Open letter to President Granger

Feb 17, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Dear Mr. President,
These are just a few brief notes on the role of Government’s future deportment within the framework of your desire to have social cohesion, and against the background of your call for a social contract among all stakeholders to move Guyana forward.
Please excuse me if I sound didactic, but in enunciating a social contract, you must know that such a pathway has very profound implications for the use of power. Every social contract philosopher, from early times with Plato to Hobbes through to Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Rawle and right up to the present moment with Amartya Sen, adumbrated the sharing of authority as the main core of the social contract.
There isn’t a citizen in this world familiar with Guyana who would not want a social contract that would see the dissolution of national, political and ethnic divisiveness. But here is where I become professorial and would like to warn you that on the road to the realization of the social contract, state power has to be accountable, democratic, consultative and distributive. Mr. President, you have now set yourself a goal from which there is no turning back – if you want a social contract, state behaviour from this date onwards has to be consultative.
My theoretical understanding of power in the Guyanese context is taken from the concept of the overdeveloped state by the Pakistani political thinker (deceased) Hamza Alavi. From the colonial governor through to Premier Jagan to President Burnham right down to the APNU-AFC Government, Guyana (had) has an overdeveloped state which is authoritarian, concerned and obsessed with the expansion and preservation of power, and makes no psychological acknowledgement of its inherent obligation to protect and serve the citizenry.
I could offer you countless examples where, since you came to power in May 2015, the services the state offers to the population are no different from Premier Jagan’s era right up to President Ramotar. In the ten months you have been President this media operative, this human rights activist and this academic has seen no positive, qualitative change in the modus operandi of the police.
During the overdeveloped state of the PPP regime, people would come up to me and warn me that the police will harm me if I write critically of them. Since you came to power, people have echoed that very sentiment to me, and as late as last week. It only goes to show that the citizens do not believe that after May 2015, the overdeveloped state and its harmful tentacles have disappeared. Perhaps the best example to cite to you involves you personally. I was part of a two-member delegation from the protest group, “People’s Parliament”, that wrote a letter to Speaker Raphael Trotman requesting that the police and Parliamentary officials respect the motion of Parliament to remove the steel barriers around Parliament.
I was outside Parliament with my group, “1823 Coalition for the Parade Ground Monument” picketing the continued existence of the steel cordon and spoke to you personally as you came to talk to the protestors. I was next to you when you engaged Commander Vyphius on why the barriers were still there. After you came to power, the steel cordons have been extended to more streets adjacent to Parliament. Not only were the barriers kept, but more were brought in and more streets were taken up. This is what I mean by the overdeveloped state.
My point, Mr. President, is if you are working toward a social contract, then until we get there, the state has to reach out and consult the stakeholders that will sign the social contract in the future. It will encourage stakeholders to embrace and eventually sign the social contract. I am sorry if I come across as impertinent when I say that the populace is going to frown on the idea of a social contract if they see the persistence of the overdeveloped stated.
They will do so if the state does not consult with them, accept their ideas and implement them, and share the nation’s resources with them. This is not my personal view but an accepted reality of political theory.
Of all the social contract theorists, Thomas Hobbes is the most misunderstood. Hobbes’ social contract is the tightest of all the other elaborations. The ruler is given about ninety percent of power in the contract. But many critics of Hobbes overlook the fact that Hobbes argued that the populace is entitled to remove the ruler once he breaks the social contract. In other words, the state has to be faithful. Let’s see if the Grangerite state will consult or remain overdeveloped.

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