The ethnic impact

Aug 26, 2012 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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(For more than two decades we’ve issued an annual variant of the following call. We do so once again in the wake of the Linden protests.)

Not unreasonably, citizens of every society evaluate the policies and activities of their incumbent government critically. Governments after all, are elected to run the State on behalf of their citizens. This scrutiny is most intense by those who voted against the government.  It has become common, therefore, for governments in the developed democratic democracies to announce ahead of time what impact their policies will have on specific constituencies.  As in the US, on labour, business, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and so on. The more divided and polarized the society is, the more critical will be the evaluation of the government’s policies, since the premise of the government being biased towards “one side” is even more palpable.
In Guyana, the PPP government usually attempts to discuss the impact of their policies on constituencies using Marxist terminology. They insist their policies help the “working class”. This doesn’t cut any ice with ground constituencies, however, which generally categorize themselves ethnically and evaluate every policy from that perspective. The PPP has had to defend every single initiative – be it appointments and dismissals to and from the Public Service, downsizing of the bauxite sector, house-lot allocation, contract awards, against claims by the African Guyanese community, for instance, of discrimination against them and favouring Indians in the sugar industry, rice industry, etc. In each instance the PPP’s explanation have been too little, too late for African Guyanese.
The fear of governments favouring supporters is exacerbated in ethnically polarized societies. The perceived or real discrimination becomes the occasion, if not the cause, of many a battle. In 1977 during the “unity talks with the PNC, the PPP pointed out the racial impact of the PNC’s policies and actions on Indians. Burnham retorted that, “much of the talk about unity is not based on class but on ethnicity regardless of class. Where is the socialist content of such ‘unity’?” The avowedly socialist Dr. Jagan was nonplussed. The uneasiness about race/ethnic interests has become institutionalised in our politics/discourse.
The PNC since 1992 has, in turn, consistently accused the PPP of practicing racial/ethnic discrimination against primarily its African supporters – even as it feels necessary to insist that it is not an “African party”. It is caught in the same semantic contradiction as the PPP. The charges of “marginalisation” from the African community have been a primary fuel in the ethnic conflagrations since 1998. The agreement signed by President Jagdeo and Mr. Hoyte in 2001 and the Communiqué of 2003 between the President Jagdeo and Mr. Robert Corbin, were attempts to answer such charges. But we have seen that they simply lead to additional charges and counter-charges over implementation or non-implementation.
(Let’s see how the present agreements pan out!) The PPP and PNC will have to overcome their ideological reservations and deal with a spade as a spade: the division of the cook-up must not only be ethnically fair, it must be seen as ethnically fair.
Guyana has now all accepted the need for “Environmental Impact Statements” before we embark on programs affecting our physical environment. This policy acknowledges the fragility of our environment and the importance towards our own health and survival. Can’t we acknowledge that our social environment is as important as our physical environment – and certainly more fragile? After all, it has been vividly demonstrated over the past decade that the destruction of our social environment is the direct destruction of “us”.
While we concede that the cause (and solution) of our ethnic problem goes beyond governmental actions, the fact of the matter is that we have to begin there. It is a simple matter of justice. No matter which party forms the Government, we accept that Governmental actions have to be conducted on behalf of all the people: the State is our joint venture. Since, based on our history, we know that all governmental actions will be scrutinised by the populace for its ethnic impact, what is the harm of scrutinising the policies ahead of the implementation?
If such “Ethnic Impact Statements” could be crafted and issued before the announcement and implementation of policies and programs, they would precipitate discussion and debate, which could be utilized to modify the policies or programs before they become political mobilisational tools – witness the present (2010) agitation in Berbice Bauxite (now 2012 Linden bauxite). To wait for the inevitable ethnic post mortems is to ensure there will be trouble. Big trouble.
The old cliché still holds: justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. An “Ethnic Impact Statement” on Governmental activities would go a long way to introducing the latter happy condition.

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