Edward Burrowes letter on ‘Autocratization’ of Guyana reminds me of a Balgobin story

Mar 18, 2024 Letters

Dear Editor

In reading Edward Burrowes “Increasing ‘Autocratization’ of Guyana,” (KN 3/14/24), I am reminded of the Balgobin stories, which I used to hear growing up on the sugarcane plantation. As legend would have it, Balgobin – the fictitious protagonist –was sometimes portrayed as a clever fabricator, or an exaggerator. In one of the stories, Balgobin’s classroom teacher asked everyone in the class to draw an aeroplane. Upon examination of the students’ drawings, the teacher found that Balgobin had just two straight lines on his drawing sheet. When she asked Balgobin why he didn’t draw a plane, Balgobin responded that he did, but that the plane took off before the teacher graded his paper, and that what remained was just the runway. This brings my focus of attention to Burrowes’ letter.

In his letter, Burrowes mentioned that he utilized information published by the V-Dem Institute located within the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. A review of the March 2024 report suggests that Burrows seemingly examined the analytical findings, but that he selectively utilized titbits of information to support his claim of increasing autocratization of Guyana. Here are the reasons why.

Burrowes states that, “since 2018 under the APNU+AFC coalition to now, Guyana has been downgraded from the status of an “electoral democracy”. “What Burrows appears to conveniently omit is that V-Dem identified the year 2018 as the start of autocratization in Guyana, a time when the APNU+AFC– not the PPP/C – was in office, and for which data are available.

V-Dem publishers also acknowledged that their 2023 analytical results of Electoral Democracy (ED)are based on limited data, and that their classification schema rests primarily on the Liberal Democratic Index (LDI) they established.

According to the V-Dem, the LDI indices are:(a) Whether ‘Requirements of Electoral Democracy’; (b) ‘Judicial and legislative constraints on the executive’; and (c) ‘Protection of civil liberties, and equality before the law’ are met within a country. Based on the LDI, the V-Dem admitted that only 32 of the countries around the world satisfied the identified criteria.

An examination of the above three criteria quickly reveal flaws in the V-Dem classification of Guyana. Unless the report analysts are magicians, I can’t see how they could have assessed whether, or not, Guyana met the “Requirements of Electoral Democracy” in the year 2023. Since the PPP/C government assumed office in 2020, and elections are not due until 2025, how can someone undertake a valid analysis of this criterion? In addition, satisfying the remaining two criteria are in full display within the country under PPP/C governance.

Let’s now turn attention to another of Burrowes’ claim which he stated this way: “Guyana is shaded between grey and orange, meaning an electoral democracy but with elements of autocracy.”

It should be noted that the V-Dem identified a Grey Zone, not a “grey and orange” zone. In explaining countries within the Grey Zone – which includes Guyana – the V-Dem publishers said: “We use the plus/minus sign to indicate the possible uncertainty of the classification, and to underline that some countries are placed in the “grey zone” between regime types. This is based on the V-Dem’s confidence intervals and accounts for potential measurement errors that may arise due to the nature of the data… Countries belong in this category if confidence intervals overlap making the classification more uncertain.”

From the above quote, the V-Dem publishers appear cognizant of flaws in their data analysis, which signals that the information should be used with caution. This then begs the question why the learned Burrowes failed to make note of the report’s weaknesses in his letter. Could it be that omissions in his letter are similar to Balgobin’s aeroplane gaffe? One wonders.

Regards
Narayan Persaud

APNU+AFC, autocratization, Balgobin stories, Balgobin’s, Edward Burrowes

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Edward Burrowes letter on ‘Autocratization’ of Guyana reminds me of a Balgobin story

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