Last week I argued that since the transfer of government to the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) after the March 2020 elections, both it and A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) have been promising constitutional and electoral reforms to prevent a repeat of the allegedly criminal events associated with attempts to manipulate those elections. In considering similar claims that are now being made in the vaunted bastion of democracy, the United States of America, I came upon a few lessons that could be of interest to Guyanese. I surmised that a more formal presidential transition period and legal electoral arrangements such as exist in the USA could enormously benefit the electoral process in Guyana. However, the political nature of Guyana that encourages ethnic entrepreneurship is the main problem, and this will not be solved until the establishment of more inclusive national governance arrangements.
In my previous article I said that, unlike the position in Guyana, in Philadelphia the members of the elections commission have a term limit of four years that coincides with the elections cycle, and the first lesson today concerns this issue. Guyana’s Elections Commission (GECOM) is also multiparty based but by article 225 of the Constitution its members appear to have a status akin to permanent public servants and some have argued that this should be changed to fixed term appointments or something like the situation in Philadelphia.
The commonplace argument is that, as we have seen in Guyana, political party-based arrangements can imperil or cripple decision-making, especially where critical party interests are at stake. Furthermore, the presence of politicians on election commissions could undermine confidence in, for example, the security of ballot material. Multiparty-based management bodies are also said to ‘generate dissatisfaction among minority parties that might be excluded from them’ (https://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/em/emd/emd01/emd01c/emd01c01). However, many countries, that have ethnically polarised populations and are transitioning from an autocratic system have a dearth of persons who are accepted as impartial to serve on elections management bodies. It is expected – and the quarrel surrounding the recent elections in Guyana clearly indicates – that the commission members are usually partisan but it is also true that they tend to checkmate each other, ensuring that undue advantage is not taken by the various sides. However, frequent turnover of members can be managerially disruptive and the members of these political party-based arrangements usually hold fixed term office from which they cannot be dismissed except for cause, such as a breach of their duties, or upon their withdrawal by their nominating authority.
The law in the state of Pennsylvania states that, ‘In trials of contested nominations and elections, and in all proceedings for the investigation of primaries and elections, no person shall be permitted to withhold his testimony upon the ground that he may incriminate himself, or subject himself to public infamy, but such testimony shall not afterwards be used against him in any judicial proceedings, except for perjury in giving such testimony.’ The Constitution of Guyana allows an accused to withhold testimony on the ground of self-incrimination and recently, the police in their effort to deal with the claim by the PPP/C government that attempts were made rig the 2020 elections, have had in custody some persons who invoked the right to remain silent.
The second lesson concerns the above Pennsylvania-type law that has been making the rounds as a possible input into a solution. Of course, if we place a high value on the democratic process and agree that elections manipulation severely undermines that process then perhaps those accused of such behaviour should have a duty to testify. However, pleading self-incrimination helps to prevent the accused from being compelled to testify and make ‘confessions’ extracted by the use of force or torture. So, even the diluted Pennsylvanian version of the right to remain silent should not be removed in conditions such as exist in Guyana where political partisanship affects most social organisations and accusations of police pressure and torture are commonplace. Only a few years ago, the genitals of a young man in police custody were burnt to extract information from him. The 2018 US State Department Guyana Human Rights report stated ‘There were allegations that prison officials mistreated inmates as well as claims that police tortured suspects and detainees.’
Interestingly, I have repeatedly argued in this column that a major political problem in Guyana is the general absence of a united public opinion by which to hold governments accountable. However, law enforcement operation is so pervasive and of such questionable repute that on this issue I doubt that either of the two large parties will be able to gain sufficient support from their ethnic bases to pass legislation that removes a person’s right to remain silent when confronted by the law.
The presidential transition period is useful and could be formalised to prevent the kind of chaos President Donald Trump is now causing. However, I am far from claiming that social systems could function smoothly upon written regulations alone. The final lesson is that all manner of traditions and customs must be abided by: this is why ‘work to rule’ is such a potent trade union resistance tool. The final lesson is that democracy rests upon two important unwritten values, tolerance and forbearance and discourse and compromise. One does not go to the limits – 34 is 50% of 65! – to pursue one’s case even if one feels that one is being shortchanged.
The presidential transition period is one of those important traditions and is allowing Donald Trump sufficient space to present evidence and make his case, but he has chosen to go to the limit by not even cooperating in ways that would be extremely beneficial to his country, particularly at this time. So when the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – who has only recently been threatening to sanction Guyanese officials for undermining democracy by pursuing ‘frivolous’ legal cases and demanding that only legal votes be counted before there was a transfer of government – says that he is in support of Trump’s stand of following the process to its limits, he is being hypocritical. But given Trump’s popularity with Republicans, his insistence upon personal loyalty and Pompeo’s supposed ambitions for the 2024 elections, maybe he can find solace in the notion that once Trump does not actually break the law he can palaver as much as he likes: 20th January beckons.
