Gridlock or Flow?

Feb 12, 2012 Editorial

President Donald Ramotar delivered what in effect was his “State of the Union Address” to the National Assembly on Friday, as his presence in that hallowed institution served to complete our Parliament. The President offered a succinct but panopticonic view of his new administration’s vision for our country. We will be examining that vision in future editorials but today we would like to delineate the context within which the President delivered his message. Context can sometimes be as enlightening as the text.
The President highlighted the major characteristic of that context: “For the first time we are faced with a situation in which no party has an absolute majority.” He was referring, of course, to the results of the last elections which delivered 32 seats to the PPP/C, 26 to APNU and 7 to the AFC. With a constitution that precludes post-electoral coalitions to form the Executive, the PPP/C captured the latter while the other two parties could control the legislature if they acted in concert, if, in other words, they formed a de-facto coalition.
President Ramotar made a most pertinent observation on the situation into which we had been delivered: “It is a new situation to us, but one that has been experienced in some other countries of the world. The results of the work of such parliaments have been very mixed. In some cases they were successful. In others they have not been so fruitful, and in some downright failures.” It behoves us to examine what were the variables that led to success or conversely, failures.
More than any other, the willingness or unwillingness of the participants of the political system not to exploit their circumstance to exclude others will determine success or failure. There has to be a spirit of accommodation to guide all activities. With two months under our belt after our elections, we can look at the behaviour of the parties to get a hint as to where we may be heading.
The President set the ball rolling by appointing a Cabinet drawn exclusively from his electoral block, to the chagrin of some in the opposition, especially APNU that had hoped the minority status of the Executive might have persuaded it to draft in some opposition members. The President, however, did unilaterally extend an invitation to the opposition to become involved in three new committees that would in essence have direct input in the policy-making bailiwick of the Executive.
These three committees were on governance (non-parliamentary), parliament/constitution, and economic (excluding budget). In addition there was to be an overarching plenary committee consisting of the top leaders of the parties and their representatives that would meet regularly to discuss concerns about past and present concerns about governmental policies and initiatives.
For instance, the opposition had expressed severe doubts about aspects of the Amaila Falls Hydro project: these were discussed at the plenary level and a tacit agreement on the way forward was reached.
The opposition was also invited to send representatives to make submissions on the formulation of the 2012 budget and also to the committee that was established to review the entire tax system in Guyana. Against this comparative openness by the executive, however, the opposition has been somewhat less accommodating.
There was firstly the selection of the Speaker of the Assembly where the Executive complained that not only was tradition jettisoned and the past Speaker not retained but that the opposition insisted on using their majority to secure both the Speakership and its Deputy.
More recently, and conterminously with the president’s speech, the opposition once again used its majority to secure control, rather that the parity suggested by the executive, of the very strategic Selections Committee. All of this seems to suggest that the president’s fears of ‘gridlock’ might be in store for governance of the country.
Calling for concrete actions of “compromise and consensus” to build “trust”, the president offered a sombre caution: “As willing however as my government is to exercise patience, forbearance, and reasonableness in the interest of all of our people, my administration will not be held ransom to intractable postures.”

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