Guyana is one of those countries whose politicians live in the past. Even though they talk about the future they do so applying the criteria of a bygone era. As a consequence the conflicts of earlier times still linger and the two major parties become locked in a pattern of perpetual confrontation. Each party has its own version of what our post-independence history represents, but for the PPP it is its exclusion from office because of electoral fraud on the part of the PNC. The final episode in this disreputable saga came in 2020, when there was an attempt to rig the poll which failed on account of foreign pressure.
This event in particular seems to have persuaded the ruling party to indulge a feeling of moral superiority, since it appeared to vindicate all it had been saying about its opponent over the years. At the beginning, therefore, President Irfaan Ali refused to meet Mr Joseph Harmon, then Leader of the Opposition unless he recognised the government as legal. This was despite the fact that the head of state was constitutionally required to consult him on specific matters, and that the Constitution set out no conditions for doing so. Nowadays it seems to be the unspoken excuse for not cooperating with the opposition on any front whatsoever.
If the government’s attitude to the opposition has some historical background, the reason for its equal hostility to independent critics does not lend itself to quite such an obvious explanation. And hostile it has been. On his accession to office Mr Ali assured citizens he would be open to “constructive criticism”, but since then both he and his ministers have demonstrated that they regard no criticism of any kind as ‘constructive’.
In one especially egregious case a year ago the President, along with AG Anil Nandlall, Public Service Minister Sonia Parag and Education Minister Priya Manickchand chorused their condemnations of a number of civil society organisations which had criticised the government on the grounds of accountability. Among the justifications the President gave for the opprobrium was that, “[m]any of the organizations had nothing to say … during the five months of impasse where our country’s integrity and credibility was damaged …” In other words, that omission put them in the same category as APNU+AFC. In addition he accused them of being one-man entities, only conveniently addressing issues, and being politically aligned.
Freedom House, of course, has always seen Guyana in binary political terms, and so the allegation that civil society bodies are not independent, but in fact are politically aligned has been a constant one. As in the case of its response to the official opposition the government impliedly justifies its invective against these groups on the grounds they are morally tainted. But there is something else too in relation to how the ruling party sees its political responsibilities in our context. The President said that the PPP/C had been elected on the basis of its manifesto and had a responsibility to deliver on the promises effectively and comprehensively. “[The] social contract on which we were elected must be achieved,” he said.
It is an entirely new concept of what democracy means here. While electorates usually like to hold governments to their promises, that does not mean that a very general undertaking in a manifesto takes precedence over all practical considerations, rules and regulations, constitutional requirements, transparency and accountability, etc, when it comes to possibly translating it into reality. In addition, a project for one reason or another might simply not be feasible at all. This idiosyncratic approach has also meant that the President has gone on to imply that those who oppose the government’s notion of development are anti-national, a divisive stance hardly in tandem with his ‘One Guyana’ mantra.
It might be noted that the ministers who expressed their views on that occasion identified the Guyana Human Rights Association as a particular target.
But if the attitude outlined above might give some account of how the PPP/C justifies its attacks on independent critics and civil society groups to itself, it still has to be asked what it expects to achieve in a supposedly democratic context by such vilification of these voices. In this day and age one would have thought it could not expect to intimidate them by this method, and as things stand they have not been effectively silenced. Does it expect to persuade others in the society that these are not bona fide independent critics? Their own supporters might be so convinced, but then that would not be a particular challenge. Where everyone else is concerned, particularly the well informed sector of the population, they will not be converted by such abuse never mind by a total lack of a rational argument. And most of the critics, it must be said, are very articulate and knowledgeable in their fields.
The line the government is pursuing in this regard seems counter-productive, and conveys the unintended impression that it does not know how to answer the independent critics, whether individuals or groups, in a coherent way. The question became even more relevant two days ago when the AG described the GHRA as “defunct” and said it had been “masquerading” as an exemplary civil society organisation. He went on to provide details about how it had not been in good standing under the Companies Act for the past three decades, and as a result owed a large sum of money.
In our edition yesterday we reported on Co-President Mike McCormack’s response in which among various other things he asked, “What steps were taken by the Attorney General’s Chamber in 1991 or more recently to ensure that all of the companies and organizations on the original Companies Register were adequately informed of the changes they were required to make to remain compliant?” He also wanted to know why the GHRA was being singled out.
The specifics aside, this represents a new departure even for the PPP/C in challenging its critics. Just what is the justification for the AG’s Chambers publicising the status of organizations registered under the Companies Act? Surely the way to proceed in the first instance is private correspondence with all those who need to be brought into compliance; it cannot be that given the changes in the law the GHRA is the only one with a problem. Is this an indication that the ruling party is prepared to proceed to a position where it uses information in government hands which is supposedly private against its critics?
The PPP/C has never been comfortable with Mr McCormack, viewing him in a political light in the early nineties. But that is not the point. It may well be that the party considers the GHRA a one-man show, but that is not the point either. It is what he has to say on matters of public interest that is the point, and clearly it is that which the government resents. It might be noted that he is also the Convenor of the Policy Forum Guyana which has concerns for the environment and along with Ms Vanda Radzik is on the multi-stakeholder group of EITI, from which Guyana was recently suspended. The President’s attempt to blame the two for the suspension was a misrepresentation of the truth, and the public became aware of this.
So once again, what is the government hoping to achieve by its endless condemnation of its critics, rather than answering their criticisms, or discussing possible alternative policies? It is only authoritarian states which attempt to silence their critics by denigrating them without let-up or releasing the kind of information that they did in Mr McCormack’s case. Is the government sliding back into its old Marxist-Leninist format, where it is uncomfortable with democracy outside national elections? Or is it a more basic case of a power obsession, and that now it is in power again it is going to do what it wants, no matter what anyone says?
What it should understand is that it might be living in the past, but times change in spite of its perceptions. Browbeating critics certainly worked in Burnham’s day, and perhaps in the earlier period of PPP/C government, but no longer. Why is the government so anxious nowadays to promote an image in conflict with democratic governance?
