Improving ethnic relations in Guyana must be shaped by historical experiences

Dec 11, 2020 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

With elections fatigue still impacting the nation; with COVID-19 wreaking havoc in the lives of the Guyanese people and causing tremendous hardship on businesses big and small; with law enforcement authorized to go after violators of the COVID-19 protocols, the question being asked is whether a national conversation on race relations, sponsored by UNDP and the University of Guyana in the midst of the Christmas season will bring any glad tidings of great joy to a tired, heavily laden and weary nation.
It is interesting to note that the conversation to which President Ali and Opposition Leader Harmon has been invited on December 14th will be overshadowed by the Presidential Quintet scheduled for December 15th. In any event, participation by Ali in the UNDP/UG December Affair is still up in the air while participation by Granger in the quintet is yet to be confirmed.
Why these two important events have been organized back to back defies rational explanation and therefore remains open to speculation.
Will the convo on race influence the parlay by the Presidential Quintet? Which one of the two events will turn out to be ‘a damp squib’ is left to be seen.
As far as both events are concerned, the politicians will be asking what is in this for me? What political benefits will participating bring for me?
Leaving speculations aside, as far as the conversation goes, this is not the first time the UNDP has inserted itself as a co-sponsor to a discussion on the ethnic dilemma in Guyana.
In June 2006, the UNDP’s Social Cohesion Programme and the Ethnic Relations Committee (ERC) sponsored: ‘The Multi-stakeholder Forum And National Conversation (Regional
Meetings)’.
According to a full page advertisement published on Friday, June 2, 2006, the ERC/UNDP stated:
These activities are aimed at enhancing social cohesion and deepening participatory democracy through dialogue.
The advert continued: Residents of each region attending the meetings will be given the opportunity to seriously discuss issues affecting them and offer suggestions and recommendations for improving race and ethnic relations in Guyana.
Finally, the advert informed that: The Multi-stakeholder Forum project will culminate with a National Conversation at which political, religious, and civil society leaders will participate along with representatives chosen from the Regional Conferences.
A precursor to the Multi-stakeholder Forum was the official visit to Guyana in July 2003 by Mr. Doudou Die’ne, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
Held just about three years after the visit of the Special Rapporteur, the 2006 Multi-stakeholder Forum was, no doubt, a follow-up to the visit by the Special Rapporteur. The Forum’s terms of reference speak to that raison d’^etre very clearly.
Now 14 years after the 2006 Multi-stakeholder Forum, the UNDP this time, has hitched its wagon to the University of Guyana. The two entities will be co-hosting a ‘Virtual National Conversation on Improving Ethnic Relations.’ The conversation will be launched in mid-December with a general discussion on: How can we improve ethnic relations in Guyana?
According to reports, the convo in December is aimed at having “frank and open discussions to capture diverse views and factors that impede ethnic harmony.”
We are told that recommendations arising from the conversation “will be submitted to the National Assembly and relevant stakeholders for implementation.”
The process by which recommendations from such fora is to be submitted to the National Assembly has long been established. However, should the recommendations be presented merely as a report for the information for parliamentarians then they will end up dead in the water. Recommendations are one thing, funds to implement them is another. Hopefully, UNDP will provide the funds to do so.
If this is the National Conversation that should have been launched 14 years ago, following the conversations at the regional level, then hardly anyone would deny that much water has passed under the bridge since the 2006 Multi-stakeholder Forum.
Between 2006 and 2020 there have been the Jagdeo, Hinds, Ramotar, Granger and now the Ali administrations. Every one of these administrations had differing, and at times, common experiences in administering the affairs of our complex, multi-ethnic society fraught with its national peculiarities, constitutional and societal imperfections.
The above, notwithstanding the following factors in my view, are of fundamental importance in any discussion on ‘improving ethnic relations in Guyana’ and more so, among the Quintet or maybe Quartet.
First: Is the question of democracy in all its aspects, and at all levels, as indispensable for the advancement of economic and social progress.
Democracy has been severely tested time and again in Guyana. Recent events leading up to the election of a new government is testimony to this fact.
Second: Is the delivery of goods and services to all the people in a people-centered economy at the national and local government levels that ensures human development targeting the poor, marginalized and dispossessed.
Third: Good governance as the foundation for national development including participatory democracy, consensus building, accountability and transparency, responsiveness and the rule of law.
Fourth: Inclusiveness in all representative bodies in the process of governing, be it at the parliamentary level, in the standing and sectoral committees and on State boards.
Fifth: Equal opportunity for all ethnic groups. The Amerindians should have the right to preserve and to develop their spoken and written language and cultural heritage. They should also have titles to land, the right to maintain or to change their customs and habits.
Any National Conversation on improving ethnic relations must cut through the thicket of rumour and the anecdotal with a view to coming up with concrete, realistic and implementable recommendations acceptable to all stakeholders across the political divide. Failing agreement, the outcome is bound to flounder and be dismissed as hot air of political dispatch.
For the sake of balance, any truthful and sincere conversation on improving ethnic relations in Guyana must be shaped by historical experiences notably, the split in the national movement and external influences exerted at the time to stoke ethnic insecurities.
The conversation must seek to establish a realistic and acceptable periodisation of the so-called ‘Period of the troubles’ and its impact on the national psyche if any.
It must deconstruct pervasive perceptions based on racial and political discrimination as well as self-serving double talk, principally of an anecdotal nature, about ethnic cleansing.
Last, but not least, the conversation must take into account the multi-cultural and multi-religious nature of Guyanese society, its negation of the ethnic fault lines, and how it has helped to keep us together on the pathway to nation building.
Notwithstanding, the tenuous nature of Guyanese society experience has shown that the Guyanese people have, by and large, rejected attempts to become ensnared in an ethnic conflagration similar to what took place in the 1962 to 1964 period.
The conversants must take into consideration, attempts at stoking the fire in Georgetown in December 1997, Agricola in February 2006 Lusignan in January 2008 and more recently, at West Coast Berbice in September of this year.
What has gone unnoticed with the passage of time, but is of great significance to the body politic is the emergence of a new national consciousness amongst the Guyanese people.
This new national consciousness has imposed limitations on attempts at brinkmanship which frames ‘every man as enemy to every man’ and fosters a society characterized by ‘continued fear, and danger of violent death and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.’
The views, language and actions of that generation of Guyanese who lived through the period of the 1960’s and episodic events following elections, have contributed significantly to the emergence of this new national consciousness.
But it is the younger generation that has made an even more powerful contribution to the emergence of the new national consciousness making it necessary, if not obligatory for politicians to pronounce in favour of national unity in one form or another.
If the UNDP/UG national conversation-cum-truth commission will contribute to the consolidation, growth and further development of this national consciousness then it should be welcomed.

Yours faithfully
Clement J. Rohee

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