For those who have some understanding of the nature and workings of political parties, a few weeks ago we were treated to a quite extraordinary exchange between former speaker of the National Assembly, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran, and Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon: clearly a case of “mouth open, story jump out.”
Their somewhat conflicting accounts sought to inform us how the hierarchy of the PPP felt and acted in relation to the government’s 2007 decision to withdraw advertisements from the Stabroek News (SN). However, my interest in the Ramkarran/Luncheon exchange is not focused on the actual withdrawal of advertisements but on the implications their responses hold for the organisation of political life and the general need for political reforms, as we go forward. This, and some related detours, will keep me occupied for the next few weeks.
That said, to add perspective, we need to remember that, though limited in scope and of a shorter duration, the first attempt to remove advertisements from SN occurred in 1994, when Cheddi Jagan was president and Asgar Ally minister of finance.
As then reported, the Bank of Guyana, on the direction of the minister, informed SN that it would no longer be placing advertisements with it because its readership was similar to that of the Chronicle.
On the question of why advertisements were still being given to the PPP’s Mirror newspaper, it was said that the latter had a unique rural readership!
According to Mr. Ramkarran, the 2007 decision to remove advertisements from SN was an initiative of the government which was not supported by the Central Committee (CC) of the PPP, following which he wrote an article making the party’s position quite clear, but was roundly condemned by the party’s Executive Committee (EC) and the article was never published. Dr. Luncheon sought to dispute Mr. Ramkarran’s version of events and although he appeared to have got his meetings confused, his contribution reminded us that the PPP operates under the principle of “democratic centralism.”
Democratic centralism is a Leninist concoction which contains two elements of relevance to us.
The first is that while lower bodies in the party are responsible for electing higher ones, they are accountable to the higher ones for their actions, and the second is that once issues are debated and decisions taken they are absolutely binding on all organs and members of the party.
Thus, democratic centralism seeks to acquire moral force by suggesting that regardless of how a matter is raised, before a decision on it is taken there is widespread open debate. Lenin referred to this as “freedom of discussion, unity of action.”
Mr. Ramkarran suggested that since the party does not believe in “paramountcy”, it could not overrule the government. Yet the advertisement controversy, with all its national and international consequences, raged on without ordinary party members being informed about, much less asked for their opinion, on the issue.
Indeed, even the bodies that were put in place to represent them were bypassed. The great benefit of the Ramkarran/Luncheon quarrel is that perhaps for the first time, it exposed to the ordinary members the totally undemocratic nature of democratic centralism and the need for the party to be radically reformed.
According to the principles of “democratic centralism”, the EC has no authority to overrule a decision of the CC; only the Congress can do so, but while the CC may have condemned the government for removing advertisements from SN, it did not, from all accounts, give Mr. Ramkarran the authority to publish its decision. Mr. Ramkarran then had a number of options, none of which he took, and none of which, I dare say, the vast majority of the elite members of any party of this sort would have taken.
Mr. Ramkarran told us that he regularly chaired the CC and so after his rejection by the EC, he conceptually had the right to go back to the CC for a position on the matter and, had he been rejected there, could have considered appealing the CC’s decision to the Congress.
As I have had occasion to point out before, all bureaucratic organisations have a tendency towards “group think” and to close ranks (“Anyone cognizant with the workings of oligarchies ….:” SN: 24/08/09). Roberto Michels in his “Political Parties” claimed that: “It is organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization says oligarchy.” Party members hardly attend meetings, leaving most of the administration to the leaders, who control the agenda, the minutes, the membership records, exercise patronage and are even able to identify their successors. Democracy and large-scale social organisations are near incompatible.
When this ‘iron law of oligarchy’ is combined with democratic centralism and our racial/political divide, internal organisational democracy dies. Internal party discipline and the instinct for survival are usually so strong in these democratic centralist parties that normal alliance formation, direct constituency expectations, strategic leaks to the press, etc. that are usually found in more liberal party organisations are largely absent, and democracy suffers at the hand of centralism.
If anything points to the dominance of the leadership and the need to immediately empower the ordinary member it is the fact that the choice of the PPP/C’s presidential candidate was wrenched from the membership some three years before the actual choice had to be made! This could not possibly have happened in an open democratic party system.
In my view, the entire party debate on the advertisement issue in the CC had a single objective. A free press is today one of the “higher moral principles” of a democratic society, for which Cheddi Jagan’s PPP fought over a considerable period and built up good credentials.
But important sections of the PPP’s leadership wanted to have their cake and eat it.
They wanted not only the immediate political advantage that could result from a more submissive media but also to retain the moral high ground won by Cheddi. And to an extent they have succeeded, for many of us who previously believed that the party and government were at one on this issue, are now uncertain!
