Elected dictatorship: Applying Zakaria to Guyana

Mar 05, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A known PPP defender has accused me of applying the theory of Fareed Zakaria wrongly to Guyana, citing Vishnu Bisram as his source. He wrote (KN, Dec 20, 2009); “Kissoon repeats misstating the positions of respected writers even after being corrected, e.g. Bisram pointed out that Zakaria’s text, “Illiberal Democracy” had contrary implications to the ones being touted by Kissoon.”
Peeping Tom and Prem Misir have accused me of the same action. Let us leave out Bisram, who I believe is not in the least familiar with the theories of Fareed Zakaria. This particular Peeping Tom (whom I believe I know because I know more about the nature of the internet than Peeping Tom; sometimes the runner stumbles) and Misir pitifully confuse two essential concepts of Zakaria
Here is a very brief summary of what Zakaria wrote. It will be followed up with quotes. But before that is done, it must be pointed out that this new adumbration by Zakaria scares many little dictators in the Third World like the ones in Guyana, because Zakaria has downplayed the role of free and fair elections in the set of criteria one uses to determine the extent to which a country enjoys freedom, justice and liberty.
Before his outline was published, the standard approach in post-WW2 political studies was to conclude that a country was democratic if its leaders were freely elected and to equate democracy with freedom. Zakaria broke with that tradition. He traces the evolution of democracy and constitutional liberalism in Europe and concluded that they are two processes at work and they have to be intertwined before freedom could be enjoyed by the citizenry.
The first step is the election of leaders. The second step is to allow for the process of constitutional liberalism. Here is how he puts it; “If a country holds competitive, multi-party elections, we call it democratic, constitutional liberalism on the other hand, is not about the procedures for selecting government, but rather government’s goals.”
Zakaria offers his pictures of constitutional liberalism; “It refers to the tradition, deep in Western history, that seeks to protect an individual’s autonomy and dignity against coercion whatever the source – state, church, society. It is liberal because it draws on the philosophical strain, beginning with the Greeks. It is constitutional because it rests on the rule of law.
Constitutional liberalism developed as a defence of the individual’s right to life and property, and freedom of religion and speech. To secure these rights, it emphasized checks on the power of each branch of government, equality under the law, impartial courts and tribunals. In almost all of its variants, constitutional liberalism argues that human beings have certain natural rights and that government must accept a basic law limiting its own powers.”
What part of this thesis is so complex that PPP apologists cannot understand? Simply put, this theorist is saying that you can have free and fair elections yet not have freedom in a country. Here now is the quote from Zakaria that should interest all Guyanese. I ask you to read it twice. “Surveying the breakdown of African and Asian democracies in the 1960s, two scholars concluded that democracy is simply not viable in an environment of intense ethnic preferences. Recent studies have confirmed this pessimism.” Then Zakaria quotes an intellectual expert on ethnically divided society, Donald Horowitz’ “In the face of this rather dismal account of the concrete failures of democracy in divided societies, one is tempted to throw up one’s hand.”

That quote concludes our discussion on The Zakaria theory. In Guyana, the relevance of the theory is evanescently clear. Guyana is one of the most viciously divided societies where racial suspicion permeates all sectors of human existence and where government of either the Africans or the East Indians are forced into terrible racist and racial policies. In such a condition, democracy and constitutional liberalism are impossible. The leaders of the UK were inhumanly rude when they imposed free and fair elections in Zimbabwe without understanding its dangerous weaknesses. In 1992, the Americans made the same mistake in Guyana.
Mr. Burnham was wrong but logical when he told a group of visiting Afro-American scholars that if the PNC does not rig the elections, the East Indian majority would reduce Africans in Guyana to servants. Mr. Hamilton Green, protégéd by Mr. Burnham, expressed the same fear as Mr. Hoyte made a covenant with Jimmy Carter and the American Government to have free and fair elections in 1992. The elections were free and fair alright. But they certainly didn’t bring freedom to the Guyanese people.