Dear Editor,
Mr Vishnu Bisram’s letter ‘The only remaining option is power sharing’ refers (SN, Sept 6). The concept of power sharing has been beaten to death for umpteen years and gotten nowhere. David Hinds was its main proponent. Also, neither of two ethnic parties, the PPP and PNC, has shown any interest in it.
I am opposed to Dr Hinds’ concept of power-sharing as well as to Suriname’s consociationalism. Power-sharing in Suriname had broken down in the 1980s and led to chaos and riots which provided the opening for the Bouterse coup. Power-sharing, if tried in Guyana will lead to the same fierce competition (called ‘outbidding’) between the ethnic factions for available benefits. Also, power-sharing is not democracy.
Democracy is not ethnic voting for ethnic parties, with one ethnic group alone electing an ethnic party to power, and that party gets elected every election cycle for 25 or more years.
That is ethnic triumphalism, and the excluded ethnic group will forever be seething.
The basic principle which will produce genuine democracy in a multiracial society is to get rid of ethnic parties so a sizeable pool of swing voters (comprising both Africans and Indians) will emerge. This group will vote on issues, and will change their vote each time the party in power performs badly. This group will be the catalyst to ensure that there are democratic turnovers, every two or three election cycles. There will be reduced political and racial tensions in the society, knowing that an unpopular government will be voted out at the next election.
Conditions in Guyana today are well suited, if not ideal, for this to happen. The PNC cannot win an election in Guyana on the basis of African votes alone, which should be the compelling reason for it to transform itself into a genuine non-racial party and make itself attractive to all races that inhabit Guyana. Similarly, with the declining share of Indians in the population, the PPP also cannot win any future election on the basis of Indian votes only.
The PPP also must begin transitioning into a genuine non-racial party. Will these two age-old parties change? Pressure must be brought to bear from the ABC countries and their representatives in Guyana to gently nudge them to change.
The Afro-ethnic PNC got into power through a coalition with the AFC, but immediately upon acceding to power the AFC lost all its power and influence on policies and direction. It became the old PNC back in power. A large number of positions on government boards and ministries went to Africans. The army and police are already dominated by Africans, as are the public and teaching services.
If the coalition was intended to be a consociational coalition (meaning representing the two major racial groups in some reasonable proportions), then something went terribly wrong. The AFC itself was not an Indian party, but it is in a coalition with an African party. The result: the majority of cabinet officers from the AFC were Africans. Also, the Prime Minister has been denuded of the normal powers in a prime ministerial portfolio which have gone to the Minister of the Presidency.
A moment ago I mentioned that conditions in Guyana make it suitably poised to move towards genuine democracy. On the other hand, the daily operations of the coalition government make it unlikely. Racial cleavages only harden with each passing day. The AFC perceived as an Indian party charged with bringing in Indian votes is destined to be wiped out at the next elections, and we are left with an unreformed PPP and PNC, both still practising the same racial politics from the Cold War days.
It is precisely the hardening of racial politics playing out in Guyana today that drove Mr Bisram to keep pushing for power-sharing. Mr Ravi Dev advocates ‘federalism’ – empowering local government and decentralizing police administration. Empowering local government is not an alternative to ethnic triumphalism, which is the source of our political disease in Guyana. Mr Bisram cites Switizerland as a model, but it took 800-years to develop that state of political and social harmony. Every group lives in its own canton (village/town) practising its local democracy, and all the cantons come together at the federal level sharing power via a constitutional formula. The problem in Guyana is that Africans and Indians live not in separate villages, but are mixed throughout the whole country.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
