Dear Editor,
I note Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan’s latest tilting at the imagined ogre of autocracy with his latest contortion, “Empirical autocracy”, both in his Stabroek News column of October 16 and his October 24 letter in defence of that column. In his column, in almost sophomoric manner, the distinguished academic defines the terms “empirical” and “autocratic”, and then goes on to quote an opinion proffered in the editorial pages of the very paper that publishes him as ‘incontrovertible empirical’ proof of his thesis of an existing, no longer imminent, autocracy: “And what about the current dispensation under the PPP/C? Is there not empirical autocracy, or absolute government? First, arbitrariness: A Stabroek News editorial of October 12, on “The President’s speech to Parliament” commented: ‘Increasingly it is evident that President Ali thinks that the future of the country is only for the PPP to decide and that the opposition parties, by virtue of the 2020 election shenanigans have deprived themselves of that right.’ Parliamentary committees rarely function; and consultation with the opposition is perfunctory at best.”
Further he quotes a newspaper report on the functioning of an independent oversight mechanism engaged in independent oversight, the Police Complaints Authority, as ‘evidence’ of autocracy. In his letter, in defense of that column in response to a rebuttal published in the state media, he writes: “Fourth, I labelled what is taking place empirical, or de-facto autocracy. I was careful not to pronounce on whether it was intentional autocracy – thereby giving the Government the benefit of the doubt.
Fifth, I stand by my view that there is incontrovertible evidence of empirical autocracy – all of which could be corrected by the Government if it cares to listen.” There is no such thing as a de facto or unintentional autocracy, no more than there can be a charge for accidental murder – the intent is an intrinsic and inalienable component of the definition. It is either an autocracy, for which he continues to fail to provide empirical evidence even as he self-attributes empiricism to his opinions; or it is not.
It is a strange and hubristic position to take, even more so from an academic of his stature, that his opinion (based on an opinion) is to be taken as ‘incontrovertible’ evidence. Perhaps Ramcharan might find stone tablets a more suitable medium for his writing than the pages of a newspaper. Finally, in my response to Ramcharan’s original ‘Shades of Autocracy’ column, I made the observation that he omitted the Alliance For Change (AFC) in his identification of the autocratic actions of the executive political administration in place from May 11 of 2015 to August 2 of 2020. In his ‘Empirical Autocracy’ column, he writes: “Under the PNCR regime, was there not empirical autocracy, or absolute government, followed by prolonged efforts in 2020 to subvert the will of the electorate? Was there not arbitrariness in the negotiation and signing of the oil contract? Was there not mismanagement and corruption?”
I disagree that between 2015 to 2020 there was an autocracy, although there was certainly evidence of the intent to establish one, particularly after the incumbent lost the March 2020 elections. I take the opportunity to remind Dr. Ramcharan, once again, that empirical research should have led him to observe that there was no entity named PNCR on the electoral lists for either 2015 or 2020, hence there could be no PNCR regime, something he seems to be strangely unaware of. There was, of course, an APNU+AFC government, a coalition as the name suggests comprising two entities, APNU and AFC. My opinion – based on my empirical assessment of Ramcharan’s interventions – is that this seems to be a deliberate and sustained effort on his part to absolve the AFC of complicity in the very ‘autocratic’ acts he lays exclusively at the feet of the PNCR in government prior to 2020, including, glaringly, the signing of the oil contract which directly involved serving AFC leadership; as well as the egregious and shameful attack on our democracy – after March 2, 2020 – using autocratic control of state mechanisms from GECOM to the Guyana Police Force to the state media to the Ministry of Health.
Ramcharan did not respond directly to my last letter, choosing instead to temporarily bow out of the very discussion he purported to have raised in the public interest, before rallying forth again once more into the breach of baseless claims of autocracy. I invite him to directly engage on the points raised in this one, in particular his multiple attempts to erase the AFC from complicity in the very sort of autocratic action that he purports to identify and condemn.
Sincerely,
Ruel Johnson