Part 2. ‘The future is now: the rest is history’
In Part 1, the late Mr. Robert Corbin, the Leader of the PNCR, outlined the socio/political context within which he was operating and detailed the ‘Constructive Engagement Agreement (CEA)’ that resulted from his efforts. Here, I will outline my general orientation and involvement in the CEA process, note Corbin’s assessment of the results of his efforts some four months after the CEA was signed, and will conclude with a general evaluation of the entire process and its aftermath as it relates to the future of democratic governance in Guyana.
Early in March 2003, as Minister of Education, I went to the office of Dr. Roger Luncheon, the Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS), for a scheduled education sub-committee meeting and was invited by him to sit in a meeting he was having with a group of Guyanese who were very concerned about the political crisis then occurring in Guyana. They were encouraging Dr. Luncheon to try and encourage the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP), to have dialogue, compromise, etc. with the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) so it would again participate in the parliamentary process, which it was boycotting.
I was quite taken aback by Dr. Luncheon’s response, which was essentially that it was impossible to speak to the PNC and expect any meaningful outcome. He might have been frustrated with the extant political situation, which was indeed quite frightening. There was a significant increase in violent crimes: murder, kidnapping, daring robberies, gangland style executions, the shooting and killing of policemen, extra judicial killings, and a jailbreak by dangerous criminals, etc.
The situation was so dire that notwithstanding my being a member of the government, in 2002 I began writing a few position papers for internal discourse that were leaked to the press. In ‘Normal Politics: Breaking the Link between Crime and Politics in Guyana’, I recognised that the most important problem then facing the country was the coalescence of crime and politics.
My first paper, ‘Establishing Normal Politics in Guyana’, attempted to identify what I considered the main issue. I argued that ‘for more than half a century the political process in Guyana has operated sub-optimally. The period to 1964 was wasted in a geopolitical confrontation which removed the PPP from government. 1964 to 1992 saw the establishment of a dictatorial regime. 1992 to date has seen a governance mechanism that a significant number of citizens view with suspicion but see as irremovable. For at least half a century then normal politics has not existed in Guyana.
Normal politics requires, inter alia, respect for the rule of law, open multi-party elections and freedom of expression and assembly. However, very importantly, normal politics does not exist where (for whatever reason) political competition is absent. Power sharing is the less desirable alternative at this stage but if, because of negligence or impracticability, normal politics is not urgently established power sharing remains an alternative.’
The minute everyone else left Dr. Luncheon’s office, I accused him of spreading propaganda. I need not relate his response, which included a plethora of personal and other invectives. I finally challenged him to give me two weeks to get the PNCR back in the National Assembly and he requested some time to think about the proposal. In his position that usually meant he needed time to speak to the party leadership. He took about two weeks but responded positively. I contacted Robert Corbin and a few other people in the PNC and after another couple of weeks they agreed to talk. Although I was there as a facilitator, the actual negotiators were President Bharrat Jagdeo and Dr. Roger Luncheon for the PPP and Robert Corbin and Lance Carberry for the PNCR.
I had known Robert Corbin relatively well in the early 1980s when we worked with, Dr. Ptolemy Reid, Prime Minister and General Secretary of the PN, at the Office of the General Secretary of the PNC and Ministry of National Development. Corbin was the Junior Minister and I was in charge of research in the Department of Planning and Research. When Dr Reid died in 2003 Robert called to inform me saying, ‘Your father is dead better come and say something at the funeral!’ We played squash at the Georgetown Club, and I was one of those who, before a quite unexpected event occurred, initially got him to agree not to lead the party into what turned out to be for him the disastrous 2006 general elections.
As previously noted, the PPP/PNC negotiations were completed on 6 May 2003, and in his 17th August 2003 address to the nation on the Status of implementation of the Communique, Corbin claimed that the outcome was far from positive. Although there has been some limited progress there has been too many delays for them to be classified as mere slippage as the President wanted to do’. ‘Regrettably, the time and energy spent to obtain the results achieved so far suggest that deliberate efforts are being made to retard implementation. I expect that you the citizens will be the best judges of the facts. I have only highlighted some of the matters dealt with in the Communique to emphasize the reality of the implementation. Many Guyanese, including my own supporters, have asked me why I signed the Communique, knowing the track record of the PPP/C of not honouring commitments?’
I agreed with Corbin’s assessment as some level of delay was applied to almost every one of the two dozen or so individual agreements contain in the final communique. The negotiation process was completed at about 1 am on the morning of 6 May and a press conference was scheduled for later the same morning. But before the press conference, the PPP called an executive meeting at the Office of the President at which some influential members accused their negotiators of going beyond the party’s mandate!
It immediately appeared to me that the road ahead would be very challenging, for if the PPP had any intention of fulfilling its obligations under the agreement it would have diligently been monitoring the negotiation process as had apparently been happening in the PNCR. It would not have waited until the negotiations had concluded to start throwing around accusations.
Secondly, in retrospect, one should have given more weight to the fact that, although there was some slippage here also, the PPP only fulfilled its obligations under the 1998 Herdmanston Accord and St. Lucia statement to hold new general elections in three instead of five years because Desmond Hoyte had consistently threatened mass public protest, spiced with his ‘more fire’ mantra.
That said, in mitigation in 2003 it was not yet obvious that the PPP had already chosen the pathway towards ethnic/political dominance. It is worth noting too that after his sterling efforts over more than a decade to help Guyana transition to a healthy modern democracy, the next year, 2004, President Jimmy Carter left Guyana with the following assessment of the general situation.
‘Jagdeo is an intelligent and capable leader, but he takes full advantage of the ancient ‘winner take all’ system in Guyana. Following my meeting with him, I was very doubtful that his political party would commence new dialogue with the PNC, be willing to make any substantive moves to implement the National Development Strategy, share political authority with other parties, or permit members of parliament to be elected by their own constituencies instead of being chosen from a party list on a proportional basis.’
Carter did not return to Guyana until 2015, when the PPP had already lost its majority in the 2011 general elections and the APNU-AFC Coalition manifesto of 2015 had similarly committed to ‘the establishment of a Government of National Unity, which would have as its priority the …. Constitutional and institutional reforms necessary for the realisation of Shared Governance … during the first two years of the first term of the Government of National Unity’
In modern times, Africans have been a minority in Guyana and historically the PNC has been a coalition-orientated party. Indeed, If Dr. Ptolemy Reid is to be believed, after the (PPP Burnhamites) lost the 1957 elections, Forbes Burnham decided that all African groups had to unite if their interests were to be properly protected. Some in the PNC, which was formed after the defeat, considered themselves socialists and were most reluctant to joint forces with what they considered the African ‘bourgeoisie’ in such groups as the United Democratic Party. Forbes Burnham had to threaten to pack his bags and migrate to Ghana if a coalition was impossible and as Dr. Reid observed, ‘the rest is history’.
The PNC has historically been orientated towards an ethnically open coalition, such as that which existed in the African National Congress of South Africa, and as in South Africa, such openness should not prevent it from adequately confronting the ethnic realities of its context. The constitutional formations that are appropriate for an ethnically homogeneous society are expressing ithemselves undemocratically in the multiethnic context of Guyana. Since 1960, Sir Arthur Lewis, who is considered by experts to be the father of shared governance, made the point that historically deeply ethnic fractured societies require that all substantial ethnic groups should be at the decision-making table. Here, Robert Corbin and the Coalition government of 2015 lapsed.
