Dear Editor,
Ambassador Hardt’s public urging of the Government of Guyana (GoG) to hold long overdue elections has met with a lot of condemnation from official government sources, and notably from retired AG Charles Ramson and Justice Duke Pollard. The government claims the Ambassador’s public urging (as opposed to the same thing done privately) is an attack on the nation’s sovereignty, namely, it amounts to interference in the internal affairs of the state.
What is this doctrine called sovereignty? Where did it originate? Has its application and meaning changed over the last 350 years? It all started with the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years’ War. What became known as ‘Westphalian sovereignty’ doctrine provides for three bedrock principles, one of which is the non-intervention of one state in the internal affairs of another state.
However, both the idea of Westphalian sovereignty and its applicability in practice have been questioned from the mid-20th century onwards from a variety of viewpoints. Much of the debate has turned on the ideas of internationalism and globalization which, in various interpretations, appear to conflict with Westphalian sovereignty. In 1998 NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said that “humanity and democracy” were two principles that directly contradict the original Westphalian Sovereignty doctrine, and further said that the latter has its limits. It also leads not to a community of states, but to exclusion and isolation. In 1999 former British PM Tony Blair gave a speech where he “set out a new, post- Westphalian doctrine of international community.” He also argued that globalization had made the Westphalian approach anachronistic. Several world leaders have also asserted that globalization has superseded the original meaning of the Westphalian Sovereignty doctrine.
Simply stated, if governments are going to brandish the original Westphalian idea of sovereignty – as the GoG is doing – then that government is looking for excuses to lower its conduct of humanitarian standards and debase the universal idea of democracy.
Publicly chiding a recalcitrant government for failing to hold local government elections for 17 years is a very reasonable and acceptable thing to do in a globalized world, in a democratic environment and among a community of nations in the post-Cold War era.
The behaviour of the GoG and its resistance to an Ambassador’s public calling for constitutionally sanctioned local government elections should frighten all decent Guyanese because it reminds you so much of the Burnham government’s resistance to free and fair elections for more than two decades.
Former AG Ramson and Justice Pollard are hewing to old interpretations and practices of concepts and doctrines. Do they realize the consequences of their public arguments? It is that a would-be dictator can usurp power and set up a dictatorship, and the diplomatic community and foreign governments should feel constrained by 350-year-old doctrines and say nothing and do nothing.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
