The days of a comfortable House majority appear to be clearly over

Mar 29, 2020 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

There has perhaps, been no other time in recent history when the results of general and regional elections seem to be trying to nudge and point us towards the long desired goal of the major parties coming together in some form of a unity or national front Government to help heal Guyana’s decades of bleeding wounds.
The unofficial or preliminary indications are that the Coalition will enjoy a second term, with maybe no more than two parliamentary seats separating it from the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP), its longtime political nemesis.
For those who might not have been paying attention, the days of any government governing with a comfortable House majority appear to be definitely and clearly over.
No longer can one, led by the People’s National Congress (PNC) or by the PPP govern the nation with the ease of five clear parliamentary seats. The results from the past three elections seem to bear this out. The Coalition will not dominate the PPP and the PPP will not be able to do likewise either.
We can all recall that the PPP had run the Country between 2011 and 2015 with a one-seat majority in Parliament. Rather than face losing the floor vote to an APNU-AFC no confidence motion, then-President Donald Ramotar prorogued Parliament, called for fresh elections and lost by one seat or less than 5000 votes.
In came the APNU-AFC administration led by President David Granger and it too was forced to walk on political egg shells associated with a Government running a Country like ours with a one-seat majority. It was eventually brought down by a successful no confidence motion in December of 2018.
Earlier this month, the general and regional elections were conducted, the results of which are still being argued in an attempt to reach a conclusion. The electorate, it would appear, have continued messaging, poking and prodding our political leaders, particularly those who have long argued and advocated for some form of shared governance, to replace the failed Westminster system with unity. This is something we all should know.
Henry Jeffrey, a former PPP minister, summed it up poignantly in a column in another newspaper.
“The major fact” he argued, “is that peoples of Indian and African ethnicities do not want to be ruled by each other and are of sufficient numbers to make it difficult for either side to rule the other. Universally, in such conditions majoritarian rule breaks down and all the moralizing in the world about the existence of ethnic voting, who is discriminating against whom, murdered whom, stealing elections from whom, and whom should be punished by whom will not change these social facts and their consequences.”
The former University of Guyana lecturer noted that the time is now for “the introduction of a consensual form of government as the only sensible alternative for those who wish to move Guyana forward. As such, the present chaos is not surprising and should be used to push the extant majoritarian political system towards a speedy demise, not to help its resuscitation in the forlorn hope that it will produce better results.”
Depending on whose posts one reads on social media, we have seen calls for President Granger to be sworn in as Head of State and for PPP Presidential candidate Irfaan Ali to be the prime minister and vice versa.
Few have ventured to go on to sharing cabinet positions, those for advisers, high level positions, ambassadorial postings, chairs of state boards and other positions.
But one thing is clear. The party that wins the presidency will almost surely want to have control of the Country’s energy department or ministry. This will certainly be a main bone of contention, if not a reason to scuttle any talks that may be in the pipeline.
Therefore, eyes are slowly being turned to the need for an impartial outsider to act as a honest broker for any talks regarding some form of shared, unity or national front government.
Call it what you will. The results of the past three elections more than speak for themselves. Decades of cries for the Guyana Constitution to be modernized could end with a shared system as all will be involved.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)