Phillips needs to know that there were three other papers on power sharing

Apr 11, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I refer to Mr. Eric Phillips’ letter in Kaieteur News of April 10, 2010. Ostensibly, he only alluded to one of my papers on power sharing that hit the media over Easter; the letter writer needs to know that there were three other papers on power sharing immediately preceding the Easter piece – March 13, 20, 27. I would suggest that he reads these pieces.
Nonetheless, I am reluctantly responding to this letter, due to the letter writer’s gross deceptions; my response also will not contain anything vitriolic. The letter writer, perhaps, believes that engagement in vitriolic writings will be attractive to readers and could serve the purpose of concealing his propagandistic thoughts, while making him more competitive for leadership status within his base.
My four papers really are some research findings on power sharing; hopefully, we can engage in meaningful debate on the issue, and in the process, advance the cause of Guyana’s development. The letter writer’s vitriolic statements are unhelpful. Tolerance and appreciation of others’ ideas are critical and a prerequisite for consequential discussions.
And on another matter, surely and especially as he is so vitriolic in his letter, the respectful thing to do in his response to my April 4 paper that looked at Professor Ian Spears’ work in Third World Quarterly, was to accurately use the term I used; just for repetition, I used the term ‘power sharing’. Since he did not mention my other papers on power sharing that were a part of a series, let me whet his appetite:
“…In previous communications, we spoke about self-interested politicians’ voicing incessantly what they want; and that they should let the people decide whether or not they want power sharing; especially as they believe that power sharing is a panacea for society’s ills. Next, we showed how power sharing enthusiasts use only one type of power, omitting the use of a full accounting of power to peddle the power-sharing phenomenon; we referred to this as conceptual favouritism.” Barnett and Duvall (2005) work ‘Power in International Politics’ would be instructive here.
And then we noted that notwithstanding its attractiveness, power sharing continues to experience failures through discontinuities and interruptions in Ethiopia, Angola, South Africa, Tajikstan, Israel, Bosnia-Herzegovina, among others. And I continue to surmise that if Israel did not have its continuous coalition governments, perhaps, today, we could have seen a two-nation state in the Israel-Palestine mayhem!
Effective power sharing is rare, but where it exists, it can block strategic policy formulation and implementation, as in the Israel/Palestine perennial conflict, among other scenarios…”
Even so, in a power-sharing arrangement, we need to ask these questions:
* Would the PPP/C, the PNCR, and the rest of the opposition share authority in the same ministry?
* Would the PPP/C control some authority in the ministry and the opposition some?
* What would be the role of the President and the Leader of the Opposition in this new dispensation?
* Would Guyana have two Presidents with two Offices of the President?
* Who would Chair Cabinet meetings?
* To whom will ministers and statutory boards be accountable?
* Whose campaign promises would require fulfillment?
* Will there be two sets of Cabinet?
* How would we address political loyalty?
* How would we address gridlock?
* Which party manifesto will carry the day?
And there are other questions. The answers to these questions create more difficulties than exist at present.
Let me say, too, that in my four papers on power sharing, there is nothing in my premise that suggested that ‘shared governance’ was a global failure; keep in mind I used the term ‘power sharing’ and the letter writer talked about ‘shared governance’. Look at what I said about the status of power sharing: “Undoubtedly, there are people in this society who genuinely advance the cause of power sharing; and in their quest to reach this end, they want to replace the existing political structure with unproven aspects of consociationalism; it is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.”
For this reason, it is the letter writer’s premise that shared governance should totally replace the current political system; the fact that I alluded to “it is like throwing out the baby with the bath water” implies that I am not suggesting that shared governance is a global failure, and that we should improve the current political system; what, nevertheless, the political system eventually becomes, would be the subject for dialogue and constructive engagement.
In one of my four papers, I noted that the Scandinavian countries, the Low countries and Germany are some examples of stable coalitions; for this reason, I did not talk about any shared governance hypothesis as a global failure. This is what I said in an earlier paper about the status of power sharing:
“…And Rupert Taylor’s book “Consociational Theory: McGarry & O’Leary and the Northern Ireland Conflict” (2009) talked about the decline of consociationalism between 1980 and the mid-1990s. The high point for consociationalism was in the 1950s when there were 11 cases; in 1986, 6 cases, prompting Sue Halpern to say that “the model of consociational democracy has not been deployed with much success.” In 1997, there were 6 cases; Ian Lustick then noted in World Politics that consociationalism lost its centre and became a degenerative research agenda item…”
He throws up Chile as a success story for his advocacy of ‘shared governance; Chile is a fragile success story. “Not only is the system detached from civil society, but it possesses little capacity for renovation and high degrees of endogamy,” scholars David Altman and Juan Pablo Luna noted in a new report on Chilean politics.
One observes a political system co-opted by the elites and with low levels of citizen participation and activation.” I further said: “My input here is not to dismiss these people’s proposal, but it is just that these people ignore or may be unaware of the challenges that power sharing presents.
We need to ascertain, too, whether these challenges would be more politically-cost-effective than the challenges to the existing political system.
I contend that the pushers of the power sharing proposal(s) need to address these challenges that I address in today’s Perspectives.”
Should the advocates not look at the challenges that power sharing may present? And that is what I am doing; as I do not have the proclivity to accept anything carte blanche.
And the letter writer goes on ad nauseum about deficiencies of the Guyana Constitution; I hope he is aware that no constitution is written in stone, in that a constitution is subject to revisions.
And perhaps, when the appropriate opportunity arises, he will gain a seat at the ‘constitution’ table and be able to craft revisions that would be to his liking; readers should be aware that many of the letter writer’s deficiencies on the Guyana Constitution are mere propaganda.
The study on marginalisation to which the letter writer referred was a preliminary study on participation levels in the public service, and merely a continuation of Debiprashad and Budhram’s work some years earlier; this was a study on social marginality, attempting to determine the representativeness of the bureaucracy; I did not address political and cultural marginality; and even the letter writer’s comments on the marginality study extended beyond the parameters of my project.
‘Tokenism’, a variable more within a research on political marginalisation became an issue at the time the study became public, even though my work did not address such matters as political or even cultural marginalisation. Perhaps, we need to administer a study on tokenism.
And we should know, too, that marginalisation is not a condition; it is a process, as a person could experience marginalisation at one phase of the life cycle, but may be not in another; marginalisation also is not perennial, and people do make adjustments to their experiences of marginalisation over time. And the letter writer should know that over the years in Guyana, many people from different ethnic groups closely worked with me, where they excelled in their capacity and moved on with their careers intact because I believed in their capacity to always do better. Incidentally, Guyana has more than six peoples as race-ethnic groups.
I am unaware that I made allusion to any similarity between slavery and indentureship; they were not the same; Mr. Phillips is engaging here in gross deception. I wrote repeatedly about ethnic alliances between Africans and Indians, and that the two ethnic groups need to address the principles and practices of these alliances to enhance race and ethnic relations in this country.
I still repeatedly try to show that there are more similarities among us than there are differences; let us focus on these similarities.
At any rate, I do not want any Oscar; perhaps, if I do receive one, I will, indeed, give it to the letter writer, as he is more deserving of it; particularly because of his continuing exceptional poignant outbursts.
Prem Misir

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