Support Village Voice News With a Donation of Your Choice.
In terms of the way Guyanese do politics, the pending process of constitutional reform could be positively transformative. Last week I stated that as a first step the enactment or radical reform of a constitution should be ‘characterized by a ‘pre-constitutional’ societal consensus regarding the foundational norms that underpin the state. Such consensus bestows the constitution with legitimacy in the eyes of the governed.’ This has not happened and I am afraid that if more than cosmetic changes are intended, the absence of consensus has only postponed looming difficulties and their consequences.
Monday last, in a Stabroek News article ‘Constitutional reform process will be inclusive – Nandlall’ (SN:13/02/2023) in which the Attorney General Mr. Anil Nandlall (AG) was responding to some comments made by Mr. Ralph Ramkarran in his ‘Conversation Tree’ article (SN: 05/02/2023) on the type of questions raised by me last week, the word ‘inclusive’ was used 16 times but ‘consensus’, or phrases intending that concept, was not used once. For a multi-ethnic/bicommunal society with ethnic schisms such as Guyana, this is ominous, for if the proposed process of reforms is to extricate Guyana from the present political morass it will have to gain the support of the representatives of not a mere majority but ‘substantially all’ Guyanese.
The AG stated that consultations by the Constitutional Reform Commission will be broad-based and inclusive of all citizens, and if inclusive governance is recommended by the people it will be considered by the Commission. ‘However for the record, as far as I am aware,’ he said ‘the PPP/C has long expressed its commitment to inclusive governance, … It will be recalled that this is the principle which inspired the changes that were effected in the 1999 – 2000 constitutional reform process. I do not know that our position has changed.’
I can agree that the PPP’s notion of ‘inclusive governance’ may not have changed but what does it mean and what are the possible consequences?
Apart from an outright dictatorship, degrees of inclusiveness will exist in any polity. Inclusiveness must, therefore, be viewed as a continuum that is even broader than that of democracy. The PPP accepted this interpretation in its 2003 paper on this matter that contained the principles of inclusion mentioned by the AG and was a response to the PNC’s demand for an end to the winner-takes-all political system. The paper concluded, ‘In an environment created by deepening trust and confidence, further arrangements for inclusive governance can result after consultation with our constituents and the electorate.’ (State House February 8, 2003)
Today, after two decades of living under the 2000 constitution that was inspired by this PPP approach, Guyana is classified as an ‘electoral democracy’ i.e. one containing the lowest level of the democratic/inclusiveness. Talk of inclusiveness is, therefore, meaningless without one saying quite clearly what level of accommodation is envisaged. Thus, at the conceptual level Desmond Hoyte and every PNC leader since, the Carter Center, the present United States government and others have made their position quite clear. What is required now if Guyana is to be inclusive of the major ethnic groups and improve is the removal of the winner-takes-all political system.
The principles adumbrated by the PPP do not envisage any such arrangement ‘until trust and confidence’ is built and its ethnic oligarchic leadership which controls the party consults the very party and its ethnic constituency! What this in effect means is that there will be no substantial effective change until the PPP leadership determines that it is necessary! In an ethnically divided society such as Guyana this is not the absurdity it might appear to be for the PPP is an ethnic party and as such must be in a position to protect its base. Instead of the usual hypocrisy about being multi-ethnic that is at best an aspiration, this is the reality that all ethnic groups in our kind of society need to accept if there is to be peace and equitable prosperity.
The problem is that what the PPP wants for itself it does not want for others: it persistently and doggedly cultivates its political/ethnic dominance.
For example, the AG spoke a great deal about the broad scope of the function of Constitutional Reform Commission claiming that ‘is not a PPP/C organ, but a national, broad-based, multi-stakeholder organisation’. While the Commission will theoretically take most, if not all of the important initial decisions having to do with the reforms, I argued last week that its composition and agenda were unilaterally determined by the PPP and are deliberately skewed in favour and its oligarchic leadership.
The argument coming from both the government and opposition appears to be that the composition of the Commission and the agenda are in keeping with the Herdmanston Accord extracted from the PPP by Desmond Hoyte twenty years ago. The length of time since then alone should have prevented that formula from automatically becoming a default consensus. But more importantly, the entire political context is substantially different.
Before the 2000 constitution Hoyte did not intend any radical reform of the state. However, a few years after he publicly recanted his prior position and rejected the majoritarian foundational norm that underpins the Guyanese state. Furthermore, from Hoyte’s standpoint, the PPP only understood political force the ultimate of which he colloquially referred to a ‘slow fire, more fire.’ The PPP understood that he had the capacity and will to act if consensus was not reached on important matters.
Any attempt at constitutional reform will be futile if it does not adequately account for Guyana’s ethno/political divide and develop a radical consensus and outcomes that take into consideration the decades-long negative impact of its majoritarian governance. Every effort should be made to broadly involve the entire citizenry in the reform discourse, but talk about ‘the people’ making the important decisions is camouflage for largely oligarchic political parties doing as they have forever been doing to the detriment of the population – as they please!