Both explicit and implicit in last Friday’s editorial, prompted by rising political tension in St Kitts and Nevis, were questions about Caricom’s regard for the quality of democracy in the region and its willingness and ability to address issues of good governance and threats to the democratic order from all quarters.
Central to our own concern is the belief that political legitimacy comes not only via the ballot box every four or five years, but also through listening to the people and meeting their expectations while in office, to forge and act on a national consensus on development and progress for all, and through transparent and accountable management of the nation’s ‒ that is ‒ the people’s assets.
As idealistic as this may sound to a weary public, notions of inclusive democracy and good governance will continue to gain currency in the Caribbean and political parties had better pay attention, for people across the region are generally better educated, better informed and more demanding than in the past. The winner-take-all system fostered by the imperfect implementation of the Westminster model of parliamentary governance in the Commonwealth Caribbean just isn’t sustainable.
But absent any sort of enlightenment among political parties, whether in government or in opposition – for although parties may rail against the inequities of the system when in opposition, they more often than not forget their concerns once in power – and absent adequate mechanisms for genuine consultation with the citizenry, much less progress on constitutional reform, the dilemma facing those desirous of change is how to achieve this when those who hold the levers of power refuse to listen.
Of course, no government wants to or should be toppled by anti-democratic means. But, equally, no country’s population should have to live with the consequences of abuse of office by any sitting government.
In a 2000 academic paper, Trinidadian political scientist Prof Selwyn Ryan asks and attempts to answer the following questions: “When if ever, is political riot and rebellion legitimate? Is there such a thing as a ‘good riot’? Did the street demonstrations which took place in Guyana in 1997 and St Vincent and the Grenadines in April 2000, and which precipitated the intervention of Caricom and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) create bad precedents for governance in the region?”
In so doing, he also considers the experiences of Grenada and Dominica in 1979, Trinidad and Tobago in 1990, St Kitts in 1993 and Jamaica in 1999. Guyanese would undoubtedly find his case study of the post-December 1997 election street protests and the intervention by Caricom, which gave rise to the Herdmanston Accord, of particular interest.
Now, there is a lingering perception in some quarters, not confined to the PPP, that Caricom failed the Guyanese people during Forbes Burnham’s rule. This period was marked – as has been indisputably established if not always openly acknowledged by all – by rigged elections, increasing authoritarianism and the trampling of human rights.
The same attitude applied to the excesses of Prime Minister Eric Gairy in Grenada and his infamous Mongoose Gang and then, ironically, with regard to his successor, the coup leader Maurice Bishop and his revolutionary government.
Caricom’s default position in the 1970s and first half of the ’80s was a policy of non-interference, ostensibly more to guard against extra-regional (ie American) interference in the affairs of young, post-Independence, leftist states and effectively to prevent any sort of constructive criticism or good-neighbourly intervention to deter anti-democratic tendencies on the part of incumbents. In other words, there was no desire generally amongst members of the regional political club to draw attention to the mote in a brother’s eye lest this might prompt questions about the beam in their own eye.
Prof Ryan’s relatively recent recommendation that Caricom should consider the creation of “some formalised machinery to deal with system threatening crises rather than rely on ad hoc interventions such as those utilised in Guyana and St Vincent,” especially where civil society and national institutions are weak, has, moreover, not been heeded.
Unfortunately, since the turn of the century, even as Caricom has backed away from full implementation of the Single Market and Economy (CSME), there has been little appetite for any hint of a supra-national mechanism and the fig leafs of sovereignty and non-interference continue to be used to justify political inaction. Meanwhile, governments and Caricom as a whole keep on taking our democracy for granted.
