Political chatter

Apr 09, 2009 Editorial

Of recent, the chattering classes have once again begun obsessing about “power sharing”, “shared governance” and other such political devises. They all presume radical changes in our system of democracy – away from the majoritorian one we presently practice.
More pointedly, what these theorists are proposing is that we dump our methodology for selecting a government (by choosing the party or parties that can garner the largest bloc of seats at the general election) and insist that – by some as yet unaccepted agglomeration methodology – all or most of the political parties around coalesce to form the government.

The reason for this intrepid – or foolhardy, depending on one’s perspective – innovation, is that such a government would be more “inclusive” and ipso facto, become more effective than the ones chosen after independence. One is not immediately convinced by the logic of this argument.

At the very minimum, increased size has rarely been used as a rationale for more efficient/effective decision-making or policy implementation. One may assume greater legitimacy for decisions that affect the wider collective – as with the recent expansion of G-8 to G-20 – but never greater effectiveness.
However, one may argue that greater legitimacy in decisions that affect an entire country is nothing to shrug off lightly. It might make more citizens put their shoulders to the national wheel and deliver greater bounties for all of us to share.
But is it a fact that citizens who voted for the opposition don’t give it their all in their day-to-day endeavours? We do not believe that this is the case since it would be a matter of cutting one’s nose not just to spoil one’s face but one’s entire livelihood: we just do not have so many practitioners of Hara-Kiri in Guyana.

Then there is the argument that the government is discriminating against supporters of the opposition in doling out the national patrimony and the inclusion of the latter would ensure a more equitable distribution.
Now this charge is not unexpected and is a standard one trotted out by opposition forces the world over – but not the prescription. After sixteen years, one would have expected that by now the opposition would have compiled a hefty dossier with documented proof on the alleged discriminatory practices that they could share with the country. This has not been forthcoming.
And this brings us to the ethnic argument, floated most recently by the UN expert on minority affairs: Afro-Guyanese perceive themselves as “marginalised”. While there may unquestionably be such a perception, the $64,000 question is whether constituting a government is the best way to overcome such perceptions. And whether it will not push our national integration backwards as politicians represent explicit “ethnic interests”.

We had two such experiments recently – in Kenya and Zimbabwe – in which the former is foundering and the latter never got off the ground because such interests are frequently incommensurable with the realities of the overarching polity.
Horse trading politics can never work when there are just not enough horses for everyone, and no one wants to sacrifice for the national good.

Apart from the aforementioned and other substantive reasons why the opposition may argue for their inclusion into the corridors of power, there arises the question as to why would the party in power – in the face of an increasingly fragmented opposition – entertain such ideas.
At the most mundane level, there is the issue of the inevitable dilution of power and the need to push some of their comrades overboard to accommodate the newfound “allies” from across the aisles. In the cold world of politics, there would have to be some quid pro quo – or more earthily, some mutual back-scratching. So what is the opposition willing to put forward?

In 1999, violence in the streets forced the government to concede changes – but changes in governmental structures were not requested by the opposition. Before those changes could even be digested, there came the new demands for “shared governance”.
So what if, as is happening in Kenya and Zimbabwe, the politicians founder while divvying up the gravy? Request communal rolls? Where does it end? And if it is not to be violence, what other “quid” is available?

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