Ogunseye: Upping the ante

Apr 24, 2011 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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A couple of weeks ago, I analysed the brouhaha that erupted in T&T after Chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) Nizam Mohammed pointed out the extreme ethnic imbalance in the upper ranks of the Police Service (20 Indians – all in the lowest tier – out of 59 officers) and proposed that he intended to address the issue with assistance from Parliament.
I had contemplated rounding off the series by reviewing the status of the broader issue of the representativeness of all our Disciplined Forces – a matter that had received quite some attention in our country – but held off in the end.
I figured with elections in the air and accusations of “marginalisation” and “blood on hands” already flying fast and furious, I might be accused of gratuitously adding fuel to the smouldering, always-ethnicised electoral fire.
Since the issue had not been completely resolved here, I thought it best to wait until one of the politicians broached it. “That’ll be more in line with the role of a commentator than a politician”.
Little did I expect the matter to be raised so soon and so dramatically as it has been by Mr Tacuma Ogunseye.
Speaking at an ACDA meeting in the African-dominated village of Beterverwagting on the East Coast of Demerara, the executive member outlined the organisation’s plans in the immediate post-election period: “If we win, we sharing the government with them but we also have to tell them that if we lose, we are going to fight and bring Guyana to a halt until we have a national government in which the representatives of African people and the combined opposition is part of parliament; Comrades, we are announcing the riot act.”
Moving to the issue at hand, he declared ringingly: “Once the African people rise up in their great numbers, I dare the army to take the side of the PPP and against Africans.”
He flatly concluded, “Our sons and daughters would not do that.”
Mr. Ogunseye was affirming ACDA’s belief that the African-dominated army would not put down an uprising by their kith and kin against the government.
And it is this exact point that I have been making for more than two decades, in calling for a more representative Disciplined Services.
An army or police force, like any organisation, is made up of people. These people have emotions, feelings, loyalties and identities moulded by their social and cultural origins – in addition to the esprit de corps sought to be inculcated by the organisation.
When, as in Guyana, politics is ethnicised and the Disciplined Forces are drawn preponderantly from one ethnic group, surely one can appreciate the conflicting pressures placed on the ordinary soldier or police rank when they are asked to take action against their “own”.
The pressures become even more intense when the government of the day, their civilian political bosses calling the shots, are drawn from the opposing ethnic group. When they do obey their orders – as has generally been the case during the past troubled decade, they are accused of being “soup drinkers” and betraying “their people”.
What I have emphasised is that it is not a matter of the ranks being “bad” or “evil” when they are conflicted in some of their responses – as occurred when they were in hot pursuit of criminals on more than one occasion during the Buxton violence – they are merely being human. Humans inevitably have greater empathy with those whom they share a common identity.
In the older states with ethnically differentiated populations, they had troops that were drawn separately from the several groups and they rarely, if ever, deployed an ethnic battalion against its own “people”.
I do not believe we have to go down that road here, but rather we can do one better. The state is supposed to represent the will and aspirations of all its people. If the populace persist in viewing themselves as separate, the state through its institutions can at least aspire to hone closer to the ideal.
By constituting state institutions – especially the Disciplined Forces that possess the defining state power to deploy violence against citizens – in the image of the people several gains are achieved.
Most importantly, it becomes increasingly difficult for political and social leaders to view the Disciplined Forces as strategic power resources that can be deployed in an ethnically directed manner to up the ante in political disagreements.
Secondly, the representative forces themselves will become more constrained in acting in an ethnically biased fashion. They will also more credibly deflect criticisms from ethnic cohorts of being “sell outs” when they execute their orders in a professional, non-partisan manner. And this will be true for all ethnic groups.
It is rather pathetic that we have to make this point 20 years after the vicious beating of Rodney King by members of a white-dominated Los Angeles Police Department led to the radical reform in its ethnic representation, and its enhanced overall performance.

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