One of the most important elements of a properly functioning democratic state is regular personnel turnover, so when a political leader tells you, as Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo did a few days ago, that his party intends to win the next elections and stay in government for 30 to 40 years, you know that you are not living in a properly functioning democratic state, the person or persons making such statements are democratically suspect and from them you must expect government policies intended to keep their government in place for that length of time. Furthermore, whether he wishes to accept it or not, Mr. Jagdeo is the leader of a political party that receives the vast majority of its votes from those of Indian ethnicity, who are about 50% of the population, and as such, to all intents and purposes, the PPP is viewed by the other half of the population as an Indian-orientated party. Particularly given the PPP’s recent record, when Mr. Jagdeo makes these promises he is simply saying to the other half of the country that an Indian-dominated political party intends to control the political space and them for over a generation!
The PNC has had no greater friend than Mr. Jagdeo because already determined to see that the PPP does not return to government, they and their supporters are now presented by him with a justifiable reason to do all they possibly can to see that the PPP is in no position to keep them locked out of the political leadership of Guyana for three to four decades! The problem is that history is not on the side of the PNC. The last time it lost government was as a result of a major shift in the international system. The PPP/C won the elections of 1992 and by the end of their reign in 2015, notwithstanding that in the intervening period there was a substantial constitutional reform process and outcomes that sought to address the corrosive ethnic political state of Guyana, that situation was at its worst.
This is largely because the changes that were made did not address the inappropriate majoritarian nature of the system for the management of a near evenly ethnically divided, deeply conflictual society. The PNC has a substantial history of talking about the need for national unity and one had expected that the APNU+AFC coalition that took government in 2015 would have fulfilled its commitment to address this structural difficulty. But it failed to do so and thus maintained the conditions that allow Mr. Jagdeo to be able to make his undemocratic promise which, given the history of the PPP, places its supporters in jeopardy. Furthermore, unfortunately for the PNC, the leader of the PPP is making his statement at an opportune moment when the hands of history are at it again: another significant shift has taken place in the global political system that threatens the PNC’s take no prisoners approach to acquiring and holding on to political power!
I played a minor role in one of the first attempts by the PPP and PNC to work together, and this is the time to try and ameliorate inflammatory statements and have a light discourse about the nature of Guyanese politics. So here, taken from some research I am doing for publication, in maybe three articles I combine some historical facts with a few personal reflections to make an important point about shared governance and in support of the hypothesis I have just presented in relation to the second global shift that has come upon the PNC.
I had returned to Guyana after studying in the United Kingdom at the end of 1974 and began working at the Office of the General Secretary of the PNC and Ministry of National Development (ND) in about 1976. Dr. Ptolemy Reid, the then Deputy Prime Minister and General Secretary of the PNC, asked me to find someone to go around the country on behalf of the PNC and hold meetings with Cheddi Jagan as a prelude to national unity discourse between the parties and Burnham and Jagan making a joint appearance at a meeting that was to be held at the National Park. I tried but had to report that there were no takers and to my utter consternation and objection Reid decided that the task was mine. ‘No: not me Doc; I am not going and talk politics with Cheddi Jagan!’ ‘Yes, young man you can do this! Don’t let me down young man: you can do this! In any case it’s you all up there (Elvin McDavid, Malcolm Parris, and myself in ND Department of Planning and Research, of the latter of which I was the head) who spouting about national unity all the time.’
Cheddi and I held only two meetings – one at Bishops’ High School and the other at BV Government School. My memory tells me that Eusi Kwayana turned up at the BV meeting, questioned some of what Jagan and I had to say and concluded by asking if I had a commitment from anyone to fulfill the promises I had made. But the two meetings went reasonably well and I became quite friendly with Cheddi, and I have since considered that forcing me to do those meetings and make that association with Jagan was the second of two life-changing events that -coming almost one on the other – the PNC and Dr. Reid did for me: it prevented me from becoming attached to hard-core ethnic politics.
Therefore, when at the behest of Senior Minister Desmond Hoyte I became the principal of Kuru Kuru College at about the beginning of 1980, on a couple of big occasions when the discourse was about politics in Guyana, in the face of resistance coming not from Forbes Burnham or the prime minister but lower level officials, I would invite Jagan to participate on the ground that he was the official leader of the opposition and that Kuru Kuru was a government and not a party college. It was drawn to the attention of Dr. Reid that Jeffrey was allowing Jagan to talk at the college without permission, but as reported to me, in his usual matter of fact manner his response was, ‘he could have invited somebody worse’!
Importantly, on the national unity/shared governance issue, in retrospect the reason we then supported national unity is not the essential reason it is necessary. For us, and I believe for many persons today, it was a moral and necessary requirement if racial/ethnic groups are always bickering. But this formulation leaves the door open for politicians who believe themselves to be fair and good, to blame the leadership of the other side for misleading their people and then mislead themselves into believing that sooner or later they will win over the supporters of the other side. Unfortunately, the matter is much more complicated as almost evenly divided ethnic societies such as ours have their own dynamic. The leadership of no single ethnic group has the will/capacity to solve the issue of ethnic estrangement. Indeed, with ethnic entrepreneurs vigilant on the other side, its taking government usually signals ethnic domination and its consequences.
