Suriname graduated: Guyana failed

Sep 16, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor

“The vast majority of Latin Americans (86%) live in electoral democracies such as Argentina and Brazil, and 4% live in liberal democracies like Chile and Uruguay. However, Latin America is also the region with the largest share of the population living in ‘grey zone’ regimes. No less than 24% of people reside in Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, and Mexico – countries in the lower band of electoral democracies that qualify as democracies only with a certain degree of uncertainty. Autocracies in the region such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, have 10% of the region’s inhabitants. The only country to decidedly change regime type in 2023 was Suriname, moving from electoral to liberal democracy, while autocratizing Mexico deteriorated from an electoral democracy to a ‘grey zone’ electoral democracy” (V-Dem: Democracy Report 2024).

Following the late eminent political theorist Samuel P Huntington, I believe that open, free, and fair elections are a sine qua non if a regime is to be considered democratic. But democracy is only one of the qualities of a truly liberal democratic regime. Governments produced by free and fair elections may be inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, incapable of adopting public good policies, and may foster environments that lack effective citizen control over policies, honest and open politics, informed and rational deliberation, equal participation, etc. The absence of these qualities may make governments undesirable, but they do not make them undemocratic as democracy is only one public virtue.

The V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) relates well to the previous paragraph. It captures both liberal and electoral aspects of democracy and the Electoral Democracy Index (EDI). The EDI measures the extent to which regimes hold clean, free, and fair elections, but also the actual freedom of expression, alternative sources of information and association, male and female suffrage and the degree to which government policy is vested in elected political officials. The liberal component captures the liberal aspects, including checks and balances on the executive, respect for civil liberties, the rule of law and the independence of the legislature and the judiciary. The egalitarian component measures the extent to which all social groups enjoy equal capacity to participate in the political arena. It relies on the idea that democracy is a system of rule “by the people” where citizens participate in various ways, such as making informed voting decisions, expressing opinions, demonstrating, running for office, or influencing policymaking in other ways. The participatory component emphasizes active participation by citizens in all political processes, electoral and non-electoral. If practicable, this principle prefers direct rule by citizens. The deliberative component considers the process by which decisions are reached. A deliberative process is one in which public reasoning, focused on the common good, motivates political decisions – as contrasted with emotional appeals, solidarity attachments, parochial interests or coercion.  Four regime types are identified: (1) liberal democracies, where the requirements of electoral democracy are met and there are judicial and legislative constraints on the executive along with the protection of civil liberties and equality before the law; (2) electoral democracies, where multiparty elections for the executive are free and fair and there are satisfactory degrees of suffrage, freedom of expression and freedom of association; (3) electoral autocracies, where multiparty elections for the executive exist but there are insufficient levels of fundamental requisites such as freedom of expression and association, and free and fair elections, and (4) closed autocracies, where there are no multi-party elections for the executive and there is an absence of fundamental democratic components such as freedom of expression, freedom of association and free and fair elections. Grey Zone countries are those where classification is more uncertain. they are classified as either going up, electoral autocracies (‘EA+’) or, like Guyana, lower-bound electoral democracies (‘ED-‘).

The V-Dem 2024 Index also contains regimes’ history from 1973 to 2023 that tells interesting stories about Guyana and Suriname. From 1973 to 1997, Guyana is classified as an electoral autocracy This is perhaps because regimes are not usually reclassified after simply one election. The election of 1992 was also problematical and ethnically based.  After the constitutional changes at the end of the century, Guyana moved into the democratic ‘grey zone’ and a couple of years later it became an ‘ED-’ only to revert to the ‘gray zone’ after the 2020 elections.

Like Guyana, Suriname has also had a turbulent political history but has been able to climb out of it and has now joined Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago as a liberal democracy minus. From 1973 to about 1980, it was in the democratic ‘grey zone’, and thereafter to about 1989, during the period of military rule, it was a ‘closed autocracy’ the repercussions of which still linger. But except for a short period (1990/91) since 1989, it was an ‘electoral democracy minus’ until 2023.

Note that since the 2020 elections, like Mexico, Guyana has deteriorated from being a ‘ED-’ to being a ‘grey zone democracy’. Notwithstanding all the propaganda nonsense coming from the PPP about its treatment of the Guyana Teachers Unions being the epitome of ‘collective bargaining’ and self-interested politicians denying the autocratic trajectory of the current regime, you must be living somewhere else not to realise that democratic participation has deteriorated significantly since the PPP returned to government in 2020. Its motive is clear:  do all that is possible to control the other ethnic groups and present itself and the saviour of Guyana by unilaterally using the country’s resources to buy votes and establish all manner of dubious projects. Its various attempts to buy votes has effectively turned the government into a provider of filthy lucre for those so inclined!

The oligarchs in the PPP are not oblivious to what is taking place: they know it is not possible to win support by various kinds of cohesion and undemocratic maneuvers and then to have the results certified as acceptable democratic behaviour. Whatever corruption the PPP may have been involved with has already been discovered and is being revealed daily. The PPP’s main difficulty rests in the fact that it is an ethnic party that has weaned its supporters, and perhaps itself, on a diet of its being unilateral and irreplaceable if their interests are to be protected.  Now it has no choice, for as we have seen above, as everywhere else, the road to a liberal democracy is the road to sharing power and thus Suriname’s graduation is not surprising.

For example, Suriname’s president must be elected by a 2/3 vote in the national assembly and the treatment of budgets accords with international best practices recommendations that in ‘no case should’ the period of budget consideration be ‘less than three months prior to the start of the fiscal year’.  In a nutshell, the 1987 Constitution of Suriname states that the budget debate/parliamentary process must take place between October and December for the budget to be enacted on 1st January. The National Assembly can amend, approve, or reject the budget and after it is read in October, i.e. Budget Day, the National Assembly begins the debate with a series of meetings open to the public. During this period, civil society groups are encouraged to engage with members of the relevant National Assembly standing committees. The progress of the debate can be interrupted several times if the government fails to respond in a timely manner to requests made by the National Assembly.  More than a decade later the ‘wonderful’ Guyana constitution permits a process that after some 15 days of inconsequential discussions, budgets leave the National Assembly more or less exactly as they entered.

Regards
Dr Henry Jeffrey

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• autocratizing, behaviour, Cuba, electoral, Guyana, Nicaragua, V-Dem Liberal, Venezuela

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