By Kevin De Silva
Kevin De Silva is a co-creator of the Caribbean Studies Students’ Union (CARSSU) and former president and editor of its annual journal. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and is currently engaged with issues related to Guyana and its diaspora.
In Sartre’s prescient play Dirty Hands, a young idealist challenges a respected political stalwart claiming that his party has become divorced from its early emancipatory promises through engaging in flaccid realpolitik, one dependent upon manipulating and lying to its base. The leader retorts in ways often reminiscent of parties and their figureheads in response to their own citizenry elsewhere: initially with an exasperated paternal sigh due to their sheer naivety and meddlesomeness, then a more reluctant explanation of real world travails, followed by a pat on the head and a tangible though subtle ‘now off to bed.’
In that play, the young Hugo asks Hoederer, the steeled and weathered leader, how he expects the party to garner support for its schemes. Hoederer responds shrewdly, “We’ll get them to swallow them little by little.” Hugo asks: By lying to them? Hoederer: By lying sometimes. Later Hoederer explains the institutional logic. “Our party? But we have always told lies, just like any other party. And you, Hugo, are you sure that you’ve never lied, never lied to yourself, that you are not even lying to me this very moment?”
The following lines are a guillotine that many a community organizer, student leader, activist, academic, fringe lawyer, or human rights advocate is often sentenced to while pressing against the inertia of powerful political institutions. Hoederer bellows: “…How afraid you are to soil your hands! All right, stay pure! What good will it do? Why did you join us? Purity is an idea for a yogi or a monk. You intellectuals and bourgeois anarchists use it as a pretext for doing nothing. To do nothing, to remain motionless, arms at your sides, wearing kid gloves. Well, I have dirty hands. Right up to the elbows. I’ve plunged them in filth and blood. But what do you hope? Do you think you can govern innocently?”
“Well, I have dirty hands. Right up to the elbows.” “Do you think you can govern innocently?” The play’s complexity should not be pegged to these lines alone for it offers far more nuanced observations on politics, youth and free choice. But the theme of dirty hands, and the undergirding ‘realism-as-moralism’ it presents as well as the sordid nature of professionalized politics are all themes transferable to the case of Guyana; a polity that winces on the point of decentralized political activity, and that refuses to acknowledge its authoritarian character all the while commanding the intensification of party loyalties and tribalism.
In 2010 Wikileaks released 251,287 cables consisting of 261,276,536 words, the world’s largest release of classified material, and though the chorus of responses surrounding the groundswell of information varied, it usually echoed Hoederer’s chord: politics is a grizzly business, full of dirty hands, but necessarily must keep room for manipulation and preserve managerial autonomy so the machinery can remain intact and greased, and of course so that citizens are safe.
Guyana itself was chronicled extensively in nearly four hundred cables covering mundane issues such as stagnant economic growth and debt relief all the way to broad sketches of personality and psychological assessments of leaders. The more popularly consumed leaks dealt with drug-trafficking, police corruption, abuse and political authoritarianism. However nearly five years later, many of the official analyses (which did not only include information on Roger Khan and Phantom Squads) need to be returned to and re-examined.
Re-evaluating the information is particularly useful as it relates to Guyana’s local elections. Guyana of course has not had local elections for twenty years, since 1994. The obvious consequence of this is that there is little local participation in political activity aside from the basic selection of leaders at a presidential level. In the cable entitled 06GEORGETOWN832 point 3 (C) the
situation is succinctly described: “Currently on election day Guyana’s voters choose a party knowing who is its candidate for President. But they do not know whom they are choosing to represent them in the National Assembly. Party headquarters pick and choose their MPs from their party lists after finding out how many seats they won. Therefore, the members of the National Assembly are accountable only to their political parties and not to the people. The six critical reforms involving exercise of power all depend on Parliamentary action. Some have been stalled for over a decade. Without accountability of Parliamentarians to the electorate, the people have no way to press for the governance reforms they want. Donors are of one mind that without changing this perverse Marxist-inspired electoral system, Guyana’s broader reform and development plan is doomed. Guyana can only move forward if its people can elect the legislature directly and hold it accountable for its actions, or lack thereof.”
After decrying the unfair advantage of the PPP/Civic in its control of media and exposure in winning the 2006 elections, the 06GEORGETOWN915 cable goes on to condemn a lack of transparency in GECOM as well as the centralized selection process of members of parliaments, of both the PPP and PNC (now APNU). The cable is worth quoting in full: “Although Guyana’s national and regional elections were an overall success, issues concerning lack of transparency in the process did arise. First, most of GEOCOM’s [sic] decisions regarding the election were discussed and decided in closed meetings. This lack of transparency left voters guessing as to how, exactly, the decisions were made and who, ultimately, was responsible for making them. The constitutional selection process for Parliament members is opaque. After learning how many seats their party has won, the party leaders than pick and choose names from the electoral list to represent their party in Parliament. The selection mechanism is closed to all other than the inner-circle of party faithful. The two major parties presented electoral lists with far more names than the total number of seats in Parliament. Thus, even if the PPP/C or PNC/R-1G had won 100% of the vote and all 65 seats in Parliament, the electorate still would not know which individuals would end up representing them in Parliament. Lastly, the number of Parliament seats awarded to each contesting party is calculated through a confusing constitutional formula that left most observers (as well as candidates) dumbfounded as to whether the resulting distribution was correct…From a transparency standpoint, Guyana’s voting laws need to be re-written so that even the public can understand them.”
Guyana’s broader authoritarian conventions and indicators of poor governance dot the notes of ambassadors throughout many of their correspondences. 06GEORGETOWN372 states in passing that “…Guyana resembles a big ranch more than a nation state.” 06GEOREGTOWN371 compares Guyana with Haiti on its level of mismanagement, while 06GEORGETOWN546 2 (u) notes that “Guyana’s economy and society have stagnated for the latter part of a decade…the main culprit holding Guyana back is poor governance. Guyana’s percentile ranking across all 6 World Bank governance indicators fell by 11% between 1998-2004.” It’s truly amazing how few of the cables out of nearly four hundred (if any) actually mention Guyanese people or Guyanese civil society. In passing some become ruminative on this point, noting the shrinking power of both opposition parties as well as civil opposition.
Caribbean states are usually lumped together as sharing similar historical traits, especially as it relates to their proximate independence and kindred experience with slavery and colonialism. Yet one rarely takes the time to view Guyana as unique in that it has effectively experienced two separate though similar dictatorships in one legally enshrined authoritarian climate since independence, one which undoubtedly favours executive over local and decentralized forms of political engagement. The deferral of local elections, a significant step towards a more active and informed citizenry, has been a private source of shame. Noted in 07GEORGETOWN388: “The PPP was ‘embarrassed’ by the long spell without local elections, especially since this was one of their main complaints during the PNC/R’s rule.” In 07GEORGETOWN455 “Jadgeo acknowledges that municipal governments are broken, and often simply absent, and tied their revitalization to a longer reform package announced after his re-election.” These observations are nearly seven years old.
In 2006, Guyana’s Private Sector Commission in 06GEORGETOWN248 describes the political impasse of constitutional reform as being tied to a common desire on the part of both the PPP and PNC to preserve executive power. 06GEORGETOWN248 states: “opposition leader Robert Corbin felt that the PNC had blundered in its negotiations after the disputed 1997 and 2001 elections. The PNC accepted the victorious PPP party’s promise of constitutional reform too hastily in exchange for ending post-election unrest. Constitutional reform then failed because neither the PNC nor the PPP wanted real change. The PNC under Desmond Hoyte thought that it could somehow win an election and so did not want to diminish executive powers. Corbin does not want to make the same mistake again, so he is prepared to create ‘mayhem’ in order to drive the PPP to the negotiating table and extract concessions giving the PNC greater involvement in Guyana’s governance. …It is hard to imagine Jagdeo conceding much executive power.” Since local elections have the potential to diminish executive powers in much the same way, one can infer the reason why neither constitutional reform nor electoral reform has occurred in Guyana is identical; although both measures would enhance public engagement and agency, they would do so at the expense of executive power and top-down decision making.
The issue of executive power embodied in the maintenance of the present constitution as well as the perpetual deferral of local elections (simultaneously allowing Neighbourhood Democratic Councils to atrophy) has boded well for political parties. It has entrenched a winner-take-all format and maximized the spoils for political victors. It has also allowed for free internal disciplining, diminished transparency, and most importantly immunized parties from public scrutiny and unwanted political engagement. Both of these moves (constitutional reform and local elections) could theoretically make Guyanese citizens players in the political game, a sort of nuisance considering that the game is generally reserved for those with sufficient prudence and seasoning to understand ‘dirty hands’.
It is possible that political actors may eventually come around to these reforms, but probably only as a patient would to the pulling of their teeth.
It has been twenty years now since local elections have occurred, two decades. It would be incorrect to say that during this time nothing has happened, or that this non-occurrence is accidental or ‘no harm, no foul.’ Instead it would be more accurate to note that every year an election does not take place citizens become further disenfranchised, further removed from political decision-making and more and more powerless to hold their leaders accountable. Democratic practice is just that, a practice; one which is learned, experienced, often flawed and stumbling, but perfectible. More frightening for policy-makers is that it is also expandable, too. This latter point may go a far way in explaining why such elections have still not taken place.
