UNION OF THE GOVERNMENT AND MASSES AGENDA

Dec 25, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Minority governments can never be a precondition for the majority opposition in the legislature to internalize the illusion that, by virtue of its majority, it has an executive role. Under existing constitutional arrangements and given the election outcomes on November 28 last, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) remains the ruling party with legitimacy to execute its executive responsibility; and the majority opposition has the legitimacy to effect its legislative duty. The majority opposition is not the executive, and, therefore, not the government; likewise, the PPP/ C government is not the legislature, and, therefore, not the parliament.
The PPP/C Government has the exclusive right to present an executive agenda to parliament wherever and whenever parliamentary approval is necessary; and the opposition majority should have no input into the Government’s determination of this executive agenda, unless so requested and may be mutually beneficial. Nonetheless, it is in parliament that the majority opposition can use its majority to influence the outcomes of the government’s agenda.
And in the preparation of the Government’s program, there is no harm in government’s key personnel seeking the opposition’s inputs; but during such process, the opposition should not presume upon itself that it is part of government. Given a minority government in Guyana, the battle on the dynamics of minority versus majority will be in parliament. Indeed, the majority opposition can bring down this Government by virtue of its majority.
But the majority opposition will not do so now, since facing the electorate at this time, and perhaps even in the medium term, may endanger its majority in parliament. And it would be extremely problematic and damaging for the opposition to traverse this risky electoral route, especially if the PPP/C Government has an agenda deeply rooted in the masses’ concerns, interests, and needs.
As I said in my last letter to the media, “The PPP/C, indeed, is a minority government, but it can produce for all Guyanese as a majority government because it is not primarily the votes it acquired but a quality legislative and executive agenda that will determine the quality of its governmental performance in parliament. The logic governing good governmental performance pertains to having an agenda that meets people’s interests and fulfils their needs; especially the concerns of the vulnerable and the poor. Addressing and resolving such concerns with immediacy would dismiss any sine qua non attached to ‘votes’.” And, indeed, meeting people’s needs dismisses the relevance of a ‘majority’ in parliament.
The PPP/C Government’s agenda must holistically embrace the masses’ concerns, interests, and needs, where the Government’s agenda becomes the masses agenda; and the Government can achieve this goal through (1) concretely and verifiably addressing the masses’ concerns, interests, and needs, and (2) where public perception is in sync with concrete governmental efforts and outcomes to address the masses’ concerns, interests, and needs. This kind of governmental modus operandi would make the opposition ‘majority’ concept statistically not significant.
Nevertheless, there is another side to this story of majority opposition and minority government. Notwithstanding the closeness of the PPP/C’s agenda to the masses’ agenda, or where there may be mutually beneficial policies for all stakeholders, it is still possible that the majority opposition could engineer a situation to induce bargaining failure because of party-voter discipline.
Consider the case where former President Vincente Fox of Mexico failed to introduce significant fiscal reforms to enhance state revenues, because his party did not carry a majority in the Congress, even though the opposition might have favored increased taxes and revenues. Consider, too, where the red-green government coalition in Germany (1996-2006) failed to reduce taxes and improve social security in the Christian-Democrat-dominated Bundesrat, although opposition majority should have supported the measures. These two examples illustrate legislative gridlock.
Ferna´ndez-Albertos and Lapuente (2010) provided stakeholders’ electoral motivations and voters’ imperfect information as possible reasons for this legislative gridlock through citing Magar (2007) and Groseclose and McCarty’s (2000) studies. Magar (2007) argued that preventing certain policies to gain parliamentary approval is the majority opposition’s way of dispatching a signal to rationally uninformed voters; or blaming the government for not being in sync with voter choices (Groseclose and McCarty, 2000). Whichever reason becomes manifest, the end product will be legislative gridlock. And perhaps, the way to prevent gridlock for any government is to inject as its raison d’être, the public prominence of the Government and masses agenda.
Prem Misir

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