I did not urge Race Voting

Oct 02, 2014 Letters

---

DEAR EDITOR,
Mr. Mahadeo Persaud made several errors (KN Sep 29) in his response to my missive.  Contrary to what he penned, I never called on Guyanese to “strictly vote racial”. I ran a fact check on Google, as well as on the thousands of articles stored in my computer, and came up blank on anything slightly suggesting that I urged Guyanese to “strictly vote racial”. So Persaud is challenged to produce the exact quote in which I appealed to Guyanese to vote “race”.
I could not have appealed to Guyanese to vote race. I never campaigned in Guyana and never ran for political office in Guyana. I ran for undergraduate and graduate student governments in New York and won repeatedly (voted in by non-Indians) in various positions including as Treasurer, Vice President, President, Senator, Councillor, Delegate.  I ran for Student Government and leadership of the Hindu Society at Corentyne High School (99% Indians) in 1976 and as such could not have appealed on students to vote race.
I do not know if Persaud hallucinates and/or mistakes me for someone else. But I am on record, since my high school student days as an anti-dictatorial activist from the 1970s till now, as saying “no group should dominate another group”. I did not fight Burnhamism to replace it with ethnic dominance.
In numerous articles in local newspapers, and in overseas publications, I called for the leaders of the ethnic groups to negotiate a system of governance in which no group dominates the other groups. I recently called on the AFC to abide by its ethnic rotational agreement and give equality to Africans putting one (suggesting Nigel or Cathy Hughes) as the Presidential candidate.
As I stated four decades ago and repeated umpteenth times since then, it was wrong for Burnham and the PNC to persecute Indians, Amerindians, Portuguese (driving them out of Guyana) and others.  It cannot be right now for any group to dominate another group, even if elected in free and fair elections. There is need for a political system in which the groups would get a relatively fair share of resources and a say in their governance – hence a referendum similar to Scotland’s (the gist of the article).
On the issue of ethnic voting, one does not need to appeal to people to vote for their group. They do so automatically. Does Persaud feel ethnic Ukrainians will vote for ethnic Russians and vice versa or that Palestinians will vote for Jews? When politicians appeal to Black Americans to vote, they don’t tell them to vote “Democrat” – that is how they vote.  Similarly, when Afro Guyanese leaders appealed to their followers to vote, they automatically voted PNC, except in 2006 when the African votes were split. But they returned home following a concerted grass root effort by PNC leaders. Ditto Indians in appeals by their leaders, except in 2011 when the Indian voters were split, with some going to AFC to teach the PPP a lesson for neglecting them. Indian PPP leaders are making a desperate effort to bring them back home.
On the Scotland vote, Persaud misses the main thrust of the argument — important matters of governance impacting on the population should be put to a referendum. As an aside, Amerindians were not given a referendum to determine their status when they attempted to break away from Guyana during the Rupununi uprising; instead they were massacred.
Developed countries give their people an opportunity to voice their opinion on self determination.  Guyana and Third World societies do (did) not, with rare exceptions.  Scotland and Quebec allowed their people to determine their political status (system of governance). In Guyana, we have never had a referendum to determine our political governance. The British handed us a Constitution that was negotiated by the leaders of the ethnic groups – making it legitimate. Then Burnham, as leader of his group, changed the Constitution without the approval of the population or the leaders of the other ethnic groups – making it illegitimate.
The population should be given an opportunity to choose (and it is not late to do so now) between the Burnham Constitution and the one that was negotiated and agreed upon by the ethnic leaders. This could lead to coalition formation – power sharing. So what kind of logic does Persaud employ to conclude my call for a referendum on governance is not power sharing?
Persaud misunderstands the theory of consociational democracy which is too complex to explain here; readers can Google for an understanding of the model.  Persaud denigrates the work of the outstanding Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart, to refer to the theory as apan jhaat consociationalism; it is not. Apan jhaat politics precedes consociationalism; the latter was developed as a solution to apan jhaat politics, and it has worked well in virtually every society where it was adapted, including Switzerland, Belgium, and South Africa.
Persaud called several times for the ethnic parties to transform themselves into multi-ethnic parties. But he has failed to explain how this can be done. He urged 15% of each ethnic group to vote cross-racially. But they have not heeded his call. He appealed to the ethnic parties to appoint a leader from another ethnic group, believing this will bring 15% cross-racial votes; when practiced at some level, it did not lead to cross-racial voting as confirmed repeatedly. And even when non-ethnics ran for the leadership of an ethnic party they lost badly.
So where does the nation go? Should the parties keep repeating the same thing, as Mike Persaud is suggesting, and expect different results? That would be no different from the failed politicians. How about trying something different – like consociationalism or federalism, or the South African model, or some other hybrid system, or giving each group (cultural and political) significant autonomy over their own affairs, as London would do regarding the Scots, Welsh, and Irish?
Vishnu Bisram

---

---