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This column has many times drawn attention to the fact that constitution making or remaking is not for amateurs, and from my assessment thus far, none of us have the expertise to anticipate the vicissitudes of the reforms this society requires and at the very least we need to have some broad idea of what we are trying to achieve.
The following lengthy quotation from Giovanni Sartori (Comparative Constitutional Engineering. (1997) Macmillan Press, London) written around the time of the last major constitutional reform, suggests that although the entire reform environment must have significantly improved since the mid-1990s, one needs to acquire the right expertise and be on the guard for politicians, who will attempt to use the occasion and the commendable efforts at public participation to inject all manner of untenable outcomes. As he noted, ‘To be sure, change by reform is always difficult. Once an electoral arrangement is in place, its beneficiaries protect their vested interest and struggle to go on playing the game by the same rules that they know’. This gets worse when, as is the case in Guyana, ethnic visions that have been fostered over decades are in still in play.
‘Do changers know how to change whatever it is that they seek to change? And, narrowing the question to the issue at hand: whence and how do present-day electoral system-makers (or remakers) seek inspiration? By looking at the cleavage structure of their societies? By excavating into the deeper determinants of their history? Of course not. Across the world the drafters of electoral systems look cursorily at existing systems, cantily ask for expert advice from self-styled experts and end up adopting the system that they perceive to their own immediate advantage – with many hurrays to history, social determinants and noble traditions.
There is little that scholars can do with regards to the politicians’ self-interest – other than showing that they are or might be wrongly understood. Still, scholars are supposed and required to give sound advice: – regardless of whether it is being heeded. And here is the rub: are the present-day political scientists capable of giving sound advice? Based on the views that I have briefly reviewed, the answer must be no. … I submit, that our alleged electoral experts have largely failed to develop the expertise that is required of them and that much of their current counselling is poor and plainly wrong. As I propose to beginning by showing, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, the effects of electoral systems can be adequately predicted and determined.’
The political system is the set of formal and informal institutions and behavioural patterns that constitute the government. It is a subsystem that interacts with other nonpolitical subsystems of the social system. The electoral system is itself a subsystem of the political system that determines how votes are translated into seats at national, local and other relevant elections and thereby is affected by the behaviour of the voter.
The major difference between electoral systems is whether they translate votes on proportional or majoritarian principles. Important too is who controls the selection of the winner: the person voting or someone else, e.g. a political party. Today, the political system needs to respond constantly and adequately to changing political life: novel forms of political activity, mass communication, demands for greater popular participation, ethnic diversity, rising expectations, the extension of the scope of governmental activity, etc.
Reforms are intended to enhance the democratic interplay of the above structures and goals within the specific context of Guyana. Make no mistake, we could – as we have done before – easily mess this up. For example, the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary is the foundation of the liberal democratic system to which we claim to aspire.
Yet at the turn of the 20th century, after almost a decade of political disturbances, we went to constitutional reform and created a judicial platform that for almost the entire period since then has been without the two leaders of the judiciary being confirmed in their positions. Yet we feel free to walk around claiming that Guyana has one of the best democratic constitutions in the world because we instituted a whole host of hardly functioning committees and left them in a majoritarian framework in a deeply ethnically politically divided society!
It gets worse, for it is obvious that the political elite does not understand what impartially means: it is as if it does not recognise the importance of the notion that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. It takes the executive members and close associates of its ethnic political parties and appoints them to chair constitutional commissions and committees that are supposed to be impartial! It may well be that its reluctance to confront the existing ethnic cleavage has blindsided it, for as Sartori recommended, any constitutional reform that seriously looks back ‘at the cleavage structure of (Guyanese) society’ should not have allowed such a travesty! For a start, as in other countries, Guyana badly needs an ‘independent’ advisor on ethics if only to educate the public and not thus normalise this kind of amoral political behaviour.
In the context of what is currently taking place and as a backdrop to the reform process, it is worth noting that there is a big difference between stable autocratic and stable democratic political systems. The optimal working of political systems depends on good political leadership and effective political structures and processes. Since the quality of the political leadership is often decisive in democratic or autocratic countries, the arrangements that provide methods of selecting able leaders and replacing them are critical for the maintenance of political stability and development.
Some, authoritarian systems have not only been stable but have demonstrated impressive capabilities for survival and economic grow, e.g., Singapore and China. As we are witnessing in Guyana, the key to their success is their ability to control social development, to manage and prevent change and to bring under governmental direction all the forces that may result in innovations that are threatening to the system.
Democratic polities hold that acceptable and able political leadership is more likely to be found where there is free and open competition for leadership positions. Representative democratic systems also adhere to other democratic values: freedom of expression, information and association, checks and balances on the executive, respect for civil liberties, the rule of law and the independence of the legislature and the judiciary and equal capacity to participate and help in making informed political, electoral and non-electoral decisions. There must also be an attachment to principles of local democracy and a focus on the common good, in contrast to emotional, parochial ethnic appeals and coercion, etc.
In democratic countries, this kind of formal and informal institutional interaction is a major determinant of policy outcomes and is frequently the target of various kinds of political action for change. In the United States, for example, such major institutional reforms as the direct election of the Senate in 1913 and the limitation on presidential terms in 1951 were made by social pressure for constitutional amendments (https://www.britannica.com/topic/ political-system).
