One-term governments

Jun 13, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

One-term governments seem to be becoming highly popular in the Caribbean. Recent elections in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and St Lucia have signaled the region’s electorate impatience with the change and their willingness to remove incumbents.
The question that is uppermost in everyone’s mind is whether the ‘bug’ of one-term governments will catch on in Guyana which has never had a one –term government. The PPP ruled from 1953 to 1964, then again from 1992 to 2015. The PNC joined with the United Force to win the 1964 elections and the stayed in power through fraud from 1968 until 1992.
Guyana’s last elections was extremely close and therefore it is quite possible for there to be a change come the next election should that election be free and fair. The ruling party narrowly scraped into power and the margin of victory was so small that the opposition felt that they were cheated. The narrowness of the margin of victory also means that free and fair elections could result in a change four years from now. It is not outside of the possible for this to happen.
In Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and St Lucia, the defeated parties have accepted their loss. There have been no upheavals over those losses, no riots, no arson, no looting and no assaults on innocent people. The electorate in each country has accepted the results of the elections and has moved on.
The big question is whether the same can happen in Guyana. Will the APNU+AFC accept any electoral loss? Will they demit office peacefully should the need arise. Will there be a smooth democratic transition if the coalition should lose power?
In 1992, Guyana needed free and fair elections so that it could return to the democratic fold of nations. Guyana had become a pariah nation in the world. It was an embarrassment to the Caribbean. 1992 allowed all of that to happen but democracy was not smooth because of the PNCR’s unwillingness to accept subsequent defeats in 1997 and 2001 and 2011. It did accept its loss in 2006 but it went back to its old ways in 2011.
The PPP made a feeble protest over the 2015 results but has not provided any incontrovertible evidence that the results of the elections were manipulated. Those results mirrored the results of the 2011elections just as the elections of 1992, 1997 and 2001 had mirrored each other.
The results of those early post 1992 elections may have weakened the prospects for change once voting was along ethnic lines. But demographic change and frustration with the PPPC may have now created a new situation in which electoral change is possible even with ethnic voting.
Even with a polarized nation, it is now possible because of shifts in the ethnic arithmetic for there to be a change in government.
The litmus test of that will come when and if ever the APNU+AFC government loses an election.
The PPP licked its wounds and walked away from its electoral loss. The PNCR, the main party in the APNU has never demonstrated a willingness to readily accept its electoral defeat. This is where democracy is seriously threatened.
A democratic system of government only works to the extent that there is a smooth transition from one government to the next. Without this smooth transition, democracy is threatened because the basis of democratic government is the willingness of the losers to accept the will of the people.
The Caribbean people have shown that they are willing to experiment with on-term governments. In Guyana, there is need for change, constant change in governments so as to remove the insecurities that each of the major ethnic constituencies feel at election time. Regular changes in government are just as important as ensuring free and fair elections.
A one-term government is not a bad thing so long as it is not followed by a four or five term government. Regular one and two-term governments may be just the tonic that Guyana needs.

1 thoughts on “One-term governments”

Emile_Mervin June 13, 2016 at 3:38 pm

Like the PPP, the Coalition has to decide if it wants to be booted from office by voters. That’s right, the ball is in its court.

But so far, the Coalition is not giving the majority of voters solid reason for a second term, unless a Jagdeo-led PPP is reason enough for the majority of voters.

If a Jagdeo-led PPP is a definite non-factor for the majority of voters, then one of three things will happen:
1) The Coalition makes a drastic change and satisfy its own campaign promises and show voters it means business , or
2) it rigs/interminably delays the next elections, or
3) it shockingly succeeds in getting the PPP to agree to power-sharing, whether by fair or foul means.