Dear PPP,
Democracy, defined as ‘majority rule’, is not an end in itself but a means to an end. In our times, that end is the creation of an open and inclusive society in which all the people, given the circumstances of the country, have and believe that they have equitable opportunities to create and live the good life.
In a moral democracy (“Democracy without political virtue:” Henry Jeffrey, SN: April 30, 2014),
80% of a substantial ethnic group and more than 60% of one’s own constituency do not feel that the government does not care for them, and in the effort to hold on to power and grow the economy, governments do not turn a blind eye to all kinds of illicit activities. Also, there is not the widespread perception that the elite is enriching itself at the expense of the poor and powerless. Moreover, it is not a condition in which, in order to hold on to government, a party is forced to mount the most open and blatant racial/ethnic campaign, that further divides the country, in the hope of frightening its own ethnic constituency to vote for it.
Many a time the PPP was given the opportunity to change course; to become more inclusive, share the political space and thus expand the capacity of our political system to become more virtuous. President Jimmy Carter left in disgust in 2004 after you failed to heed his advice, and if the reports are true, when he returned last month you were still stuck in the same rut.
So let me repeat what few in high government will openly tell you: generally, but more specifically in an ethnic context such as ours, majority rule is not an end in itself but a means to the good life for all the people.
If, instead of only using your history for essentially propaganda purposes, you had learnt from your party’s experience in the 1950s and 1960s, when it thought that majority rule gave it the right to ignore the political position of a large swath of the people and was thrown out of office, you may not have been here today.
Thus, even if it is true that you were cheated out of office – and there are substantial doubts about this – you must realise that no one cares. In the eyes of too many, both internally and externally, you have shown no indication of any intention of developing and implementing an acceptable democratic mandate. In other words, you were in effect managing a democracy without the necessary accompanying political virtues.
Of course, I hope that your present experience will be a signal lesson to those now in office and are already showing signs of autocratic behaviour. They made promises to establish an open and inclusive society and a government of national unity that will include our major communities and hopefully provide the good life for all the people. Should they renege on or become dilatory about implementing these promises, they too will be removed and no one will care!
Last week I argued that there was a near total mobilisation of Africans for their traditional party during the elections and promised to explain why I believe this occurred. I have identified at least four contributing factors, the discussion of which will form a useful, though not indispensible, backdrop to what I have previously said.
The PPP’s decades-long policy of trying to successfully rule alone by dominating the political space in Guyana of necessity resulted in African ethnic alienation. That party’s belief that, secure in its own ethnic base, over time it would be able to force large numbers of Africans to join its ranks by showing their leadership to be weak and/or incompetent and by destroying the institutions with which they were closely associated, was delusional.
As a result, as the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) survey indicated, 80% of this group perceived the PPP as being unconcerned about its interest, and perception is everything where political participation is concerned.
The second factor was the coming into being of the coalition. The traditional view that Indians were the majority, coupled with the fact that the PPP has always been able to mobilise sufficient support to win, had made many Africans sceptical and lackadaisical about the possibility of their traditional party ever winning an election. Even the persistent claim that the Indian population was declining due to migration was not sufficient to erase their doubt and its resultant lethargy. But the mere formation of the alliance gave this group real hope that the usual outcome could be avoided.
Of equal if only related importance, by opening a real possibility that the opposition could take government, the alliance also opened the purses of the wealthy, particularly businesspeople who always seek to be in the good graces of whichever party wins. The PPP was clearly taken aback by an opposition able to match them toe for toe in the propaganda campaign. Remember its jibe that the many coalition flags it was seeing were possibly being financed by drug lords!
The next factor must be (now President) David Granger and his military comrades who are largely associated with the African base. The PPP is a formidable political machine that has largely been able to outdo the PNC at elections time. After all, it honed its skills in the hard Burnham era when campaigning was largely perfunctory for the PNC. The PPP concern about the military was largely propaganda against Mr. Granger, but concern was also there about the organisational discipline, skill and tenacity of its membership attached to the opposition. And of course, the PPP’s open attack upon the military only made the ex-soldiers more tenacious and committed to the party’s defeat.
APNU+AFC won by an extremely small margin and I would be extremely ungrateful if I did not give credit for at least this winning margin to the PPP and more specifically former president Bharrat Jagdeo! It has been a long tradition in Guyanese ethnic politics that both parties play their racial games in what have become known as “bottom houses” – a generic term for small homogenous groups of supporters that would then spread the ethnic messages far and wide.
There is a notion in administrative theory that longstanding traditions are such because they work and that they should not be undermined or removed without much thought. But the PPP was in dire straits. The LAPOP survey suggested that over 60% of those traditional PPP supporters believed that the party did not care for their interests and to bring them back to the fold radical methods were therefore required.
Without properly accounting for the dysfunction that may occur when traditions are undermined, the PPP tried to supplement what usually takes place at the bottom houses with open ethnic attacks. In a country such as ours it is impossible to racialise one group without also racialising the other! Even African vagrants, not usually too concerned about election, were showing off their inked fingers!
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
