A lingering dilemma that needs to be resolved

Jan 29, 2014 Editorial

Poor countries are poor not because they lack resources; surely we in Guyana should know that. They are poor because their laws and institutions of governance are incapable of addressing the specific challenges and opportunities of the world they operate in. Their problems are compounded by opaque and unaccountable governance that often works as a nursery to promote the culture of cronyism and corruption that use various pretexts for self-perpetuation.
Former Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore explained the culture of governance adopted by the paradigmatically successful new state. “We faced,” he explained, “the classic question of governance: whether we put in place a system of laws and institutions that would sanctify rulers as a breed above the rest, and operate the system for promoting their special interests, or devise a system of governance that works for the country as a whole.”
In the case of the former eventuality, the rulers — whether civil or military — were to be generally exempted from the application of ordinary laws of the state. In the latter case, all politics and governance had to be conducted under the rule of law, and everybody, including Lee himself as head of government, would be subject to the same laws as everyone else. The founding fathers chose the latter course and undertook reforms in governance to make it real. As Lee later said, it helped to “create assets where none existed” and the results have been there for everyone to see.
Our founding fathers also correctly apprehended that we needed to make changes in our model of governance. But our subsequent experiments never really grappled with our fundamental divisions. The principles of governance bequeathed at independence were quickly jettisoned as rulers insisted on “moulding” the nation in their vision. They looked at our nation through imported, unadapted “isms” and fulfilled Popper’s aphorism: “Those who try to create heaven on earth invariably end up creating hell.”
Because of the dogmas of their Marxist ideology, they underestimated the persistence and the politics of identity. The quarter century of undemocratic governance after 1964, precipitated by the need to maintain a minority government, did not help. It created powerful vested interests that subverted any positive elements that may have inhered in the bequeathed model of governance so that after 1992 even if the PPP wanted to reform, there were entrenched institutional barriers to overcome.
The issue, however, is not just one of the differences of interests of various groups: these are present in every society. The problems of governance thrown up by our present model lie in the absence of the acknowledgement of the fundamental type of division in our polity. No solution is in sight. As the last fifty years have demonstrated, the unresolved conflicts embedded in this model of governance have been a source of recurring instability in the country. These have worked as the sword of Damocles hanging over every government and leads to sustained unpredictability in governance, which has been playing havoc with the political and economic development of the nation.
Irrespective of the good intentions of any ruler, this model of governance cannot simultaneously deliver on conflicting agendas without acknowledging an agreed forum where conflicts of interest could be peacefully resolved to produce harmonious national development. If it is further entrenched, this model of governance will most likely continue to create severe imbalances in the functioning of state and society. Without an agreed framework for their peaceful resolution, these imbalances could harden and spread out, weakening the state itself and making the search for solutions so much more difficult.
But in the all-consuming passion of power politics and partisanship on display for quite some time, there appears to be a growing realisation that this lingering dilemma in governance needs to be resolved. The serious schisms and imbalances being generated by this model could well be making business as usual a fairytale in the future, as non-peaceful means of advancing different agendas could nurture overwhelming negative forces all around.

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