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A few great things Western democracy gave us
I am not fascinated with the greatness of Western political economy. The structural defects are enormous and frightening.
When countries like the US achieved the kind of wealth it has chalked up, there is no reason why poor people should go without health care.
The story of Hurricane Katrina showed the dark side of US greatness. How can a country with an annual budget in the trillions of dollars allow its people to live in such poverty?
One of the insane failures of Western capitalism is its maniacal emphasis on military hardware. Even Canada that has just one neighbour spends money on arms that could go into making the country more prosperous.
The most mind-boggling mystery of western societies is their refusal to practise the inner core of the value that all its citizens and leaders embrace at a deep psychic level – Christianity.
One would have thought that western civilization would have achieved the “end of history” after it passed all of Rustow’s stages of economic growth. To say that capitalism has been a crowning glory for the world is far from the truth.
No bigger embarrassment was pre-Chavez Venezuela. Swimming in petrol dollars, Venezuela should have acquired First World status long ago.
But as the statistics showed, each year before the rise of Chavez, income disparities widened; they favoured the rich classes.
Capitalism’s failure was laid bare after the Industrial Revolution. With the fantastic rise in science and technology, the fate of the poor and lower classes did not improve.
Alternatives to capitalism proliferated in the 19th century and two won out – fascism was less successful than communism. The rest is now history.
The economic side to western society may be a perpetual disappointment but the great political values that came down from Christianity right through to the Enlightenment and culminating in the age of the hippies in the 1960s have made western democracy a superior paradigm to its competitors.
In this sense, Fukuyama may be right – the end of history is here.
One of the valuable lessons passed down to us after Independence is the neutrality of the civil service. We know how Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham treated that.
Today three Permanent Secretaries sit in the highest forum of a political party. The concept of the conflict of interest is one of the stupendous assets that we in the
Third World have inherited from the UK when it controlled vast sections of the Third World. The doctrine of the conflict of interest needs no legal definition.
One does not have to delve into any explanation of its preciousness. Two examples of the assault on this sacred doctrine have occurred lately.
I will deal briefly with the first one, then respond to Peeping Tom’s article on the second situation as was dealt with in his column yesterday.
Since President Jagdeo is the Minister of Information and since he was the victim of the verbal abuse broadcast on Channel 6, he should not have presided over the fate of Mr. Sharma.
He said that he asked Dr. Luncheon to do that but Sharma resorted to the courts. But in the end, the President did become the judge in his own case.
Yesterday, Peeping Tom wrote that Minister Frank Anthony was not in a conflict of interest when he headed the credential committee for the PPP’s 29th congress. Interestingly, the writer refused to acknowledge that Dr Anthony was the chairman of the committee.
Whoever wrote that column either tried to deceive readers or does not know what is the role of the credential committee.
The credential committee had in its hands all the names of the delegates that were to be at the congress six weeks before the event.
A delegate is a person that has voting rights. Dr. Anthony as a contestant expected to receive votes to be in his party’s central committee.
Why he should not have been there is because he knew who the voters were six weeks in advance; they had to submit personal data on a form that had to be forwarded to him.
Dr. Anthony also would have been in possession of the names of the 87 competitors who were vying for a place among the forty seats on the central committee.
The point is not the personal integrity of Dr. Anthony. He may have all the principles in the world and refused to do anything wrong.
The reason why he should not have been there is because one day, someone without morality may use his/her position on the credential committee to manipulate the voters.
When laws are made, the legislators have no specific person in mind when they deliberate. They think about the guiding principles rather than the personality.
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