It must be obvious to the vast majority of the Guyanese that if the coalition government had won the 2020 elections, the festivities would have been substantial, long over, the PPP/C left to lick its wounds, and given the weakness of the health system, the national focus, would have been – as it should be – exclusively on the coronavirus crisis. Furthermore, if the coalition had won the elections, nothing would have changed for those of us who insist that Guyana requires a shared governance arrangement. The PNCR would have been gallivanting around the country claiming the end of ethnic voting and the irrelevance of the discourse about the winner-takes-all system notwithstanding that one half of the citizens would have been left alienated as a result of its, more likely than not, manipulating the extremely bloated electoral list!
The maximisation of individual and social freedom, security and good living are the objectives of human existence and natural rights. Democratic elections are merely a tool for the expression of human freedom in the social setting, and I see at least four kinds of threat to this freedom.
Firstly, when the democratic system itself is threatened: when the West believed that communist world domination threatened their view of democracy they were prepared to destroy the entire world to prevent that from happening (the Cuban missile crisis). The West sided with the PNC to manipulate elections in Guyana for some three decades and things have not changed. When Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006 and among other things refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, the West cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas was declared a terrorist organisation. This column has recently indicated that in 2013 in Azerbaijan a clearly fraudulent election was declared free, fair and transparent by a US congressman largely because ‘Azerbaijan lies squarely in the energy-rich Caspian region and is vital to European oil and gas supplies. .. it acts as a counterweight to Europe’s increasing dependence on Russian energy resources’ (Who does the West want to rule? SN: 12/02/2020).
I supported the West in its confrontation with the PPP because I believed that communism was a danger to my freedom. I did not support a return to ‘democracy’ as Cheddi Jagan had the capacity to win and I believed that he and his party were communists set upon doing what, misguidedly, Marxist-Leninist communists were wont to do: suppress the extant freedoms of the people in the interest of some distant stateless utopia. Please note that all those who mattered in the PPP knew my position long before I joined its government in 1992.
Secondly, my freedom is curtailed when the structure of the electoral system does not properly account for the expression of myself as a member of a primordial ethnic group. This is essentially a shortcoming of Anglo-Saxon-type political systems that are essentially winner-takes-all and not consensual. So that in 2012, after African organisations decided that they wanted the monument commemorating the 1823 slave rebellion placed at Independence Square, the PPP/C unilaterally decided to place it on Carifesta Avenue. That could not have happened in Belgium, where, after the 2010 elections, because of their differences over community and social-economic issues, the conservative New Flemish Alliance of Flanders and the socialists of French-speaking Belgium took 541 days to negotiate a new government.
The delay in Belgium was an extreme case, but it makes the point that political systems can be structured to allow for various ethnic expressions, and this natural right is missing in Guyana where, instead of courting consensus, the electoral status quo pits two larger ethnicities against each other and inevitably leaves one outside the decision-making process.
Thirdly, my democratic freedom is distorted to the extent that it is manipulated by the role that money plays in the electoral process. This is well recognised and a great deal of noise is usually made and systems established to mitigate the influence of campaign financing.
Fourthly, my democratic freedom is curtailed by direct and indirect electoral manipulation: in our case the former essentially by a bloated list, voting buying etc., and the latter by way of fake news, propaganda, etc. All manner of elections monitoring groups have been established to prevent or reduce such practices.
No one can take away my natural right to express myself as I please as an individual or a member of a group: even less so can oligarchic political parties with their self-serving arrangements! The present political system is not conducive to Guyanese, particularly minority groups, maximally expressing their freedom and as such should be changed, and this is only strategically related to the PNC having been supported to and then squandering the opportunity to fulfill its promise to make that change.
Mankind makes its own history but does so in confrontation with its circumstances: it is not a slave to those circumstances and what confronts Guyana today is not insurmountable or even complicated and this is as good a time as any for those changes to be made. I will make a suggestion below but first let me put to rest a few issues. There are numerous cases where important negotiations take place between physically warring parties, so the notion that the present elections must be declared in favour of either of the parties before discussions on ending the winner-takes-all system are concluded is mere opportunistic humbug. Similarly, claims that ‘the Guyanese people’ expressed themselves well during the last elections must not be taken seriously. The citizens spoke: Guyanese are not ‘a people’ or ‘a nation.’ Furthermore, those who believe that government should be turned over to the winning party once it makes some loose commitment to constitutional reform have no experience in government. Desmond Hoyte had to induce ‘mo fire’ to get the PPP/C to implement the 1998 Herdmanston Accord in a kind of a timely manner!
Desmond Hoyte also left a template that suggests a way forward and I make the following suggestion because I believe we are set on a path that could lead to the March 2020 elections being annulled with added recriminations that will not be beneficial. If he has not already done so, President Granger as leader of the ruling party has the responsibility to, in one way or another, make contact with Bharrat Jagdeo, General Secretary of the PPP and make a proposal: upon the strongest legally binding agreement being reached, the results of the 2020 elections will be immediately declared and the winning party will take government. It would be best if the new opposition take no part and is not in a position to take any blame for the activities of such a government: it simply must stand ready to hold its feet to the fire for timely completion. The following are my views of the basic issues to be agreed upon.
1. Within 2 months of taking government a constitutional reform process will be established and will be completed within 18 months and new elections will be held within 1 month thereafter.
2. Based upon a consensual vision, the PPP and the PNC have agreed to support an end to the present winner-takes-all electoral system, use the intervening period to get rid of the bloated list, and establish a system of governance in which both the major parties have equal authority.
3. At various levels of governance there will be mechanisms to eliminate or reduce as much as possible the effects of majoritarianism.
4. During its term in government, unless agreed to by the opposition, there will be no promotion, demotion, removal or victimization of senior personnel in the public and security sectors.
As I wrote in a letter to the press in June, 2009, ‘No politician, I know, wants our roads, schools, hospitals, education, crime prevention, general administration and all else, to be underfunded and in various stages of disrepair. If our leaders and indeed many of us are to be blamed, it is for either not truly understanding the context in which they find themselves or having recognized it, not having the will to change it.’
