Having experienced over half a century with just a single previous instance of substantive change in the political order we find ourselves in the throes of an unaccustomed newness. As in 1992 when the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) surrendered political office to the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), change has once again brought with it varying measures of euphoria, hope, disappointment and, predictably, query over the veracity of the elections results as declared by the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom). It has also brought a number of ambitious commitments from the new administration.
The post-elections environment is yet to evaporate completely. Towards the end of last week we witnessed former President Donald Ramotar and some of his once high officials staging a picket outside Gecom. There is, too, the likelihood of litigation over the veracity of the May 11 poll. If precedent is anything to go by ‘rigged elections’ is likely to be adopted once again as the PPP’s favoured slogan in the period ahead. This time around, though, the party must be painfully aware of the fact that the effectiveness of its protestations have long been watered down by the unanimity of the international observers on the conduct of the poll.
The past week was dominated by other post-elections preoccupations like the swearing in of the new Cabinet, the name changes which some ministries have undergone and the new ministries that have been created. There has also been some public comment over the number of ministers. (Twenty-six at last count).
The first thing that should be said about the number of ministers in the new Cabinet is that it reflects the number of political parties comprising the APNU coalition and what, one assumes, was felt to be the need to reflect the composition of the coalition at the level of government. That, however, is not the end of the matter. President Granger must anticipate that sooner rather than later his administration will have to tell us more about the particular responsibilities of the new ministries and ministers, otherwise, he runs the risk of charges of a bloated bureaucracy comprising a host of ministers possessing ill-defined portfolios.
Setting aside the continued protestations of the PPP/C it would appear that President Granger has begun his term in office with a fair measure of public goodwill, a currency which, if not managed with a measure of thrift, can disappear quickly. The novelty of newness will be replaced by expectations that elections promises be kept with some measure of alacrity. That is when the rubber will hit the road.
To return briefly to the Cabinet, while all of the criteria for ministerial appointment might not be publicly known, it is assumed that competence is one of those criteria. The last thing we need, therefore, given the President’s promised focus on high standards as a tenet of his administration are ministers whose portfolios are unclear, who are preoccupied with their new-found authority and whose portfolios do not appear to be matched by either their energy or their abilities. One of the things that our new ministers will doubtless find out is that their Cabinet positions do not automatically entitle them to be held in awe by the citizenry as a whole, and that their respective performances will be monitored and assessed fairly and objectively.
Precedent would have heightened the awareness of the populace as a whole regarding the importance of holding their government and its high officials to high standards of governance and accountability. Part of that pursuit will involve the issuance of timely reminders to those officials that they are servants of the people. In this regard one expects, too, that the President will honour his commitment for zero tolerance of corruption, and that the same commitment will apply in equal measure to incompetence among high officials.
A point has been reached where Guyana can no longer afford a continued drift into government that simply takes its authority for granted, with consequences that extend to practices that include the flagrant misuse and abuse of state resources. That is why, unpalatable as it might turn out to be, what is widely believed to have been the corrupt and nepotistic practices that ensued on the watch of the previous administration must be sufficiently thoroughly probed so as to serve as a deterrent in the future.
If the kind of societal transformation which the Granger administration says it anticipated is to be realized, then there is clearly a key role for the media. It would be a mistake for the new government to follows in the footsteps of its predecessor by having the state-run media function simply as a government mouthpiece. The expectation is that those media houses will quickly begin to function to higher standards of objectivity and professionalism and, perhaps more importantly, that there will be continuity to advancing the process of media freedom in Guyana. Frankly, it would make little sense to pay lip service to the virtues of good governance and accountability if free, independent and professional media are not treated as a prerequisite to the realization of those virtues.
