By Dr Bertrand Ramcharan
Seventh Chancellor of the University of Guyana.
The author has previously performed the functions of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
In a 2022 book on the History of Ideas titled “Confronting Leviathan”, David Runciman, University of Cambridge Professor of Political Philosophy asks “Is the state that we built to keep us safe going to be our saviour or our destroyer?” This is an apposite question in Guyana, whichever party is in power.
In a telling comment, Runciman writes, “The founding idea of modern politics is representation. This is Hobbes’s idea. In a modern state, power is delegated. It is handed over to a smaller group of people who exercise it on behalf of the larger group and the larger group acquiesce in that: they authorise it, they legitimate it, but they also live under it and they live with the consequences of it.” Indeed, Guyanese have been living with the consequences of their political rulers, whichever party is in government.
In this piece, I ask the question: “Has Guyana been experiencing empirical autocracy, both under the PNC and the PPP: the autocracy of arbitrariness, mismanagement, and corruption?” And I invite the commentariat to share their reflections on this question: soberly, dispassionately, and without invective. The question posed is one of political philosophy.