Latest update November 28th, 2024 3:00 AM
Nov 01, 2020 APNU Column, Features / Columnists
Kaieteur News – (A review of David Granger’s Public Policy: the crisis of governance in Guyana. ISBN: 978-976-8178-41-1.)
David Granger’s Public Policy: the crisis of governance in Guyana sets out to show how “…governance staggers when public policy falters”. It succeeds in doing a great deal more. The book represents a most damning indictment of the People’s Progressive Party Civic’s (PPP/C) performance after entering office in 1992. It relates a continuum of maladministration resulting from the failure of public policy, particularly under the Bharrat Jagdeo presidency.
Public Policy: the crisis of governance in Guyana is a collection of essays which constitute a stern rebuke of the PPPC’s policy from the end of the last decade of the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century. This was a period characterized by criminal violence, ministerial mismanagement and incoherent public policy. Granger’s criticisms of the PPP/C administration are so strident that, had the evidence not been incontrovertible, the book could have been viewed as an anti-PPP/C polemic. He would not have been singular in this regard.
Damning criticisms and analyses of the PPP/C administration were prevalent in the local media at the time. Those criticisms, however, invariably lacked the sort of rigorous analysis and profound insights with which Granger scrutinizes the administration in this book. Every point and every argument is clearly and concisely articulated, well-cited and supported by unimpeachable sources.
Granger’s method is unmistakably subtle. He begins, usually, by citing criticisms of the administration’s record by an international agency, say, on human trafficking. He then follows by reporting the administration’s often hapless and jejune response. It is through this device that Granger nudges the reader towards the view that the PPP/C administration was hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.
The PPP/C can hardly escape culpability for its squalid record of maladministration. The PPP/C’s hegemony over governance during this period was incontestable owing to its unassailable parliamentary majority. From crafting public policy to implementing governmental decisions, nothing stood in its way. It was either that the administration lacked the capability to devise sound public policy measures or it was more interested in the impure proceeds which could accrue from its deliberate misrule. The PPP/C, as such, bears full responsibility for its palpable failures in the field of public policy.
David Granger’s prose is rich, refreshing and readable. Free-flowing, and filled with delightful little turns of phrase and historical allusions, his essays are succinct and written with such great clarity that the reader is left with a vivid picture of the PPP/C administration’s malignant governance. He has a particular affinity for historical metaphors, dubbing the chaos of the early 20th century ‘The Troubles’ and referring to Guyana’s ethnically polarized society as ‘A house divided’. The 20 essays in this book address a broad spectrum of public policy issues each of which bears a catchy title which captures the readers’ attention.
The PPP/C administration’s failure to satisfactorily address poverty, living standards and human rights is examined in the section entitled ‘To Live and die in Guyana’. The administration’s record on child labour and child prostitution is explored in ‘Loss of innocence’. The leadership struggle within the PPP/C is the subject of ‘The war of succession’.
The PPP/C’s vindictive and vengeful media policies are discussed in ‘The war over memory’. The contradictions within the PPP/C and the manoeuvres through which Cheddi Jagan’s death paved the way for Bharrat Jagdeo’s ascension to office are examined in ‘A break with the past’. The PPP/C’s civic component which was appended to the PPP in 1992 and which has been emasculated ever since is examined in Samuel Hinds’s solitary sojourn as the survivor of the once flaunted ‘Civic’ constituent in ‘Last Man Standing”. The PPP/C’s attitude and approach to the University of Guyana comes under the microscope in ‘University of Adversity’.
Other essays in this book, which was published in 2012 before Granger was elected President, cover a variety of contemporary topics which are still relevant to present day public policy. These include race relations, trafficking in persons, death squads, and inclusionary democracy. The book is impressive for its diverse range of issues discussed.
David Granger has a record of eschewing personal attacks. In Public Policy: the crisis of governance in Guyana he does not deviate from this standard but is unsparing in his criticisms of the PPP/C. He characterizes the PPP/C leadership as instilling a Leninist-Stalinist personality cult centered first around the communist Jagans and subject to the blind obedience demanded by its Bolshevik political ideology.
He unmasks President Bharrat Jagdeo’s proclivity for bending party democracy to one of personal autocracy. These arguments are articulated not belligerently but through artful political dissection, including exposing the penchant for the creation of Ministries for favourite apparatchiks and cronies and the orchestrated expulsion of dissidents who dared challenge the status quo.
Some sections are less subtle. In his essay on the spate of fires at government buildings (a subject at best tangentially connected to public policy) Granger fires what can be described only as ‘potshots’ at the administration’s conspiracy theories that his party, the PNC/R, was responsible for the acts of arson. He alludes sparingly to official reports of the causes of the fires and, instead, opts to fight conspiracy with conspiracy, resorting to circumstantial evidence that seems to suggest that the administration itself was behind the arson attacks.
If this book were handed to a foreign reader, he or she could scarcely be blamed for believing that Guyana was a pariah state, constantly at loggerheads with the US Department of State, the United Nations, the Commonwealth and a host of other international organizations, over the failings of public policy.
In Guyana’s divided house, such a perspective is likely to be embraced by one half of the population and rejected by the other half. Supporters of the PNC/R, Granger’s party, will find this book’s assessment as nothing short of the truth. Supporters of the PPP/C, Jagdeo’s party, on the other hand, will view the book’s assessment as shameless hyperbole written for political gain.
The book remains, however, an invaluable source of factual information and informed opinion on a wide range of public policy issues. The book constitutes a most surgical dissection of Bharrat Jagdeo’s misrule. It is peerless in this regard.
Public Policy: the crisis of governance in Guyana is a ‘must-read’ for policy-makers even if only to test one’s objectivity or to determine whether Guyanese have become so numb to government incompetence that dysfunctional public policy is accepted as normal.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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