Fears on Federalism

Jun 02, 2013 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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Back in 2003, when Dr Henry Jeffrey was Minister of Education and I was a ROAR MP, I was in his office discussing the travails of my son, who, at the age of three could read, write and do ‘rithmetic, but could not enter primary school. In the midst of our conversation, an employee entered on some presumably urgent matter. When he left after Henry signed a piece of paper, the Minister smiled ruefully, shook his head and said, “The Regional Education Officer is supposed to take care of that matter, but these fellows in Georgetown will never let it go.”
I remembered the incident as I read Henry’s disquisition as to why federalism will not help Guyana. Like almost every serious politician in Guyana, Henry accepts that there are severe problems with our centralised form of governance. And because of this he reaffirmed that “the way forward for our multi-ethnic society must contain substantial devolution”. All we need discuss, according to Henry, is “the appropriate degree of decentralisation”. But “federalism” is irredeemably inappropriate. In fact, he concluded definitively, a federal system “does entrench racism” and will lead to “the ethnic Balkanisation of Guyana”.
And why does he conclude this? Because this is the problem with America, which has a federal system. And why choose America as his model? Because even though he accepts that “federalism comes in many forms and the relationship between states and central governments are also most varied,” he chose the US “because it is the one best known to us”. This I found to be most odd, especially when he also pointed out that the US variant of federalism “was not conceived in connection with race elections”. I mean if Henry is going to illustrate his contention, would it not be best to select an example that fits your subject?
But Henry is mistaken when he says that US federalism “was not conceived in connection with race relations”. In fact, everything that constituted the US system of government then and now has to do with race relations – specifically white-black race relations. When the US issued its famous Declaration of Independence, Blacks were officially defined as only three-quarters a human being. The federalisation of the Republic explicitly operationalised this point of view by differentially facilitating the economics of production.
Henry would remember also that in the US expansion, each “territory” had to achieve a white majority before it qualified for “statehood”. Which is why Puerto Rico never became a “state”. Federalism in the US was always intended to perpetuate racism. So for Henry to use the US example of federalism to show that federalism writ large entrenches racism, does stack the deck a bit too obviously.
He could have easily picked Canada or Switzerland as his model, because their federal systems were designed specifically to deal with the challenges of groups that have distinct identities – of which race/ethnicity is a subset. I would say that they have done pretty well on inter-group relations and equity, all things considered. In the post-WWII era, almost every country that has been forced to deal with plural societies (and they had to deal with that problematic sooner or later, as we will) have adopted federalist approaches. Most recently, after Kenya experienced severe inter-ethnic violence following their 2007 elections, they instituted constitutional changes that reversed the unitary state innovation of 1969. They divided the country into 47 “counties” and constitutionally mandated at least 15 per cent of national revenue be sent directly to the counties, giving local leaders greater authority in managing resources. Each county will have a County Executive headed by a county governor elected directly by the people and a county assembly elected with representatives from wards within the county. Federalism by any other name… Not incidentally, they also moved to make their Police Force more representative of the ethnic groups in the country.
I have long tried to grapple with the reflexive dismissal of the federal option to address Guyana’s ethnic challenges, compounded by its absolutist traditions. Because in the details, the only difference between the proposals for “deep devolution” rather than “federalism” is the latter’s constitutional demarcation of “competences” or exclusive powers. But this is the only mechanism to challenge the imperative of central bureaucrats to hog power (if the politicians are uncharacteristically shy about doing so) as Henry saw with his subordinate back in 2003. To pretend otherwise is to ignore Henry’s citation of Madison’s observation on human nature: “if men were angels, no government would be necessary”.
As Henry also pointed out to PM Sam Hinds, we’re not talking about creating Utopias. But at least we should not ignore constants immanent in our “crooked timber”. I’ll close with an anecdote about what I think is the real reason why some oppose federalism. I was walking with Andaiye some years back, from a GHRA discussion on Constitutional change, where I spoke on Federalism for Guyana. Andaiye said that when she saw those lines on the map of Guyana, “it was as if her body was being divided.”
Many still have fears that federalism means “partition” rather than a form of balancing autonomy with integration.

 

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