Two weeks ago (“PPP/C has an historic opportunity …..:” SN 25/01/12) I promised to address what it is that politicians can mean when they claim that their policy or actions are based on ‘principle.’ This interest arose from what appeared to be an unusual amount of reliance on this concept in our recent political discourse.
For example, you will recall that in the recent debate about the allocation of the speakership of the National Assembly, the PPP/C claimed that it was basing its demand for it on the ‘principle’ that in hung Commonwealth parliaments the government side gets the speaker. Similarly, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan told us that the AFC proposed Mr. Moses Nagamootoo on ‘principle’, only for us to hear that Mr. Nagamootoo had been rejected by Mr. David Granger on ‘principle’ as “APNU set out the principles for selection to prevent the matter from degenerating into a popularity contest or being serialised as a soap opera in the press. We separated principles from personalities.”
However, as the negotiations proceeded, we were then told that the AFC had accepted the proposal to share the speakership in ‘principle’ and then somewhat later that the election of Mr. Raphael Trotman fulfilled the ‘principled’ position of the AFC. Mr. Nagamootoo withdrew his candidacy and told us he did so on ‘principle’, only for us to be told by a letter in the Guyana Chronicle that: “It is not surprising that Moses Nagamootoo with all his self-professed guile as a politician deceived himself on principle, when in justifying Trotman’s elevation as Speaker …” (“Moses deceived himself and 35,000 behind him” 01/02/12). Leaving aside the problematical notion of one ‘deceiving oneself in principle’ why all this sudden reliance on principle?
In my view, this is largely because the last general elections have propelled us into an era of “discourse politics.” Having lost control of parliament, the government can no longer use the parliament as a rubberstamp and this has provided better opportunities for the opposition to compete with it for our support. As sentient social beings, we are prone to moral appeals and matters not how unethical their actions, politicians seek to present them as morally constructed and desirable. However, I want to suggest that as citizens, we had better be wary of these persistent appeals to ‘principle’. As we shall see below, these appeals can rarely be implemented without compromise, are often invoked to explain away obvious contradictions, may have the potential to diminish credibility for the user and attempts can be made to establish ‘principles’ with blatant untruth!
When Mr. Ramjattan told us that he proposed Mr. Moses Nagamootoo on ‘principle’ to be the speaker of the National Assembly, I think he intended and we understood him to mean that Mr. Nagamootoo was being proposed to be the speaker for a full term. However, after Mr. Nagamootoo was rejected, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine suggested that the speakership be rotated between the AFC and APNU and the AFC stated that this was acceptable to it. It does not matter that after this acceptance the AFC eventually ended up with the full speakership or that its willingness to compromise was laudable; the fact is it was willing to compromise its principle!
Mr. Granger’s claim to have based his position on the speakership on the ‘principle’ that he will not support anyone who had until quite recently been in the hierarchy of the PPP/C for decades appears to be even more problematical. We expect that principles should apply to an entity of a category, e.g. recent members of the PPP/C hierarchy, and should be known before the fact so that persons who are likely to run afoul of them can know to behave.
So far as I am aware, Mr. Granger only adumbrated his principle after Mr. Nagamootoo’s candidacy was announced, as a result of which it has the appearance of an opportunistic categorization, and some will argue that a principle cannot fairly be applied to the initial condition that gave rise to it and some counterfactual thinking gives this contention even more weight.
Do we believe that if Mr. Granger had incontrovertible proof before the elections that the PPP/C would be held in check, as it now is, only if Mr. Nagamootoo campaigned for the AFC and the latter wanted to reward him with the speakership for his efforts, Mr. Granger would have refused Mr. Nagamootoo the speakership? I think not, and herein lies the difficulty for, as we go forward, Mr. Granger’s invocation of principles and principled positions will be suspect. Let it not be mistaken, I was against Mr. Nagamootoo getting the speakership because I did not believe that he had yet proven himself on the opposition side and a sizable number of APNU supporters would have found it unacceptable for him to be chosen above an APNU candidate. The difference is that my position had nothing to do with principle but applied to Mr. Nagamootoo’s specific situation.
Others and I have dealt sufficiently with the PPP/C’s unconscionable attempt to fabricate a principle to support its demand for the speakership, so that need not detain us. Of course, this discourse raises the issue as to whether or not we are not wasting our time seeking a political morality. After all, the high priest of ‘realpolitik,’ Niccolo Machiavelli, notoriously claimed that “A prudent ruler … cannot, and should not, keep his word when keeping it is to his disadvantage, and when the reason that made him promise no longer exists” and even today one sometimes gets the impression that political negotiation is an arena where it is legitimate for one to dissemble, bluff, bribe, and renege on agreements at the first possible opportunity. You do not have to leave our shores to find this; just consider the numerous agreements between the previous PPP/C governments, the opposition, civil society, etc. which are yet to be implemented. The result is the controversial position which holds that political morality should not be judged by the moral benchmarks of everyday living. After all, as Machiavelli indicated, would you expect your president to stick to an agreement if doing so is likely to lead to our destruction?
Adherence to political principles is intended to be morally soothing, but as we have seen, sometimes they are not only falsely constructed but operationally can easily be compromised and opportunistically applied. This suggests that we had better be very sceptical of politicians who claim allegiance to them.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
