Dear Editor,
The deep political quagmire in which the no-confidence motion has thrown the PPP raises the question again in my mind, what were the dynamics within the party when it agreed to this and several other far-reaching constitutional reforms in 1999/2000. The PPP during the last constitution reform process agreed to several (what for it were) revolutionary changes. These include the two-term presidency, the sectoral oversight parliamentary committees, the new constitutional commissions (in particular, the Ethnic Relations Commission and the Public Procurement Commission), sweeping local government reforms and an independent Auditor General.
While the PPP’s support for the two-term presidency was readily interpreted as a move to accommodate the presidential ambitions of several of its top leaders in the post-Jagan era, the other wide-ranging agreements did not fit the PPP’s political impulses and modus operandi. I do not recall, as an observer of and very minor participant in the constitutional reform process, much fire and brimstone during the multi-stakeholder meetings as these proposals were hammered out.
One explanation for the good behaviour, of course, was that the party would have been able to thwart implementation as the government. Recent history has well illustrated this. After over ten years, too many reforms in the constitution remain only on paper. The problems, however, the party is presently facing with local government elections and the no-confidence motion suggest that its agree-then-kill strategy might have been too large and unpredictable an operation.
The second possible explanation was that the presence of so many stakeholders at the negotiations and the high profile nature of the process would have made intransigence politically costly for the PPP.
More than likely, however, as a third explanation, the political instability in the country just after the 1997 election street demonstrations would have caused the PPP to adopt a conciliatory and friendly posture.
That said, the party’s agreement to the inclusion of no-confidence provisions in the constitution is the hardest to fathom. Did it assume it would always control a parliamentary majority? Forbes Burnham would have thought so too of the PNC, but the so-called Burnham constitution included precautions to rule out any post-election match-making such as the 1964 PNC-UF government. It would be interesting then to hear the views of the negotiators on the genesis of the no-confidence motion in our constitution.
The current parliamentary crisis is another stark reflection of a political culture that has not lived up to the spirit and letter of the constitution reforms. And, maybe, therein resides the fundamental flaw of the constitution. It assumed political maturity when little or none existed and, as such, provided too few braking mechanisms to control any government on a rampage. We are left to resort to a single extreme measure in the form of a no-confidence motion. Will the country emerge better or worse?
Yours faithfully,
Sherwood Lowe
