Much has changed in Guyana over the fifty-plus years since Independence except for one thing: the politics. And, it should be added, the politicians as well. The faces on all sides are different, but their modus operandi is, if not quite identical, for the most part very similar to what obtained decades ago. It is a case of the society struggling to move forward, while the political operators exert a pull on the reins of progress. Of course, new roads, new bridges, new houses and the like have been built over the years, and now we have the promise of all kinds of benefits accruing from oil, but these are developments of a predominantly material nature, not evidence of a truly forward-looking democratic society.
The problem is a structural one, both at a national level and in terms of the individual parties, which behave as if they are set in a concrete mould. As hardly needs repeating, it is a product of our main ethnic divide, but we are yet to find a party which can rise above this and function according to more enlightened principles. For a time a segment of the populace thought they had found it in the AFC, but it was not to be; that party too succumbed to the seduction of power and the dictates of an unreformed political system.
For some the answer is shared governance, although exactly what that means might not be quite the same thing for all its advocates. Be that as it may, the likelihood that any arrangement of that kind would work in the short or even medium term is probably nil, even presuming it was desirable at a theoretical level, which is highly questionable. Apart from anything else it would require a measure of trust between the two sides which simply does not exist at the present time.
It has been fashionable here to cite the example of Northern Ireland as a shared governance model which could be a guide for us here, but given the events there in the last few years, the lesson to be learned from that province is just how difficult it is. Leaving aside the fact that the complexity of Northern Ireland’s politics makes what obtains in Guyana look like a paradigm of simplicity, it has to be remembered that Ulster is not an independent sovereign state. As a devolved regional administration, if the shared arrangement breaks down, as it did not so long ago when there was no government for three years, Westminster remains the national government. In Guyana’s case there would be no Westminster, and a collapse of shared governance would produce chaos.
As things are at the moment there is no interest on the part of either of the two main parties in shared governance; the fashionable word on both sides is ‘inclusion’. It is something which has been echoed by two US Congressmen, one of whom, Mr Hank Johnson, urged the government and opposition to “work together towards further strengthening Guyana’s democracy and building a more inclusive nation.” In addition, Congressman Albio Sires, when delivering remarks at a Congressional hearing was reported as saying, “Guyana’s wealth is for all the people of Guyana, irrespective of their ethnicity… [W]e want to engage all actors in Guyana, including businesses, civil society, the current government, and the opposition to advance inclusive economic growth.”
Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Gail Teixeira was clear in her response that the government would ensure that every Guyanese benefited from the proceeds of the nation’s natural resources. She was quoted by the DPI as insisting, “We have been saying this all the time. The manifesto of the PPP/C during the election campaign and in the programmes we brought out since, focus on making sure that Guyanese benefit not only from oil money, but from the development of our nation, and the modernisation and expansion of our economic base.”
How this is to be achieved, handouts such as flood relief packages or $15,000 payouts to parents of school-age children excepted, was not made clear. Perhaps the assumption is that a revival of the larger economy will benefit everyone in the process, since no mechanisms for inclusion were mentioned. The problem is that politics in this country has always had a way of trumping economics.
For all of that the Minister went on to say that her government believed in Article 13 of the Constitution, which refers to the principal objective of Guyana’s political system as being an inclusionary democracy. “We are committed to Article 13 of our Constitution,” she maintained; “[w]e are committed to constitutional rule of law, and participatory democracy.”
Ms Teixeira then proceeded to contradict herself and hold onto a position which is the opposite of ‘inclusion’, however that is interpreted. She was reported as saying that the government would only work with the opposition when APNU+AFC adopted a mature political stance and recognised the legitimacy of the PPP/C government. Never mind that after the 2015 election her party refused to recognise the legitimacy of the poll, and by extension the legitimacy of the coalition government. She also appears to have forgotten that well into 2020, former President Ramotar was writing letters to the press alleging the 2015 result was the product of rigging. It does not seem to have occurred to her that no exceptional perspicacity is needed to discern that this is common-or-garden hypocrisy.
It is true that the opposition is encumbered with perhaps the most incompetent political leadership of any party in the last fifty years or so, and must be infuriating to deal with, but that is not the point. Freedom House is not in charge of Sophia affairs, and just has to accept whoever the coalition leaders are. In addition, as the opposition has correctly pointed out, there is no constitutional requirement for dialogue at any level.
As for requiring a formal recognition of legitimacy from the opposition, the coalition never required that of the PPP/C during its years in office, so why should the government make such a demand now? It knows that after all the nonsense APNU has been feeding its supporters, it is well-nigh impossible for that party to make a public concession at this point; it would simply be too humiliating. It could still work with the government, as the PPP/C did before it. As things are it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Freedom House is using this pre-condition as an excuse not to have dialogue with the opposition.
But the steely Ms Teixeira wasn’t finished yet, going on to accuse the coalition government of discrimination in office. Unfortunately for her, allegations of discrimination are by no means confined to one side only; the opposition can produce its own sheaf of examples covering the PPP/C’s previous twenty-three years in office.
What can be said is that these levels of exchange are extremely unhelpful from the point of view of evolving a rational political system. Contrary to what both sides think, neither on its own in an authoritarian sense can develop the nation; whoever is in government has to have mechanisms by which it can consult all sectors in a meaningful way and take on board their suggestions.
It is our misfortune that at the moment we do not have personnel of the stature of Northern Ireland’s Rev Ian Paisley and Mr Martin McGuinness, who can rise above the confines of party group-think and in one case a party constitution, to forge understandings for the betterment of the nation. Both Paisley and McGuinness were extremists in their heyday, the one from the unionist side and the other a senior official of the IRA. They were both very bright men, but most of all, they shared a great sense of humour, in addition to which Paisley was witty. They became unlikely friends, and in the early days they made the new government system in Northern Ireland work.
President Irfaan Ali has been making the right noises, but those noises do not reflect the reality which is represented by Ms Teixeira’s utterances. Of course humour is in short supply among our leading politicians, particularly on the government side, but nowadays even the opposition has a dour aspect. The atmosphere is rarely relaxed; everything operates in confrontational mode. Since it is the PPP/C which holds the power, the onus is on it in the first instance to create the space which would allow us to advance towards a more inclusionary democracy and reduce the temperature of the exchanges. And the first move in that regard would be to open dialogue with the opposition without conditions. Subsequently, other measures should follow, but that is another issue.
