ELECTED WHAT?

Jul 30, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The exchanges between Dev and Kwayana on the concept of an elected dictatorship have one fundamental shortcoming.

Neither of the two men has established the parameters of just what constitutes a dictatorship.
It is also a flaw that is present in the contributions of other commentators, the best known of which is Freddie Kissoon.

Kissoon was discredited in an earlier debate on this very subject when he tried to misuse arguments advanced by Fareed Zakaria.

The problem of definition is what leads Kwayana to ask how many authoritarian or dictatorial acts a government has to commit before it is deemed a dictatorship.

It is like asking how many abuses of human rights must the American Government be allowed before that country is deemed a dictatorship.

I had attempted to address these concerns in a response I had done to Kissoon entitled Guyana has no elected dictatorship. This is what I wrote way back in September of last year:

Guyana has no elected dictatorship. The very concept of an elected dictatorship is an oxymoron, and even more so if one is relying on Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy” as a justification.

The essence of Fareed Zakaria’s The Rise of Illiberal Democracy is to separate the concept of democracy from the concept of constitutional liberalism.

It is not as some may assume to strictly advance the thesis that there can be an elected dictatorship.
Fareed begins arguing that increasingly around the world democratically elected governments are ignoring constitutional limits on their power and are depriving their citizens of their basic rights and freedoms.

The problem, according to Fareed, is often obscured because of the association of democracy with that of constitutional liberalism.

However, Fareed notes that the two are theoretically and historically different and that to label a government as democratic only if it guarantees its citizens a range of social, political and economic rights is to turn the word democracy into a badge of honour rather than a descriptive category.
This is the very point that some analysts writing in this newspaper seem to have missed.

The issue is not about elections- and by extension-democracy- electing the wrong leaders. The issue is more about the association of electoral democracy with constitutional liberalism.

In short, what Fareed is advancing is that guaranteeing constitutional liberalism will take much more than simply having free and fair elections and especially since constitutional liberalism has led to democracy in many countries but democracy has not necessarily brought liberalism.

He, however, insists that the essence of democracy has to do with the right of the people to elect a government of their choice.

Quoting Samuel Huntington in the Third Wave, he repeats that “elections, open and free, are the essence of democracy.

Government produced by elections may be inefficient, corrupt, short-sighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good.

These qualities make such governments undesirable but they do not make them undemocratic…To have democracy means, subjectively, a good government renders it analytically useless. Guyana turned the democratic corner in October 1992.

There were many persons, including some who are now advancing this misplaced notion of an elected dictatorship, who knew that simple respect for human rights and civil liberties was not enough to restore Guyana to the democratic fold of nations.

The struggle was essentially for that fundamental right which is the very essence of democracy: the right to elect a government of one’s choice.

This was achieved in 1992 but it did not become the panacea for all our ills, nor did it guarantee that there would be good governance.

However one feels about the track record of the ruling administration and however much one is peeved by its betrayal of the other anti-dictatorship forces, there is no question that freedom and rights are better safeguarded in a country in which the holding of free and fair elections exist. Without this right, all other rights can be trampled upon.

Guyana, however, needs to look beyond electoral democracy. Its special circumstances, however, dictate that it also look beyond the traditional notion of constitutional liberalism because even with limited government, checks on executive power, and independent and efficient judiciary to defend the rights of citizens from arbitrary governmental action, the Guyanese political system is still likely to engender discontents precisely because of the ethnic security dilemmas.

Any solution, therefore, to poor governance cannot limit itself to entrenching constitutional liberalism because these in themselves will not erase the core causes of ethnic insecurity which is at the heart of political instability in Guyana and by extension the creation of a cohesive polity.

If we wish to engage the question of the limits of free and fair elections, let us therefore be honest and visionary enough to accept that mere respect for the precepts of constitutional liberalism will not suffice in the case of Guyana.

In fact, a stronger argument can be made that the economic content to constitutionalism liberalism can be extremely divisive.

What is needed is a solid commitment to the free and fair elections without which democracy means nothing. Constitutional checks against the heavy hand of the State are needed.

What is also needed is an efficient and independent judiciary that will ensure that the violation of the rights and freedoms of citizens are not condoned.

But more importantly what is needed is a political system which accepts that Guyana has a serious ethnic insecurity problem and is so tailored to address the insecurities of all significant as well as minority groups in Guyana.

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