‘Nowhere has it been different’

Jul 22, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor

‘Respect and protect African Emancipation celebrations’ (KN: 16/07/2024). Ms. Olive Cannings Sampson, Chief Executive Officer of Decade for People of African Descent Assembly-Guyana (IDPADA-G), called upon the African community and ‘the member organizations of the International to stand with the African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA) and demand respect for and protection of the 30-year-old tradition of ACDA’s Annual celebration of Emancipation.’

Many international conventions, but since we are all minorities now, the 1992 UN ‘Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities’ states that ‘Persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities have the right to enjoy their own culture, …  in private and in public, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination [and] the right to establish and maintain their own associations.’ This column supports Ms. Sampson’s call, for it again draws attention to the PPP’s perennial deceitful quest to confiscate the political will of Africans by breaking national and international laws and conventions to undermine and destroy all of their organisations.

In ‘Attempting to stymie the agenda of IDPADA-G’ (Village Voice 30/07/2023), I wrote, ‘Whether or not Mr. Joel Bhagwandin was commissioned by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) to write his critical review of IDPADA-G’s Strategic Plan … his approach and recommendations certainly fit well with that party’s governance ideology and objectives, particularly as they relate to African Guyanese. It is now clear that the PPP wishes to control the entire political sphere in Guyana – particularly that occupied by Africans.’ And Bhagwandin recommended that the work of IDPADA-G ‘be done by a majoritarian parliamentary commission’ (most of which are useless) because his mission is to enable the PPP to bypass legitimate African representatives and arrangements; take control of the entire process by packing a commission with PPP associates to delay, divert or stymie the objectives of IDPADA. As has become customary, the regime can, and no doubt will, appoint whatever commission it wants, but it should not be allowed to obstruct the objectives of IDPADA.’

The PPP has taken the track that is universally associated with political/ethnic regimes everywhere: buy some Africans to undermine others. Minister Kwame McCoy, capping his unsubstantiated, propagandistic fulminations, puts it well: ‘the Government’s support for observances and celebrations of the 186^th emancipation in Guyana is assured for the dozens of community-based organisations that have boldly and judiciously unshackled themselves from the disgraced IDPADA-G’ (Demerara Waves: 18/07/2024). There is no doubt that legitimate democratic pathways exist for the PPP to adequately protect its mainly Indian supporters, but it is going the route it is because the Indian ethnic orientation and political culture of its ruling oligarchy is bent in that direction and does not allow it to take a progressive account of Guyana’s quite unusual socio/political context.

How members of ethnic groups participate in politics is determined by a whole range of factors, but when they are a minority of say 1% of the voting population, such as the Chinese are in Guyana, no one pays much attention to how they vote. But groups become problems for pure majority rule (democracy) when they constitute geographical/regional majorities and/or like in Guyana, for whatever reasons, vote as an ethnic block and constitute about 40% of the voting population. Liberal democratic constitutional makers worldwide have had to take these variables into account, and that is why again last week I noted that democracy constitutions must be based upon a system of majority rule agreed upon by substantially all of us and must periodically be reformed to maintain their legitimacy. Nowhere has the situation been different, and not confronting and contextually dealing with these variables result in democratic deficit, with tremendous negative implications for political mobilisation, governance and socio/economic development.

In a competitive democratic situation, when an ethnic group that votes as a block is about 40% of the voting population, as is the case in Guyana, it becomes a party for itself and forces the other side to become likewise. The narrative of the different sides will undermine the authority of each other, matters not how equitable they attempt to be in a situation where they will also have to care for their constituency. Over decades both the PPP and PNC have been operating in this context and the political fear of the other side that has resulted is palpable: has obstructed the development agenda and lead to the massive electoral manipulations, the buying of support and various levels of political violence as the parties try to hold on to government.

‘To the extent that the constitutional arrangements ignore this development, tension, alienation, disturbances and underdevelopment results.  There is little point in blaming the community leaders for, … their stories are fit and do win them maximum support.  There is little point in pleading right-doing for with similar facts, the opposite story can also be told. …Nowhere has this story not played out.  [It is a] mistake to blame the outcome on anyone. Power-sharing become inevitable because of the logic of political cleavage in competitive democracies (Orr, Scott.  The Theory and Practice of Ethnic Politics: How What We Know about Ethnic Identity Can Make Democratic Theory Better).’

Where two large ethnic groups are at a standoff winning the support of one or two percent of them, or of a micro party to acquire a mere majority, does not in itself provide the required legitimacy to rule.   Democratic constitutional rule must be acceptable, not to a simple majority, but to substantially all of us. i.e., about 80% of the population. Elections in a few local government districts, such as Beterverwagting/Triumph, indicate that when the fear of the other side is abated, vibrant political competition is possible (Future Notes: SN: 12/12/2018). Indeed, political party elections are also suggestive of this. While we know that arrangements such as exist in the PPP are the epitome of unfreedom, the PNC has been trying to democratise and here again, the level of fear of the other side being absent, lively, independent competitive elections were possible.

In Guyana’s context, the only way to significantly reduce the fear that the other side will use the system of governance to severely disadvantage one’s group, as the PPP is at present attempting to do with the African Cultural and Development Association and others, is to have in place power-sharing and other forms of executive constitutional restrains.  It is either this or autocracy: the use of whatever leverage the State allows to rule and keep the other side in check. Nowhere has it been different!

Sincerely
Dr. Henry Jeffrey

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• governance, Government, Joel Bhagwandin, Minister Kwame McCoy, mobilisation

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