In a comment on last week’s Future Notes, Mr. Mike Persaud said, ‘we need a Constitutional Reform idea that would trend or move the people away from this over-racialized politics’, and then asked ‘Any ideas on this question, … Jeffrey?’ He then proceeded to suggest an idea: ‘I have proposed that we should go back to elect authentic candidates from each of 53 Electoral Districts (EDs) – they must run for seats in the parliament w/o endorsements from parties. They must be held accountable to their constituents. This should at once reduce heavy racial voting. And, it will reduce the intensity of the nation’s ethnic politics by 50%. The other 50% will be addressed by racial parity laws – let the power of law do the rest.’ I am not certain what precisely is meant by over-racialised politics, how Mr. Persaud came to the conclusion that his suggestion would reduce the intensity of ethnic politics by 50%, what racial parity laws he will devise to reduce the other 50%, how he plans to arrive at such laws, etc. etc.
However, in the first article in this series ‘Constitutional reform: more accountable MPs’ (Future notes, SN: 12/08/2020), I addressed the issue of constituency accountability of Members of Parliament (MPs) and recognised that this is arguably the most popular demand of reformers. The general idea is to give constituents the ability to directly elect MPs and exercise a check on those who once elected betray their promises or fail to adequately perform, abandon the proportional representation (PR) ‘closed’ list system that allows the party leadership to determine who actually goes to parliament, increase direct constituency representation to about 50 MPs of the present 65 MPs, maintain the proportionality between votes received by a party and the number of MPs it receives and transfer the power to recall MPs to the constituencies.
I did note that the required changes could involve the party leaderships losing a significant degree of control over their constituents, and that while it might be impossible for them to exclude this item from the reform agenda, as with all issues impacting upon the control of party headquarters, vigilance will be required to ensure that the proposed new arrangements are not largely meaningless. However, since the ethnic struggle in Guyana is for national political control, I really do not see how the involvement of the political parties at all levels is to be avoided if only because some organisation will have to coordinate the national effort, and in an ethnic competitive political context it will do so around issues that will bring it the most votes. So I do not believe that making MPs more accountable to their constituency will substantially diminish ethnic voting. As can be seen in the era of Donald Trump, even a loose party arrangement as in the United States could severely influence constituency representatives!
Mr. Persaud claimed that the PNC and PPP are ethnic parties and I agree but I see nothing wrong with persons voting ethnically; it is a human right and over 90% of African Americans voted for Barack Obama. Indeed, the United Nations 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities states that ‘Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establish and maintain their own associations.’ Political parties are such associations for politics is an important aspect of one’s culture. The world has long gone past the days of cultural assimilation; trying to cultivate homogeneous type societies. The problem is that the world is becoming more and more multicultural and political/ethnic mobilisation is leading to political polarization in countries with two party systems such as in the United States.
Political theory tends to follow political practice and as I pointed out over the last two weeks, there are today two ideal forms of democracy. The first, which Mr. Persaud appears to believe is the only form of democratic expression, is based on homogenizing and assimilating the population so that the vast majority of citizens will become one and majority rule will work. The second, which is more appropriate to countries such as Guyana, uses various mechanisms such as minority inclusion in the national power structure, distribution of resources according to the size of the group, veto power to avoid decisions that adversely affect vital interests of the minority, and politics of negotiation, compromise, consensus and delay instead of majority rule (Future Notes, SN; 16/12/2020). Mr. Persaud, the latter constitutes my basic solution to the political ethnic problem in Guyana.
Mr. Persaud began his comment with ‘Jeffrey makes reference to the Constitutional Reform of year 2000. What good is that reform if it doesn’t address/mitigate the intense racial politics of the land?’ Firstly, unlike Mr. Persaud and I, many people still do not prioritize the ethnic problem in a direct manner when dealing with the present constitution. Instead, their contention is that the powers Forbes Burnham gave himself in the 1980 constitution were not sufficiently mitigated by the 2000 effort to allow the latter to be considered something new. I made mention of the 2000 reform process to indicate that the widespread consultation and acceptable constitutionality that officialdom is at present demanding is insufficient to make people believe that the constitution is legitimate. A constitution must be judged not only by the process that brings it about but by what it contains, and this must be based upon some prior understanding and agreement about the nature of the problem to be solved.
This position raised a few associated questions. It suggests that since what it contains depends upon the political world view of the framers, that world view could change, sometimes radically, over time and the constitution must be directly or indirectly consistently upgraded to keep up with this situation. For example, the late Desmond Hoyte forced the 2000 process upon the PPP/C at a time when he still believed in Westminster-type political participation, thus the numerous essentially majoritarian committees/commissions it contains. However, as one should do as new information becomes available, in about 2004, Hoyte changed his mind about the usefulness of the Westminster system but when in office his party did not take the opportunity to make the necessary fundamental changes, so here we are today!
To meaningfully participate in the reform process not only must Guyanese be encouraged to be fully involved but after decades of socialization in one destructive way of doing political business and having been fed mountains of self-interested propaganda, Guyanese need to be properly informed of the meaning of democratic participation and of the ethnic nature of the politics that underpin the Guyanese reality. Changing the constitution should not simply be a matter of sterile political horse-trading. Those who seek to make and facilitate such changes must, similar to Mr. Persaud, first publicly indicate the deficiencies they observe in the present process and how the changes they propose will make a positive difference.
