Practice without theory is blind. Theory without practice is sterile. Theory becomes a material force as soon as it is absorbed by the masses (Marx, Karl; 1872; Capital, Vol. I, Preface).
Given my promise to deal with some of its details, I will continue and conclude my analysis of the AFC Congress statement of Mr. Nigel Hughes, which was interrupted last week. I will do so without touching upon some of the more commonplace issues such as presidential immunities.
Let me repeat that rather than the persistent sloganeering to which we have become accustomed, Mr. Hughes and his party have done a service by putting on the table some real proposals for us to get our heads around.
To recap, I have previously attempted to show (Future Notes, SN: 17&24/12/2014) that the constitutional relationship between the president, the legislature and the cabinet in the presidential system of the United States of America and Guyana is similar. Yet we would not want to argue that America is not one of the more inclusively democratic systems existing today.
I have also stated that it appears to me that the framers of the 2001 Constitution had a broad notion of inclusive democracy and thus established numerous committees and arrangements to provide the citizenry with opportunities to directly participate in the management of national life.
Returning to the quotation above, all practice is based upon some conceptual construct containing an understanding of existing resources and goals. But I believe that by theory Marx meant a bit more than this. At the very least, it entails the existence of a more or less studied comprehensive, non-dogmatic appreciation of a reality and an explicit plan to relate with it.
The current discourse on constitutional change to establish management relations more suited to Guyana has gradually become a material force. So much so, that as was indicated in a previous article on this topic, the General Secretary of the PPP has been attempting to close it down with all kinds of spurious arguments.
That said, we certainly do not wish to act blindly: without some proper understanding of what constitutes our reality and why we are doing what we are doing.
For example, conceptually, an “inclusionary democracy” is a misnomer. What is an “exclusive democracy”? According to the Oxford Dictionary, a democracy is a “system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.” From its inception in 6th century Athens – if we exclude the slaves – democracy was direct and most inclusive.
What we can and do have is a democratic society in which, for all intent and purposes, certain groups are locked out of having a meaningful say in how the society is run and how the rewards of the society are distributed. So that if we choose to speak of “inclusionary democracy” at best we are only trying to emphasise an element that is already contained in the general definition, but which we may feel is lacking in our specific context.
As such, it is important that even if we wish to keep – and perhaps given our political culture we should – this kind of colourful language, we distinguish between form and substance.
I have argued many times in this column that an all-party government as a permanent constitutional arrangement would be extremely dangerous to our freedoms (“Measures to prevent coalition dictatorship”; SN: 24/09/2014) but Mr. Hughes gave two reasons why we should establish one.
Firstly and most elaborately, he claimed that in “No self respecting democratic state” should the “President constitute[s] two and a half parts namely the one half of the Parliament, the complete Presidency and the complete power to identify, constitute, appoint and remove the Cabinet.”
But we have seen, that this is precisely what obtains in the United States of America and I am sure that Mr. Hughes would not want to claim that the US in not a “self-respecting democratic State”!
Neither, I believe would he want to claim democratic superiority for his suggestion, if for no other reason than because to do so would be, in effect, to claim superiority over the traditional liberal democracy approach, which is based on political party competition for executive government.
Secondly, Mr. Hughes suggested that we should accept an all-party executive because “Our deeply divided political history has locked various sections of the population out of executive decision making” and this is what makes in our context inclusive democracy necessary.
I believe that here we are closer to the truth, but it is also here that we need to be very clear about our theoretical position.
The elephant in the room is not “various sections of the population” but more specifically racial/ethnic alienation. I would therefore argue that in any future arrangement, we need not include all the political parties in the executive but only a sufficient number to deal adequately with the problem. This may allow room for us to leave in place the best possible level of parliamentary opposition.
Mr. Hughes told us too that should we accept his suggestion that a new Constitution identifies and locates the organs of democratic power in the National Assembly and the presidency, the president should be directly elected rather than, as exists at present, gain this position by virtue of heading the list of any party.
For him, this arrangement is unacceptable because it “fuses the election of a party to the National Assembly with the election of the candidate for President. This removes from the electorate the opportunity of voting directly for the President but confines them to the choice of a political party headed by a specific candidate.”
Here, we are not told of the virtues of the electorate voting directly for the president and even in the weak political party system of the USA, the president is still the candidate of a political party and as such is its nominal head.
But what if our need to politically bridge the ethnic divide can be achieved as or even more effectively by way of indirect elections? I believe it was Ravi Dev, some time ago, who suggested that given the nature of our situation a person should only become president if s/he could gain a super majority, but at least more than 50% of the votes in the National Assembly.
Direct voting must have at least a theoretical point and I support it because not only could it force the president to have to win votes outside of his ethnic enclave but if properly structured, it can also enhance the separation of power, which I believe is badly needed.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
