The Freddie Kissoon column…Antigua and Guyana: democracy compared

Aug 04, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

One of the Peeping Toms, in the Thursday column, sought to dismiss my theory of elected dictatorship, which I have taken from the theorizing of Fared Zakaria on the loss of constitutionalism in countries that have regained electoral integrity.

It was a monumental misunderstanding by Peeping Tom of Zakaria’s crystallization of the descent into dictatorship by countries that have legally acceptable elections. Peeping Tom, in his endeavour to disprove the existence of elected dictatorship, ended up using the wrong quotes.

This Peeping Tom’s essay had to be written by someone unfamiliar with the evolution of the state in the European context, and how state forms have emerged, and the constitutional liberties that have resulted from this evolutionary process.

Rights and freedoms emerged in the post-Westphalia world not from open elections but from pressure on the state to share power. This power-sharing scheme was deepened with the advent of universal suffrage.

The line of Zakaria’s reasoning is that free and fair election is a manifestation of democracy, but democracy is not the real test of how free a country is. The standard requirement of freedom is the existence of constitutional liberalism.

In rejecting the existence of elected dictatorship, the writer quoted from Zakaria the very statements by Zakaria that prove that countries with democratic elections have degenerated into elected dictatorship.

What has confused Peeping Tom is that Zakaria uses the term illiberal democracy, or elected autocracy, to mean elected dictatorship. So Peeping Tom feels victorious, because Zakaria did not use the term “elected dictatorship.”

The point is that, throughout the pages of his Foreign Affairs essay, he vividly describes how elected governments are desecrating liberal constitutionalism.

The Foreign Affairs piece (November/December 1997) is a condensation of his book on the theme. Amazingly, Peeping Tom missed 22 pages of Zakaria’s pictorialisation of how democracy has atrophied into dictatorship. Using Zakaria’s explanations, the model of elected dictatorship fits neatly into the PPP Government in Guyana today.

The essence of Zakaria’s thesis is that free countries stand on two important pillars — democracy and constitutional liberalism. He makes it manifestly clear that rights and freedoms inhere in constitutional liberalism, so it is this dimension of a country that is more important than democracy.

But democracy, when it comes, must strengthen existing freedoms. This is not happening. 
I will quote Zakaria before I come to his dismissal of Antigua. Read this: “There is a growing unease at the rapid spread of multi-party elections because of what happens after the elections.” Zakaria then documents the egregious abuse of power in a large number of countries after free elections take place.

He does not mention Guyana, but the picture fits Guyana perfectly. Read again: “Constitutional liberalism has led to democracy, but democracy DOES NOT SEEM TO BRING (emphasis mine) constitutional liberalism.”
Here is the part all Guyanese should note: “Elections require politicians to compete for people’s votes. In societies without strong traditions of multi-ethnic groups or assimilation, it is easiest to organize support along racial, ethnic, religious lines.

“Once an ethnic group is in power, it tends to exclude other ethnic groups. Surveying the breakdown of African and Asian democracies in the 1960s, two scholars concluded that democracy is simply not viable in an environment of ethnic preference.

“Recent studies have confirmed this pessimism.”
The author ends his analysis by advising that US foreign policy should concentrate more on the assertion of constitutional liberalism in the Third World rather than on free, open elections. The reason is that rights and freedoms are more important than open, competitive balloting.

Finally, Antigua. Dr. Zakaria refers to it as a semi-democracy. Here is where the Guyana case study becomes interesting. If Antigua is a semi-democracy, then if you describe events in Guyana to Dr. Zakaria, he would probably term this country a despicable tyranny.

The following political pathologies present in Guyana are absent in Antigua — mysterious assassination of a radical anti-government activist; five years in jail for an anti-government critic who wasn’t convicted for any crime; terrorism advocacy charges against an anti-government spokesperson that several stakeholders agree should not have happened; consistent attacks by central authorities on the media; centralized domination of Parliament and the advocacy of its independence by a Commonwealth consultant;  withholding of presidential assent on twelve Bills passed by majority vote in Parliament; refusal to pass a Freedom of Information Act; no human rights commission; no money laundering commission; no procurement commission; suspected official involvement in extra-judicial killings.

There is no point in continuing the enumeration. These political perversities do not characterize the Antiguan landscape, yet Antigua is not classified as a full-fledged democracy. Reading the theoretical insights of Fareed Zakaria puts this country into a categorization that certainly is not within the league of democracies. Guyana, then, has an elected dictatorship.  

---

---