Our current electoral system is designed to preserve the dominance of the PPP and PNCR

Aug 09, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I have noted the attacks on the Alliance For Change (AFC) coming out of the decision taken by its National Executive Committee (NEC) against entering into a pre-election coalition with the PNC.
Recently such statements have come from none other than the Leader of the PNCR himself, who of all people should be aware of the difficulties that the AFC would face in entering a coalition with his party. Interestingly, from the PPP side Hydar Ally (PS, MoH) is also urging the AFC to keep the door open to the PNC (Kaieteur News 07/08).
Some of those who support coalition do not realise that our current electoral system is designed to preserve the dominance of the PPP and PNCR by squeezing out third parties. It results in dividing the Guyanese people squarely into two camps which are then played one against the other in a fight for supremacy. Then again, there are those who are perfectly aware of this reality.
The first aspect is that the party with the largest number of votes forms the government, even if it falls short of an overall majority. This ensures that neither the PPP nor the PNCR can be written out of the power equation because their banks of ethnic votes remain big enough to put them within striking distance of attaining power.
The second aspect is the closed list system for extracting Members of Parliament. This system ensures that the List Leaders have iron control over MPs (and Ministers in the case of the party in Government), and kills any possibility of independent thought and expression.
When the AFC energized close to 30,000 Guyanese citizens in the general elections of 2006 and shook the foundation of this established political order to the core, the PPP and PNCR quickly found common cause. It is with this appreciation of the threat to the established two-party order that we must view both the record of the PPP and PNC after the advent of the AFC in 2005, and the mischief behind the current calls for a pre-election coalition with the PNC and AFC for 2011.
Firstly, the PPP and PNC concluded a backroom deal to support each other’s candidates in regions where neither had secured a majority. Mind you, this was despite public expressions for “unity of the opposition” by the PNC. Not only would this “unity” have seen more regional councils being governed by opposition parties, but it would also have provided a stronger basis for advocacy of meaningful local government reform.
Secondly, the PPP threw a lifeline to the cash-strapped PNCR by making available taxpayers’ monies for scrutineers, a repeat of the deal they had entered into prior to the 2006 Elections. The AFC had to go all the way to the Court of Appeal to secure a ruling that it and other parliamentary parties were entitled to a portion of those funds, since identical to the case prior to the election it received not a blind cent voluntarily from the PNCR.
Thirdly, even after the AFC won a “proportionate allocation” ruling, the PNCR and PPP then got together to pass legislation, namely the Elections Laws Amendment Bill 2009, that effectively overruled the Court of Appeal’s decision, making the other parliamentary opposition parties subservient to the PNCR, and again preserving the status quo. The legal arrangements put in place by this perversion of Parliamentary power spells hell for the AFC and GAP/ROAR in terms of mobilising scrutineers. Of note is that the PPP’s overruling of Acting Chancellor Carl Singh and his Court of Appeal in 2009 was no different to that of the PNC’s statutory overruling of Chancellor Keith Messiah and his Court of Appeal in 1984.
Fourthly, the PPP and PNCR rallied to enact Recall legislation that would bring to heel anyone who might be inclined to eschew the party line in the national interest.  Their intent was very obviously to cement their individual and collective stranglehold over the Guyana body politic.
Fifthly, the AFC has been consistently shut out of talks between the Government and Opposition, leaving only President Jagdeo and Mr. Robert Corbin at the table.
Where was the much vaunted “opposition unity” in all of this?  The answer lies in the inescapable reality that once the AFC entered the political arena it became a competitor not only to the PPP but to the PNCR as well, because we ran against the zero-sum political order that they both created, and entrenched for over half a century.
Problematic for us too is that we have very real differences of philosophy with the PNC. We in the AFC believe in the sanctity of elections, and the recent experiences of Vincent Alexander and Winston Murray do not inspire my confidence. We believe in the independence of MPs to put what they consider to be the national interest before party interest. We have also taken a position on street protest that has seen us take pressure from quarters close to the PNCR.  Given these and other differences in values, the real mischief lies in the fact that our party list system does not allow for a distinct identity of the AFC within a pre-election coalition. It cannot guarantee the AFC the option of withdrawing from a coalition with its parliamentary strength intact, if the PNCR attempts to destroy the AFC once we are in the clutches of pre-election coalition or if they renege on any agreed programme in a coalition compact.
The very real risk of the AFC being subsumed in the PNC must provoke consideration as to whether our political landscape can do without the moderating influence of the AFC, and if we are willing to return to the bipolar status quo and the associated continuation of the half a century old state of persistent limited war with its occasional deadly eruptions. I freely admit that the PNCR have been saying all the right things, but the fact remains a successful pre-election coalition will inherit the reigns of absolute power.  Therefore, what are the chances that the PNC will stick to any gentleman’s agreement? For make no mistake, a “gentleman’s agreement” is the extent of the guarantee that we will have.
To my mind a pre-election coalition brings us full circle, back to 1992 where the “good guys” with “good talks” replaced the “bad guys” and those of us in the AFC executive, especially we who came out of the PPP, are painfully aware of the ease with which the best of intentions can evaporate once the seductive prize of absolute power is attained.
Gerhard Ramsaroop

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