Guyana Must Strengthen Democracy- Jeffrey

Political scientist and former minister in the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government, Dr. Henry Jeffrey, has cautioned that unless democracy’s “intrinsic humanist possibilities” are fully developed, societies globally—including Guyana—will remain vulnerable to a resurgence of autocracy.

In his Sunday’s op-ed titled “Liberty, democracy and autocracy,” Jeffrey argues that liberal democracy is “an historically truncated democratic expression of social liberty” that emerged from the European Enlightenment and remains under pressure from autocratic forces “until the abridgement is healed.”

Turning to Guyana, he contends that the country’s political history has largely reflected “ethnically based autocratic rule.” He wrote, “in Guyana anti-democratic voices have got to a stage where they are questioning the entire liberal democratic order, although it is not clear, if not by liberal means, how else, if at all, one is to manage a relatively free society!”

Jeffrey said insufficient priority has been given to building and maintaining an inclusive democratic regime, noting longstanding accusations of ethnic discrimination against the governing PPP. He pointed to the European Union observer report on Guyana’s 2025 national elections, stating that experts concluded the polls “cannot be considered as being free,” and criticised what he described as efforts to portray the country as already fully democratic rather than focusing on meaningful reforms.

He acknowledged that even free and fair elections do not automatically produce good governance, writing that governments formed through such processes “may be inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good!”

Drawing on historical perspectives, Jeffrey referenced former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who famously remarked that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter,” while also maintaining that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

He traced debates about governance back to classical philosophy, citing Aristotle’s observation that man is a social animal and his assessment that Aristocracy—rule by the educated and culturally prepared—was preferable to direct democracy by the “poor and ill educated multitude.”

Jeffrey also revisited Enlightenment concerns about state power, referencing Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s assertion in The Social Contract that “man is born free but is everywhere in chains.” He cited the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the 1789 United States Constitution as foundational liberal documents limiting government power and protecting individual rights. He further referenced Immanuel Kant’s 1795 “categorical imperative,” which urged individuals to “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

Beyond liberalism, Jeffrey examined more radical political traditions that emerged during the same period, including co-operative socialism, anarchism and strands of socialism later critiqued by Karl Marx. He described Marxism as “arguably the most radical conceptualisation of freedom and democracy that goes well beyond liberal democracy.”

Quoting from Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Jeffrey highlighted the view that “The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all of nature his organic body – both in as much as nature is (a) his direct means to life and (b) the material, object and instrument of his life activities.”

He paraphrased Marx’s argument that throughout history, humans must wrestle with nature to satisfy their needs, and that genuine freedom in work “consists only of the fact that workers regulate their work rationally by bringing it under their common control and that they accomplish their task with the least expenditure of energy.”

Citing Das Capital (1909), Jeffrey added that true human development begins when individuals produce beyond immediate physical necessity: “Man produces even when he is free from physical needs and only truly produces in freedom therefrom.” In this “true realm of freedom,” he wrote, “The shortening of the working day is its fundamental prerequisite.”

Jeffrey concluded that Marxism is fundamentally concerned with maximising human freedom, which he argued is unattainable under capitalism. “Maximum freedom in society and at work/employment consists in the entire society being democratised and workers regulating their work rationally by bringing it under their common (democratic) control and accomplishing their tasks with the least expenditure of energy,” he stated.