AFC offers the way forward

Feb 16, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
On February 23, 2011, Guyana will celebrate 41 years of Republican status. We are told that the 23rd of February was chosen because this date coincides with the outbreak of the 1763 Berbice Slave Rebellion. I would like to say something here about the significance of this particular slave revolt.
On the 23rd of  February 1763, the slaves of Plantation Magdalenenburg on the Canje killed the manager of the estate, took all the firearms and ammunition they could find, and made off towards the Corentyne. Thus began the Berbice Slave Rebellion.
The slave revolt of 1763 was a concerted project to forcefully assume political and administrative power in the Berbice locality. It predates the famous Haitian Revolution and represents the first concentrated effort to overthrow a despotic government.
Because of the values contained in what the 1763 slave revolt represents, this insurgence is celebrated and serves as an inspiration to all Guyanese.
However, the failure of the 1763 slave rebellion holds very pertinent and instructive lessons for the Guyanese society at this very critical juncture as well as in the future. Apart from a very flawed and misguided military strategy, the insurgents suffered from the paralyzing limitation of internal strife and disunity.
Vere T. Daly who gave radio address in 1966; the year we became independent on the 1763 revolt which is documented in a booklet entitled Towards Freedom—A Series of Broadcasts’ sought to relate this disunity in contemporary political parlance.
He posited that the rebels lost their chance to maintain their independence because they were divided into too many parties. “There were the creole party, the African born party, the Congo party, and the Ashanti Dahomey party; in addition there were the two parties led by Coffy and Atta respectively.”
In any movement to institute change or to amend an autocratic dispensation of governance, while divergence of views and philosophies is important in the crafting and pruning of strategy, unity of purpose and effort is in my opinion of paramount importance to the success of that struggle.
As Guyana stands on the threshold of another general election, our people must be able to select a political entity that is best able to unify our traditional polarized society. I proffer that the old antiquated political Leviathans, because of the pronounced ethnic images and characteristics associated with themselves simply cannot perform this task.
I proffer here that only the Alliance for Change representative of a genuine multi ethnic amalgamation premised on cooperation and synergies and free of the political excesses of the Leviathans is situated to achieve this task.
Desideratum of liberal democracy
Some years ago, I wrote a paper critiquing the Marxian economic and political theory. I said then that when a political movement through its activism and struggle
eplaces an authoritarian regime, if the necessary checks and balances, the sort of which were forwarded by Baron de Montesquieu, are not instituted and enshrined  in a sacrosanct constitution, that very political movement will ineluctably drift towards the very authoritarianism it struggled against the removed.
History has shown this happening in a Bolshevik Russia, Zimbabwe under Mugabe and a Cuba under the Castro brothers.
This has indeed been the particular development in Guyana though not to the extent of the above cited examples. It is against this background and context that the AFC will commence a national discussion for constitutional reform and propose amendments for the removal of the Executive Presidency.
It is against this background and context that the AFC will reform the National   Assembly by implementing the recommendations of the World Bank Fiduciary Oversight Studies and the report by Sir Michael Davies, Senior Commonwealth Parliamentary staff advisor.
With regard to the judicial system, the AFC will ensure that it continues the process started to deal with the backlog of cases, the timely delivery of rulings and adoption of stringent accountability measures.
Henry Mayo’s work on democratic theory is instructive at this juncture. He treats justice as the sixth specific value of the democratic system. Justice has been highly rated by political philosophers as a value to be attained in many societies.
Its achievement is often regarded as the core of political morality and the defense of democracy on this ground must be that it is the system best able to produce justice.
With regard to Procurement, the AFC will ensure full implementation of the Public Procurement Laws and establish the Public Procurement Commission.
With regard to the practice of good governance, the AFC will dismantle Government control of the media and the regulation thereof by Broadcasting Legislation, because as John Stuart Mills had pointed out, liberty of opinion is conducive to the discovery of new truth; establish a Bi partisan committee of the Future to advise and guide the policies and programmes of Parliament and establish a Convention for the President to give annual reports to the National Assembly.
I wish to posit that it is the prevalence of such checks and balances which more reflect and indicate the actual presence of democracy than just periodically holdings elections which because of ethnic voting is predetermined anyway.
Mayo writes, “The link with democracy lies in the political liberties – the procedures, the publicity, and the possibilities of redress. What the US Supreme Court once said of liberty may be true of justice too: the history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards”.
John Rawls had coined it “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others”.
I have also held the view that emerging economies at some stage will have to jettison that pathetic syndrome of victimhood and in the manner of the Singapore example, chart a course of growth for themselves.
Dr. Mahbub Ul Haq way back in 1975 at the Turkeyen Third World Lectures had schooled us about the “inequities of the old economic order” and of the hegemony of the Bretton Woods institutions.
Thus in 2011, we should not be carping constantly with almost puerility on such inequities but rather relentlessly shaping and reshaping strategies for growth.
I have always forwarded the view that the work of Professor Joseph Stiglitz should undergird such endeavours.
The collapse of the neo liberal paradigm has created a ripe condition for some brilliant Caribbean economist(s) to produce a Caribbean oriented model for growth.
I here wish to cite an excellent piece down by Sir Courtney Blackman entitled The Global Financial Crisis and the collapse of the neo liberal paradigm in which he forwarded some fundamental pillars on which our economic restructuring must be premised.
Economies are made up of people, not of graphs, mathematical symbols or statistical data; the market is a concept; it does not cerebrate. Only people do. It does not know better than we do. The economic programme and strategy of the AFC has been very carefully crafted to serve as a catalysis for growth. The centerpiece of the AFC’s economic vision is the proposal of a Development Bank.
In the Action Plan, sources for funding as well as the general principles governing this institution are enunciated.
A general principle that ought to be noted here is that priority must be accorded to agriculture, agro processing, bagasse electricity, coconut plantations and processing, jewellery manufacturing for export, wind energy, solar energy, ICT, aqua culture and eco tourism.
One is of the fundamental instructions emanating from the American response to the “credit crunch” is that access to credit has to be considered an intrinsic component of the free enterprise system. A Development Bank will thus provide the capitalization of the AFC’s industrial policy.
Amar Panday

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