Shared governance not shared government

Dear Editor,

I would like to clarify something my former colleague, Dr Henry Jeffrey, says in his ‘Future notes’ of Stabroek News of April 17.

I refer to the statement, “the prime minister is reported as saying in Parliament (during the budget debate) that the PPP does not support executive shared governance.”

What I said was that we support shared governance but not shared government; that shared governance was not beyond us who offered critical support at a time when our state was in a difficult position, even whilst we (PPP) were being cheated (rigged elections) and abused; that we had been burnt, very recently, only last year when we reached agreement with the APNU on beginning the long- desired reform of the provision of electricity in Linden, and all the events that followed; that in ‘Future notes’ of a week earlier the social commentator  and political-scientist, Dr Henry Jeffrey had remarked on the agreement between the PPP/C and the PNCR for the use of national ID cards during the 1997 elections. The PNCR had gone to the courts protesting the outcome of that election, claiming that the election had been rigged. The court did not find that the elections were rigged but vitiated the elections on the ground that the PPP/C and PNCR agreed use of the national ID card was unconstitutional. The PNCR then used this ruling to strengthen their protests.

I argued that shared government (at this time) would only transfer the dissension and contentions in Parliament into the Cabinet room. The government could be paralysed.  Further, I said that Mr Hoyte, until he was worn down by opposite arguments in his party, maintained three fundamental criticisms of that Mr Hoyte had changed his view by the time of his death.)

Mr Hoyte’s first concern was the danger, if shared government worked, of sliding into a dictatorship.  Indeed one could see intimations to such in the court ruling that the agreement between the PPP/C and PNCR for the use of the ID card in the 1997 elections was unconstitutional.

I went on to say that it was not that we of the PPP/C did not recognize our peculiar challenges arising from our history, in the way how our foreparents were thrown together here, nor have we not offered a position on working our way away from it.  I referred to our presentation in about 2004, ‘Building Trust for Political Cooperation.’ This is the step by step way to work our way out of our particular boundaries of fears and insecurities.

I hold to a position I learnt from my former colleague Dr Henry Jeffrey: “Democracy requires two (or more) competing political parties each of which has earned the respect of the broad masses, and each of which could form a government under which all believe that they can live.”

My view of our challenge and of the way forward, as I said in my budget presentation, is the creation of the perception and reality of a “Guyanese umbrella” under which we all live, aware of all our differences yet extending and accepting hands of assistance to and from each other; looking out for each other and ready to learn from and to teach each other.  My position has been that our troubles so far are largely not unexpected, when one thinks of the way our different foreparents were thrown together. There has been in Guyana an overlapping of the various differences amongst peoples, which lead to different political sentiments and membership in different political parties – race, religion, language, urban-rural and other regional differences.

The answer as I see it, is to keep the faith in the aspiration of our national motto, as we find and promote ways to increase socialization across our differences,  so that we get to know each other more, have more shared experiences, and one day, unannounced and unheralded, we would find ourselves all Guyanese.
Yours faithfully,
Samuel A A Hinds
Prime Minister