Latest update April 6th, 2025 11:06 AM

Guyana's largest selling daily and New York's most popular weekly

Latest News

Light or Darkness?

Nov 14, 2012 Editorial

Yesterday, the nation commemorated the festival of Divali which, being a National Holiday, hopefully focused the minds of our politicians on how they will extricate us from the “Mexican Standoff” we described in our Sunday editorial, “Disorder in the House”. Are they going to continue wallowing in the darkness of rule of law abuse or will they act to take us into the light of peace and progress by working together?
It is almost one year since our elections delivered us into the now clichéd ‘new dispensation’ that arose out of the Executive and Legislature being controlled by different parties for the first time in our history. In that time, the populace has become increasingly jaded at the hope that their votes would force a more consultative democracy. Part of the reason is that there are elements in the society who conveniently cite the Constitution when it suits their interest but close their eyes and ears when it doesn’t.
The nature of our Executive is a case in point. Ever since 1980, it was clearly stated in the Constitution that a party securing the largest number of votes in the elections automatically secures the Presidency and the Executive. The possibility that in a race between three or more parties, one of them could capture the Presidency with a plurality was widely discussed. After all, the Constitution precluded two or more of those parties from pooling their votes to form a coalition government after the elections.
When, after a great deal of blood, sweat and tears, the Constitution was comprehensively overhauled to satisfy concerns raised by the Opposition, neither that Opposition nor the government saw fit to change the ‘plurality Executive” clause. Therefore it is highly inconsistent for the Opposition to excoriate the Executive as a ‘minority government’, as if the latter is not a legitimate institution.
In the US, through the mechanism of their ‘Electoral College’ adumbrated in their constitution, there have been four instances when the party with a majority of the popular vote did not capture the presidency. In countries with the ‘constituency first-past-the-post” electoral system’ such a ‘minority’ executive is a regular feature.
On the other hand, the same functioning of the Constitution has delivered control of the House to a combined Opposition. It was expected that in the grand tradition of politics being ‘the art of the possible’, the two sides would have ‘horse traded’ across the table to arrive at a balancing of the possible conflicting interests between these now independent arms of government. We actually had a rather auspicious beginning which was disrupted by three set of factors.
APNU had consistently raised the possibility of forming what has been called a ‘grand coalition’ after the elections, if it were to have emerged victorious. It claimed it would have included members of the PPP in its Executive. It appears that even though the PPP never expressed any interest, much less enthusiasm for the idea, the leadership of APNU were very disappointed when the ‘shared governance’ model was not mooted by the new PPP executive.
The PPP had persistently downplayed the applicability of the model because of its propensity to slide into an elitist oligarchy sans any moderating influence from the outside. The failure of the model in Kenya, a similarly situated fractured polity, and its slide into a kleptocracy, gave credence to the PPP’s position.
It must be said that even after the disappointment of its expectations, APNU reacted very positively to a new device initiated by President Ramotar – the Tripartite Talks. We do not have to revisit the torpedoing of this mechanism by the smaller Opposition AFC, over the Linden Agreement negotiated by APNU with the Executive, save to point out that no one needs to be lectured now as to the futility and ultimate nihilism of such tactics.
We believe that the Tripartite Talks must be resuscitated immediately and all the parties must participate in crafting a way forward. The alternative is a snap-election which, evidently, no one relishes.

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| April, 4th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

 

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

‘One Guyana’ 3×3 Quest Basketball opens with local teams in mixed results

‘One Guyana’ 3×3 Quest Basketball opens with local teams in...

Apr 06, 2025

-Action concludes today Kaieteur Sports- In a historic occurrence for Guyana’s Basketball fraternity the ‘One Guyana’ 3×3 Quest opened yesterday, Saturday, morning at the Cliff...
Read More
GCA, East Coast surge to huge wins 

GCA, East Coast surge to huge wins 

Apr 06, 2025

GFF/Concacaf kick off two-day Match Commissioners Workshop to boost football operations in Guyana

GFF/Concacaf kick off two-day Match Commissioners...

Apr 06, 2025

Chase’s Academic outclass Bartica to move closer to 2025 title

Chase’s Academic outclass Bartica to move...

Apr 06, 2025

Three Miles Secondary make clean sweep of Jagan Windball cricket titles

Three Miles Secondary make clean sweep of Jagan...

Apr 06, 2025

National Chess champions off to Trinidad and Tobago

National Chess champions off to Trinidad and...

Apr 06, 2025

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Freedom of speech is our core value at Kaieteur News. If the letter/e-mail you sent was not published, and you believe that its contents were not libellous, let us know, please contact us by phone or email.

Feel free to send us your comments and/or criticisms.
Contact: 624-6456; 225-8452; 225-8458; 225-8463; 225-8465; 225-8473 or 225-8491.
Or by Email: [email protected] / [email protected]

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]