The African Cultural & Develop-ment Association (ACDA) is calling on political parties to contest the upcoming national elections under a shared governance system.
ACDA, in a press release issued yesterday, said the organisation “again calls on all peace loving and just Guyanese to tell all political leaders enough is enough and ask them to sign a binding declaration that is judiciable, that all political parties will go to the next elections, whenever held, under a shared governance system that will give all Guyanese the peace and justice they deserve under a government of national unity and reconciliation.”
Recently ACDA’s executive member Tacuma Ogunseye was the main speaker at the “UN International Year of People of African Descent” outreach meeting in Beterverwagting, East Coast Demerara, and he has since come under fire for statements attributed to him.
ACDA noted that Ogunseye is also an executive member of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) and “both of these organisations have been at the forefront of promoting shared governance for social and economic justice, the end of racism and for national reconciliation in Guyana.”
Calling some of the responses by organisations and letter writers “righteous indignation”, ACDA charged that they had “remained quiet” when President Bharrat Jagdeo made remarks that were “racially divisive and racist on no less than three separate occasions at Babu John and also at Diamond.”
According to ACDA, under the winner-take-all system, Guyana will continue to have an ethnic census. “ACDA does not see how any elections under this system can be free and fair or free of fear. Yet this is the measurement the international community uses,” the release stated.
A winner-take-all election in Guyana cannot be free and fair, ACDA declared, because “thousands of citizens of all races and especially Amerindians have not been able to register because of the lack of birth certificates and a second identification.”
Moreover, ACDA contended that “the winner-take-all system is an anti-human rights, racially divisive system that promotes and rewards racism.
“The winner-take-all system cannot be free of fear because as we have already seen from public statements, including those from the highest office, racial fears will play an important role because of the perception that one race has a larger block of votes than the other,” ACDA asserted.
Meanwhile, ACDA underscored that the organisation “has never advocated race hate because at the heart of shared governance is the theme of ‘equality of all races, national reconciliation and justice.’”
ACDA said further that Guyana as well as the international community should know that the executive committee of ACDA which meets once a week, “has not endorsed any political party, has not endorsed any winner-take-all elections and never will.”
However, the “executive committee,” the release noted, “has also never discussed what would happen if any group were to win or lose an election.”
And commenting on the organisation’s structure, ACDA noted that it “has no president or single leader consistent with our belief in shared governance.” Ogunseye of the Community Advocacy Committee of ACDA like all other speakers of other committees is not given a script or “talking points” to conduct meetings, the release said.
It also pointed out that “for years now, ACDA has internally and externally discussed the issue of shared governance as ACDA firmly believes and it has been proven that Guyana’s motto of ‘One People, One Nation, One Destiny’ which preaches racial equality and inclusiveness” will never be achieved under a winner-take-all system which chooses “ethnic winners and losers” and therefore promotes and rewards ethnic divisiveness and exclusion.”
“Today, the evidence of the winner-take-all form of governance has been that Guyana has become a modern day political, social, economical, racial and cultural tragedy,” ACDA posited.
According to the organisation, “the political experiment of governance by both the PNC and now by the PPP has left no doubt that this country is strangled by both perceptions and justifications of marginalization during both political periods.”
