for three decades, collecting our taxes, borrowing and begging in our name, and when it relinquished office Guyana was the second poorest country in the hemisphere.
I am aware that Guyana was never one of the more developed of the larger Commonwealth Caribbean economies. In 1964, the year when the PNC took office, the per capita GDP of Trinidad and Tobago was US$805; Jamaica US$518, Barbados US$463 and Guyana US$309. I have previously shown that the exaggerated educational claims for that period were simply 1950-60s propaganda.
The PPP/C is now, however, open to a similar kind of criticism. It cannot simply point to some completed projects; development is better assessed when we seek some comparison – maybe across time or/and space – and if this is done, the PPP/C will be found wanting. Particularly since government expenditure has grown from 15% of GDP in 1991 to 18% in 1978 to 26% in 2008. This is telling in view of Professor Thomas’s suggestion that generally speaking, government investment tends to be inefficient!
The PPP/C inherited an economy that grew at an average of about 7% between 1991-1997. By 1998, however, growth turned negative, and as Prof Clive Thomas said, “the performance of the economy over the 2000s as measured by the growth of real GDP in that period, was anaemic. It had in fact averaged less than 2 per cent per annum for the period, which in the context of the pressures to provide productive jobs and improved livelihoods for the vast majority of Guyanese has been inadequate.” Guyana prides itself on being a lower middle income country, and in the above period when the economy was growing at an average of 7%, lower income countries (the category to which Guyana belonged) were growing at an average of 2.5% and lower middle income countries were growing at an average of 5%. Today (2000-2008) the situation has reversed, as we grow at an average of 2%, lower middle income countries are growing at an average of about 8%. (WDI) Guyana is falling back.
All other outcomes are related to this relative poverty. Guyana has the poorest education, health and other social outcomes in the Commonwealth Caribbean precisely because it is the poorest country in the area. For example, we spend (2007) about US$115 per capita on health and Barbados spends about US$930 per capita, as a result of which our rate of maternal deaths is the highest, at about 270 per 100.000 live births compared with 64 per 100,000 live births in Barbados.
By claiming that, contrary to projections, President Jagdeo is now “pulling his own string,” Mr Ramotar drew our attention to a possibility that contains at least two interrelated problems. These are that he could become independent from both the party and (given the ethnic nature of our society) from the people. I have written persistently and in some detail on the latter issue (eg, ‘The problem is not racism but radical ethnic polarization’ SN, May 22, 2010) so I will here briefly consider the former.
The reason the government/president could not run away with the party in Soviet-type democratic centralism was because the ‘nomenclature’ (the party’s personnel department) controlled appointments to all important party and government positions, and as a result the general secretary was the boss. Whether or not the PPP wishes to relinquish democratic centralism, in our modern context and given that it has historically stood against party paramountcy, no such general personnel and other controls are possible without the tacit consent of the presidency. However, given the constitutional nature of the presidency and the difficulties of social management in our kinds of society, there is nothing to stop the incumbent from reneging on any agreement once he feels overly constrained. Here, the ruling party’s withdrawal of parliamentary support from the government is possible but would be considered reckless as it could severely affect the fortunes of both.
The issue then is not really about Mr Ramotar “carv[ing] his own path” if he wins the coming elections, as under the present arrangement, especially now that both the patriarch and matriarch are gone, he will have ample opportunities to do so. It is essentially about the type of path he will choose to carve and this will depend upon the context within which he wishes to govern. If the path he chooses facilitates the kind of institutional party and governmental changes this nation requires, then the many possibilities we have hankered after for decades will bloom. If not, we are in for another period of conflict, stagnation and relative decline.
Yours faithfully,
Henry B Jeffrey
