CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM CAN DO NOTHING TO MITIGATE THIS PROBLEM

Jul 10, 2017 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I wish to make a few points in the ongoing debate in the media on Constitutional Reform involving Lincoln Lewis, Henry Jeffrey and Clement Rohee.
Lincoln Lewis writes: “Henry Jeffrey and Clement Rohee voted for the amendments in the constitution that emanated from the 1999 Constitutional Reform Commission and I shall not allow any one of the two to mislead the society”. I shall take my cue from the 2001 Amendment Law. Among those amendments was one pivotal one: Limiting the president to two terms. Living in America I have come to like this amendment and support it. (Unfortunately, this matter is now heading for the CCJ). Were it not for this two term-limit law, many American presidents would be re-elected endlessly and serve until they drop dead in office. Democracy is about the ebb and flow of public opinion and regular passing of the baton of power from one party (or coalition of parties) to another.
However, there were/are other pivotal issues that should have been dealt with in the same package of amendments in 2001. Two of them are:
(1) Coalition of parties should take place only after elections, not before. It should be done under the parties’ own free will; not high-pressured pre-election coalitions as was the recent APNU-AFC coalition.
(2) The leader of the party that wins the plurality is allowed to become president. Donald Ramotar was such a president – but he did not control the majority in the parliament, and his govt. came to an abbreviated end after only 3-years. The circumstances under which Donald Ramotar was sworn-in to office can only be deemed a grave constitutional malpractice. It is a gaping flaw in the constitution.
These two items should be immediately addressed by an amendment bill. I had always assumed that these matters would require a referendum. Mr. Lewis has now instructed me that these matters can simply be redressed by an amendment bill in the parliament and become law by a simple majority vote. If it is that easy, why isn’t the ruling coalition government or the Opposition acting on this problem?
ON ANOTHER substantive issue, Mr. Lewis writes:
“. . where a society is structured in a manner that for ethnic reasons, people largely only listen to their own leaders, a ‘united public opinion’ necessary for holding government accountable will not exist – and free and objective national institutions are next to impossible.
“. . . but the enduring structural deformity . . . . . in Guyana of two large ethnic groups which, for the most part, adhere to the political dictates of their self-interested communal leaders”. [End of quote].
Mr. Lewis is talking about the excessively high rates of racial voting and the problems this political culture poses to the evolution of a normal democracy and a stable society.
Our politics is indeed “deformed”, and our society has serious “structural deformities”. The problem however is not a constitutional one. It has everything to do with the existence of ethnic parties which in turn produces excessively high rates of racial voting – all of these things make for a very weak democracy.
This problem was a particular obsession of Prof. David Hinds some years ago; he developed a school of thought that called for “shared governance”. He was talking of the Surinamese system called consociational democracy. But the power centers in Guyana, the PPP and PNC, paid him no mind.
How do we get out of this deformed politics? These are the choices:
(1) Go the Surinamese way – ethnic parties and ethnic voting, pre-election coalitions – seats apportioned according to size of ethnic blocs of votes.
(2) Go the Guyanese way – ethnic parties and ethnic voting – but officially deny both facts.
(3) Ban ethnic parties from operating. And, hope the PPP and PNC see the wisdom of transforming themselves into genuine multi-racial parties.
I support the third choice. Modern democracies and the existence of ethnic parties are not compatible. Genuine multi-racial parties will encourage cross-racial voting. A large pool of Issues Voters is essential for a stable and bona fide democracy.
Constitutions cannot force the parties to become multi-racial. Parties have to do that for themselves. PNC was in the wilderness for 23-years. It could not ever win an election based on the African bloc of votes. So you would think it would have reinvented itself and made itself attractive to win over Indian votes. It didn’t happen. PNC got back into power doing the next best thing – remaining purely an African ethnic party, but doing a ‘fusion’ thing, a merger with AFC.
This leaves Guyanese politics unchanged in 60 years; static for 60 years. And, that’s what these gentlemen, Lewis and Jeffrey are arguing about. Constitutional Reform will do little by way of addressing the specific problem of excessively high rates of racial voting which Lewis calls “structural deformity”.
I have called for the PPP to elect an African-Guyanese leader, PNC an Indian-Guyanese. This shall be the catalyst to help change the perceptions of these parties. Small percentages of both Africans and Indians will begin to see both PPP and PNC in a different light. They will begin to attract cross-racial support. It will be the beginning of change, of transformation of our politics.
Mike Persaud 

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