Dear Editor,
Since 1992, the PPP has been saying that democracy returned to Guyana. Others have picked up this refrain but for the life of me, I do not understand what they are referring to. This championing of democracy by the PPP is a hoax used to claim victimhood over its failed attempt to bring back an electoral system that was of no value to the unity of this country. The story about the wolf in sheep’s clothing is about deception and that is what the PPP has attempted to do to the younger generation of Guyanese by claiming that democracy returned to Guyana in 1992. Their unawareness of the correct history of this country has left them gullible to the deception of the PPP. The PPP has gotten away with this deception for too long and it must stop.
As I recall the history of this country, I am baffled as to what the return of democracy means. As an indigenous Guyanese, I am aware, through oral history, of the simple self-rule that our communities had before the arrival of other groups to this country. But when I think of the Seventeenth Century when Africans were brought to this country to work as slaves and the system under which they lived, I cannot describe that as democracy. Our history informs us that formal slavery lasted into the Nineteenth Century. Anyone who thinks that the period between the Seventeenth and Nineteenth centuries in Guyana was democratic needs to have their head examined.
August 1 is celebrated as Emancipation Day. That event on the first of August 1838 created a new chapter in the history of this country. The British had full control over the country. Editor, I am yet to learn what specific actions were taken to help and not hurt most Guyanese after Emancipation. The colonial powers never took action to include most Guyanese in the social, economic and political systems of the country. Those systems were dominated by companies and individuals from the country of the colonizers.
Investors from countries closely aligned with the British were part of the dominant group. Our inclusion was not seen as necessary for the running of the country. That meant that most Guyanese were excluded from the decisions and development of the country. Our history reveals that various interest groups in municipalities like Georgetown and New Amsterdam acted in their self-interest either as part of the colonial establishment or as part of the labour struggles. None of the initiatives that I read about all the way up to 1953 were democratic. Consequently, with most Guyanese left out of the dominant social, political and economic system, I want someone to explain to me if what happened from Emancipation to the suspension of the constitution in 1953 was democracy.
Editor, there is a period in our history that marked the turning point in the emergence of democracy in this nation. It is a period that nobody that I am associated with wants to see return to this country. I am referring to the period of racial strife that left a deep scar on our society and the country racially divided. There is something about that period that the PPP never speaks about, but which was at the core of the hostilities between the African and East Indian ethnicities in Guyana. This brings me to the electoral system known as First Past the Post or FPTP.
FPTP is still used today by some countries but critics of the FPTP system point to several things that make it an undesirable system in our society. Like most things, there is some good and some bad in it. In some instances, the bad tends to outweigh the good and when that happens change is necessary. The FPTP electoral system tends to reward the party that gets a minority of the popular vote with a majority of the seats in parliament.
This major flaw in selecting representatives is exacerbated by the tendency of the FPTP electoral system to support or justify racial voting in multiethnic societies. That is what this country faced before the FPTP system was done away with. Included in the weaknesses of the FPTP electoral system is its tendency to exclude minorities from fair representation. The political struggle in Guyana between 1959 and 1964 is often described as a racial conflict while, in my view, its main cause is overlooked.
While some people might want to contest the purpose of that struggle, there is no denying that a major cause of the racial hostilities was about retaining or getting rid of the FPTP electoral system. It must be understood that the PPP fought tooth and nail to keep the racially oriented and unfair FPTP electoral system in place. It was the PNC that fought for the more democratically oriented electoral system known as Proportional Representation (PR). The country got that electoral system in 1964. The behaviour of the PPP from then onwards suggested that it never gave up its desire to see the FPTP electoral system return to Guyana until after being elected to office in 1992.
Editor, you can therefore understand why I am confused as to what democracy returned in 1992 because I have never heard the PPP give the PNC credit for introducing the PR political system that we have today in Guyana. All I hear them do is condemn Forbes Burnham and accuse him of working with the CIA because the Americans helped him to put the PR electoral system in place. Now, the PPP is trying to take credit for the PR democratic electoral system that they opposed over the years. Editor, the PPP can’t want to condemn America for helping Burnham put the PR system in place back then,  and sing the praises of America now about an electoral system it helped Burnham to establish.
Those Guyanese who are now singing the praises of the late President Jimmy Carter must also sing the praises of the Americans for helping Burnham. The two are linked. It is about time that the PPP stopped its deception of playing a sheep when it is nothing more than a menacing wolf.
Consequently, I need the PPP and its supporters to explain to the people of Guyana what democracy they are talking about because their political opposition since 1964 was against the use of the PR system, Burnham’s PR system, the one that they are abusing now.
Yours truly,
Mervyn Williams,
Former Member of Parliament.
