Although it was something of a challenge trying to decipher precisely what Justice Charles R Ramson (“A focus on the facts;” SN: 28/01/2014) was attempting to convey, lest it be considered bad form not to consider his contributions, which are never without substance, I have given it a shot in the hope that I have not totally missed what he was attempting to say. As I understand it Mr. Ramson made two points in relation to my article (“The Colwyn Harding case: A dysfunction of the politics of domination:” SN: 22/01/2014).
I had argued that outside of reform at the political level, the blame being cast on and changes requested of the security forces – particularly the police – even if granted would be all but useless because, although neither the political nor police hierarchy would have instructed the
security forces to treat Mr. Colwyn Harding as they did, “These kinds of outcomes are a dysfunction of the politics of domination.”
As I understand it, Mr. Ramson’s first and less “pertinent”, point was that the article moved from a contention of the need for political change to the conclusion that behaviour of the kind Mr. Harding allegedly suffered is usual in conditions where political dominance is the goal without (“sequential construct”) showing that this is usually the case. He was correct and this is a useful point.
However, I attempted to deal with this observation of his in the following two paragraphs one of which was excluded from the article by the editors perhaps believing that it could be misconstrued. Here, I reverse the sequencing of two adjacent paragraphs to make my suggestion somewhat clearer.
As the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) has observed ‘Police officers were allegedly present when the beatings and sexual assault took place and apparently took no responsibility to either stop the assault, to assist Harding to get prompt medical attention, nor to report the incident to higher authority.’ They were either actively taking part in the brutality or acquiescing to it by their silence. What kind of state do we live in when, given the public focus on this case in which the state is responsible for Mr. Harding who is being guarded under its protection, prison officers, also employees of the state, can be so brazen as to enter his hospital room and intimidate him in the fashion that has been reported?
Present-day Sri Lanka (which I dealt with in a previous column), Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia are good examples of the politics of domination. In Nazi Germany, the normal security forces were undermined by SS “watchers” whose influence was all pervasive and actions arbitrary. Their remit was simply to drive terror into the regular security forces, whose careers, livelihoods and possibly lives could be destroyed overnight, and to cow and, if necessity required it, eliminate all possible troublemakers. The Nazis came to office in a democratic election but with the goal of domination. World domination was too radical to allow them to maintain power in democratic conditions, so they needed to undermine and subvert the existing systems to permanently install themselves in government. “In contrast to the Imperial military tradition, the nature of the SS was based on an ideology where commitment, effectiveness and political reliability—not class or education—would determine how far they succeeded in the organisation (Wikipedia).
The second point I gleaned from Justice Ramson’s presentation is located in his claim that “this writer prefers to focus on the interplay of the major participants and, more importantly, the facts, in the confrontational engagement under scrutiny.” That is, one needs to prove by way of “facts” that political dominance exists or one may exacerbate the very confusion one claims one is attempting to avoid.
In “What we have now is not working in any meaningful manner” (SN: 29/06/2011), I believe I provided sufficient “facts” of the political, national administrative and economic dominance of the PPP/C and its traditional supporters. I concluded that contribution by observing that:
If the usual opposition criticisms of Burnham and the PNC are anything to go by, this substantial Indo-Guyanese presence in the state administration must be of recent origin, and coupled with the situation in the business and policy sectors, it provides fertile ground for the negative aspects of bi-communalism to flourish. As such, it also signals the need for a more consensually driven management of the resources of the state.
Following Arend Lijphart, I will say that at a minimum such a mechanism should include: executive power-sharing that allows for: the existence of a significant opposition and also provides opportunities to further enhance the position of that opposition; the separation of powers, both formally and informally; minority representation for groups who feel threatened; proportional representation to foster constituency autonomy and encourage cross-party voting and territorial decentralisation with adequate income regimes (“Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries.”)
I can add to this a litany of negative African experiences: Linden, the condition of Georgetown and the University of Guyana, the treatment of the Guyana Trades Unions Congress, the Public Service Union and public servants in general, negative responses subsidies for the Critchlow Labour College, dubious treason charges and perhaps the height of disrespect: placing an African monument where their leaders do not want it, as sufficient proof of dominance.
Justice Ramson is also on unsafe ground if he believes that these kind of political matters rest essentially on “facts” as he conceives of them. In politics, perceptions are “facts” that the political authorities must seek to address if their intention is to grow a nation. A similar problem exists in relation to the Corruption Perception Index, which the regime perennially disputes.
So in general, I go with Stuart Kufman who, speaking of more extreme cases of ethnic violence, suggests that “politicians could only stir up ethnic discontent if there was some historical experience to support their positions. According to his symbolic political theory of ethnic violence ‘people respond to ethnic symbols and mobilize …. only if a widely known and accepted ethnic myth-symbol complex justifies hostility to the other group’” (Erin K Jenne “Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment,” 2007).
Facts or not: the task of true nation builders is to take the necessary action and establish arrangements to change any negative, actual or perceived, conditions.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
