I argued in the previous column that the no-confidence vote and the government’s response to it – flouting the very constitution President Granger and his party revere – indicate another chapter in the long-term and persistent ethnic conflict playing out in Guyana. Over the years going back to the mid to late 1980s, Mr. Ravi Dev, Dr Baytoram Ramharack and others have proposed two ethnic security dilemmas (ESDs). According to my interpretation of their written works, I have seen Dr David Hinds, Dr Henry Jeffrey and others support the broad thesis of two security dilemmas, but they disagree on the fundamental forces sustaining the dilemmas. While the layman (and party loyalists) would no doubt find reasons to demonize these persons, it is their academic disagreements which extend the frontiers of knowledge. Only by pushing out the knowledge frontier can a society grow and find solutions in the social, scientific, political and economic realms. This fact is well known to researchers.
Although not in my primary research interests, I took up the challenge to understand the ESDs using part of my core methodological training in economics and political economy. I challenged myself around 2010 to outline the economic origins and consequences of the ESDs. Prior to this effort, I was mainly concerned with demonstrating why the conventional textbook theories of monetary economics are inappropriate and sometimes harmful to the interests of people of the Caribbean and the Global South.