Guyana suffers from a “consensus crisis”, and constitutional and institutional reforms, while necessary, are likely insufficient without trust-building to generate increased consensus, a recent USAID-funded report says.
“A key driver for the lack of national consensus is mistrust among stakeholders—particularly among key actors within the political parties. Since race correlates with parties, an ethno-political dimension to mistrust exists. Guyana’s toxic mix of race and politics encourages a struggle for ethnic dominance as part of the struggle for political office,” the report, ‘Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) Assessment of Guyana’, says.
“Considering the consensus crisis Guyana finds itself in all too frequently, there have been numerous calls for power-sharing, shared governance, and government of national unity by local, regional, and international experts and some politicians. Such calls have not been successful to date, in large part because of political mistrust,” it declared.
“Constitutional and institutional reforms, while necessary, are likely insufficient without trust-building to generate increased consensus,” the report said.
According to the report, the multi-ethnic APNU+AFC coalition signalled a change from the past exclusionary politics. It reached out to the PPP/C to create a government of national unity, but the PPP/C refused, it said. Some thought the coalition had not tried hard enough to convince the PPP/C to join, but the PPP/C told the assessment team that the APNU+AFC had “won the election so let them run the government,” the report revealed.
It had noted that while there is a shared political culture and the belief that democracy is the only legitimate form of government, long-standing acrimony between the two dominant political parties has made achieving consensus on policies, committee appointments, and constitutional reform priorities, among other issues, difficult at the national level. However, social capital and the shared desire for change have facilitated consensus building at the regional and local levels.
The report pointed out that at the national level, political actors frequently confuse the roles of the party, the government (local and central), and the state. “There is a tendency to overstep, confuse, or willfully misrepresent the bounds of each to maintain control. It was noted that more intense divisions were noticeable after the recent elections because politicians, especially the PPP/C, continued to debate and engage in acrimonious exchanges in an effort to maintain power and control, while the public in large part is willing to move on,” the report said.
It also noted that although there is consensus on the rules and legal equality of access, citizens do not trust government systems and services to work because they are inefficient in delivery and often lack accountability when services are not delivered.
The report was commissioned by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to assess the political change and democratization in Guyana, consider the US Government’s operational and programmatic environment, and develop strategic and programmatic recommendations to address the core DRG problem(s) identified in the assessment. The final report was released in March and released publicly last week.
It had said that there are indications of significant change in tackling challenges to democratic governance in Guyana by the APNU+AFC government, but there are also reasons for concern, and has warned that time is of the essence and urged constitutional reform.
