Vincent Alexander and constitutional reform’

Sep 30, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor

Yesterday I commented on presentations made at the Forbes Burnham Foundation’s Elvin McDavid Memorial Symposium 2024 ‘How can an Electoral System for Guyana engineer a system of Governance that`s responsive to the Plurality of the Guyanese Society?’ The invitation was most timely as last week I argued that in Guyana most of the values of a liberal democratic society, e.g., freedom of information, checks and balances on the executive, the rule of law, independence of the legislature and judiciary, principles of local democracy and focus on the common good instead of parochial ethnic appeals and coercion, are absent.

On behalf of the Foundation, Mr. Vincent Alexander began his presentation with an opinion that captures a very important element of Guyana’s chaotic political story. ‘Guyana by virtue of its diverse population: Amerindians, Europeans, Africans, Chinese, Madeirans (Portuguese), and Indians, is a plural society. Diversity in such societies is manifested in the difference of traditions, customs, belief systems, values, cuisine, dress and other aspects of the groups` cultures or ways of life, across the ethnic groups, which are in themselves each identified by their internal commonalities of the differences earlier referenced. Societies thus populated have constituent groups, whose ways of life, and trend of thoughts are incongruent thus resulting in diverse approaches to resolve the same societal issues. … In that regard, the question of Governance looms large. … It stands to reason that the ‘by whom’ has to be a representative body of the diverse groups and the ‘how’ has to be a convergence of thoughts, consensus and the understanding that the common good should prevail over partisan group interests.’

I drew attention to an 1861 observation made by the eminent British philosopher, John Stuart Mills. ‘Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.  Among a people without fellow feeling (the essence of nationhood) … the united public opinion necessary to the working of a representative government cannot exist.  The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country.  An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another.’ Mills considered liberal democracy impossible in the environment outlined by Mr. Alexander, and it is no wonder that the notion of ethnic geographical partition is periodically raised in Guyana.

I also noted that from the very inception of the notion of nationhood, Guyana has been plagued by ethnic strife. So much so that in 1954, the report of the British Robertson Commission, observing the views of another 1951 British Commission which stated that ‘Race is a patent difference and a powerful slogan ready to the hand of unscrupulous men who can use it as a steppingstone to political power’, made Mill’s important structural point that has troubled Guyana ever since. ‘We do not altogether share the confidence of the Waddington Commission that a comprehensive loyalty to British Guiana can be stimulated among peoples of such diverse origins.’ In the 1960s, MG Smith, the Jamaican who helped to popularize plural society theory also predicted that once independence was in the air, African and Indians would struggle for power.

As regards the issue of governance and the possibility that ‘the common good should prevail over partisan group interest’, I noted that at a period when ‘ethnic assimilation’ was acceptable, after he won the 1964 elections, Forbes Burnham in his address to the nation, having referred to the ‘apparent’ ethnic cleavage that existed in Guyana, blamed ‘the dishonest, deceitfulness, opportunistic, racist propaganda and policies of the PPP’ and promised  that ‘beginning immediately my government will behave fairly and will demonstrate to PPP supporters that there is nothing to fair but all to celebrate’ and look where we still are today!

It was Sir Arthur Lewis (Politics in West Africa (1965) who made a seminal contribution to making liberal democracy possible in ethnically divided societies. ‘Majority rule’, he argued, ‘is dysfunctional for plural societies. The most important requirement of democracy is that citizens have the opportunity to participate, directly or indirectly, in decision-making. This meaning of democracy is violated if significant minorities are excluded from the decision-making process for extended periods of time. Under such circumstances, narrow majority rule is totally immoral, inconsistent with the primary meaning of democracy, and destructive of any prospect of building a nation in which different peoples might live together in harmony.’

But Guyana is not simply a plural society: it is a multiethnic, bicommunal, society with added problem because two large ethnic groups control over 80% of the population. And ‘[t]o the extent that the constitutional arrangements ignore this (structural) development, tension, alienation, disturbances and underdevelopment result. There is little point in blaming the community leaders for in the competitive political environment 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 and it’s a mistake to blame the outcome on anyone. Power sharing becomes inevitable because of the logic of political cleavage in competitive democracies.’ (Orr, Scott The Theory and Practice of Ethnic Politics. Aug 2007).

Mr. Alexander told his audience that ‘democracy, has three pillars: representativeness, responsibility, and responsiveness. Inherent in this proposition is that no single group should be able to dominate. Conflation and consensus should prevail over domination.’ Among other things, government should be limited at the national and regional levels based on the Catholic principle of ‘subsidiarity’ – nothing should be done at the national level that could be done well or better at the most local level. The determination of who is president should be a function of a process in the legislature that allows for the president to appoint a cabinet based on proportionality and a prime minister based on the consensus of the legislature. The powers of the executive and the legislature should be significantly reduced.

Mr. Alexander appears to have taken the democratic pathway, but his conceptualization needs far more clarity particularly given that he is closely associated with a political party that has previously reneged on its promises.

Jimmy Carter walked away from Guyana in 2004 complaining that the PPP did not want to change the winner takes all system. In 2006, the International IDEA, an NGO that supports the development of democracy worldwide, noted, ‘If any generalization about (political) institutional design is sustainable, …it is that majoritarian systems are ill-advised for countries with deep ethnic, regional, religious and other emotional and polarizing divisions.’ Recently, USAID and the US State Department recommended that the system be changed.

Guyanese are not so dense as not to take cognizance of this kind of advice coming from largely disinterested expert sources and other factors must, therefore, be in play. Sartori’s observation that self-interest usually pervades the constitutional reform process is spot on. After some half a century of everyone trying to tame the ethnic structural beast, the PPP has given up and has simply chosen the only other alternative: an autocratic pathway that is more in keeping with its ideological and political socialization, i.e. democratic centralism and racism that have been its traditional organizational and mobilization tools!

Sincerely
Dr. Henry Jeffrey

 

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• Guyana’s chaotic, Guyanese Society, incongruent, partisan group interes, possibility, steppingstone

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