The trouble with life is that words mean different things to different people

Feb 12, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I read President Ramotar’s speech to the official opening on the 10th Parliament last Friday and as presented by GINA, there were a number of headings, like “economy,” “international situation,” etc. There was no section on governance or democracy or inclusive politics.
From the time you secured your thought patterns as you keep growing as a teenager, as a Guyanese, you come to understand that your society is a landscape deeply divided by race and politics.
I say without fear of contradiction that in no other territory could a ruling party, that was so tattered and disrespected, have won reelection as in Guyana. Subtract the Nagamootoo phenomenon in Region Six and the November 28th General Elections were yet again an ethnic census. One would have thought that carving out a new political culture in one of the world most troubled countries, would have been one of the preoccupations of the new President thus a few words on it as he addressed the 10th Parliament
Analysing the Presidential address, one sees words used that should engender some form of optimism in the population. Mr. Ramotar spoke of “compromise,” “consensus,” “cooperation,” “maturity,” among others. Parallel with this, Mr. Ramotar used terms like “ransom”, “govern”, “intractable”, that can be quite disconcerting. The trouble with life is that words mean different things to different people and in Guyana, the PPP since its birth has had its own dictionary of words that are not shared by others in Guyana or found elsewhere.
We can start with “intractable.” Mr. Jagdeo has a special meaning for that term. If he, Jagdeo, spelt out a format and you don’t agree, then you were being intractable. It was Mr. Jagdeo’s interpretation of “intractable,” that led to a decade-long postponement on Broadcasting Legislation. The opposition objected to total power in the hand of the Information Minister. For this, they were intractable.
Does Mr. Ramotar have the same understanding of what the word means? Will the opposition become intractable when it demands that the University of Guyana Council should no longer have nine Government appointees on the Council?
The word “govern” is one that should occupy the thoughts of all Guyanese. President Ramotar seems to have a narrow interpretation of the Lockean principle of the separation of powers. Mr. Ramotar told the National Assembly that his Government will not be held to ransom by the opposition as it seeks to govern. But under the separation of power, the governing process is not confined to the Executive branch only.
A better word to use is “administer.” The Executive branch administers the Demos (ancient Greek term for community) based on the latitude the legislature sets it. In other words, there are two pillars of government with one being higher than the other.
In traditional and modern political practice then, the legislature has more power than the Executive. Mr. Ramotar has to govern (or more properly administer) the State within the guidelines set by the legislative branch.
Both APNU and AFC have promised the University of Guyana community that the University of Guyana Act will be changed so that there will no longer be nine Government appointees. The Executive arm of the State then has to obey that rule and administer the University based on that change.
If the Executive doesn’t agree then it is the Executive that has become intractable… not the legislative arm of the State.
This is where trouble is going to come because one suspects that President Ramotar has his own understanding of what to “govern” means. Then there is maturity. What does this mean? What does compromise mean? We cannot judge Mr. Ramotar on how his predecessor, Bharrat Jagdeo, approached semantics, grammar or even deconstruction and epistemology. But we know that for the 20 years President Ramotar has been a PPP Parliamentarian and the 13 years he has been General-Secretary of the PPP, his party has always used words in the PPP’s own way and that way was not found in universal grammatical use.
If you did not see it the PPP way, then you were wrong. If you don’t see it the PPP way, then you are an enemy. So we might have a situation in which when the opposition refuses to budge on fundamental principles of democracy; the opposition will be immature, intractable and refusing to compromise.
Time is going. The tripartite talks have convened four times yet there isn’t a single goody delivered to the Guyanese people. The new Parliament is almost three months old, and we are yet to see at least one of the many nasty Jagdeoite Bills repealed. Where is the maturity?

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