‘Referendum: merely a symptom’  

So far, the Alliance for Change (AFC) and Working People’s Alliance (WPA) are in support of having a referendum on the 2016 ExxonMobil contract and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which at first threw cold water on the suggestion, now appears open to one being held. One thing is certain, if the PPP had seen any personal disadvantage in the process, it would not have changed its mind. Much more likely, it sees a referendum as a means of distracting attention from more strategically important electoral issues.

Parties appear to agree that the referendum would be separate from the national elections, and this could be burdensome and distracting to small relatively poor parties in an election year. That said, properly contextualised, I consider referendums useful instruments of democratic entrenchment. Switzerland has held some 325 direct votes/referendums since 1848 when it was established, and this has helped to make governments much more responsible and accountable.

At the more technical level, but in no particular order: (1) Guyana is an ethnically divided society and a referendum must be designed with this in mind; (2) To avoid their becoming mini national elections referendums are usually about a single issue, but parties in Guyana have already been raising associated and other matters; (3) There will need to be consensus over the issue to be put to the vote and whether the result of the referendum will be mandatory or advisory, i.e. binding or not on the government; (4) There needs to be a decision on whether  there will be a legitimacy threshold, say 60% of turnout and a similar percent for approval and (5) There needs to be a decision as to whether the process will be partisan or open, allowing party MPs and supporters to campaign and vote as they please?.

Make no mistake: the difficulties around the Exxon contract are merely a symptom of a fundamental problem that is known to the parties. The AFC has been most vocal in its support of a referendum, but in 2014, its present leader Mr. Nigel Hughes located his presentation ‘A New Day for Inclusionary Democracy’ to his party’s congress in article 13 of the Guyana Constitution that deals with inclusionary democracy. Mr. Hughes’ main contention was that the commitment to inclusionary democracy is not properly expressed in the power relationships between the institutions that constitute the ‘supreme organs of democratic power’ i.e. parliament, the president and the cabinet.

In ‘unmasking … the true architecture behind the distribution of power’ between these elements, he found that the president trumps the others. His aim was by way of constitutional reform to realign the elements in what he considers a more appropriate democratic fashion suited to our ethnically divided society. But notwithstanding positive interjections here and there, the AFC remains a party without a holistic approach on this issue.

Article 13, a hobbyhorse of Mr. Lincoln Lewis, states: ‘The principal objective of the political system of the State is to establish an inclusionary democracy by providing increasing opportunities for the participation of citizens, and their organisations in the management and decision-making processes of the State, with particular emphasis on those areas of decision-making that directly affect their well-being.’  It is only one of about 40 principles, i.e. normative, non-justiciable, objectives upon which the Constitution of Guyana is said to be based.

But unless such principles are accompanied by a favourable constitutional/legal structure of power, they are unlikely to be implemented. Such has been the case in Guyana, where, as Mr. Hughes recognised, the Constitution sets the goal of inclusive governance in a power relationship that subverts it and realignment has become necessary.

The notion of a referendum itself provides another good example of this structural constitutional dilemma. As Mr. Hughes indicated, from a constitutional standpoint, the bedrock of democratic politics and vital for holding governments accountable is the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers.

According to the Constitution, the party that gains the highest number of votes at a national election wins the presidency and if that party happens to win more than 50% of the votes it controls the National Assembly. The leader of that party may or my not be the president but either way, in the context of Guyana, the Constitution makes it possible for the ethnic ruling party to control both the executive and the legislature, and given how constitutional commissions and budgeting are arranged, it gives the president enormous influence over the judiciary.

The party oligarchy determines who become candidates for MPs and the presidency. Furthermore, the party leader or someone he chooses becomes the leader of its parliamentary list with all manner of powers over parliamentarians. Where the party is organised according to the principle of democratic centralism, as the PPP is, in relation to state policy, the party leader is paramount.   The situation does not substantially change when the president is not the party leader for the constitutional arrangements allow the leadership of the party to control the leadership of the state. Thus, if by law the president has the authority to call a referendum, trying to differentiate between the two positions – president or party leader – is meaningless.

A major disadvantage of presidentialism that plagues Guyana is ‘[T]he propensity of the office to be captured by one faction, party or social group. This can create difficulties in multi-ethnic societies, where the president can easily be perceived as the representative of one group only.’ There are ‘no real checks on the executive [and] [t]his becomes even more true when there is a concordance between the president’s party and the majority party in parliament.

In this case the parliament has almost no real checks on the executive and can become more of a glorified debating chamber than a legitimate house of review. This problem can be exacerbated by the fact that a president, unlike a parliamentary prime minister, can become virtually inviolable during his or her term of office (https://aceproject.org/ero-en/topics/electoral-systems/E20GovtStructure Electoral Systems Reilly .pdf).

Guyana has a mixed presidential/parliamentary political system and those who decided to continue with it during the 2001 reforms continued with the coupling of the most questionable element of the parliamentary system – executive control of the legislature by way of ethnic political parties – with the usual inviolability of presidentialism, and thus created a potentially toxic brew that negatively affects almost every important aspect of governance in Guyana.