Interference or fair game?

Senator Ted Kennedy’s passing last month occasioned introspection and reflection on the role that he and other influential American legislators played in the staging of free and fair elections here in 1992. They had been lobbied unremittingly by groups of Guyanese residents in the US and political parties in Georgetown.  Mr Kennedy urged Hoyte in March of 1990 to ensure the coming elections were “free and fair.” Kennedy’s statement said that though there had been progress in human rights “the problem of unfair elections in the past has created a lack of confidence in the electoral process which has resulted in a mass exodus of many of Guyana’s skilled and educated citizens.” Interestingly and still of great relevance in present day Guyana, Kennedy also expressed hope that candidates will have “reasonable access to the media, including the radio stations controlled by the government.” PPP Leader Dr Jagan in response hailed the statement as “very, very, important” and then went on to urge that other senators and the Carter Center get involved.

Much of the impact of Mr Kennedy’s work was felt via the lobbying of other influential congressmen and senators for pressure to be brought on the Hoyte administration and also in decision-making on whether aid would be provided to the government here. All of this filtered into the upper echelons of the US administration. Perhaps, the piece de resistance was the congratulatory cable to Mr Hoyte from President Bush, also in March 1990, in which he quite brusquely expressed the wish that the then upcoming elections would be free and fair. That set the cat among the pigeons and in Georgetown there was great exultation when the message first appeared in print in the Catholic Standard. It was clear then that there was an inevitability about the process leading to fair elections. In the words of the PPP it was “the most dramatic comment yet by the USA on the electoral process in Guyana.”

Many of these interventions limited the ability of the Hoyte administration to circumnavigate the albatross of rigged elections and to represent Guyana adequately in important fora. They also neutralised ground-breaking initiatives such as the Iwokrama rainforest project which had been announced a year earlier in Malaysia. Of course, the most potent intervention came from former President Carter who wrested from Mr Hoyte key reforms such as revamping the elections commission and counting ballots at the place of the poll. President Carter was to play another crucial role when he managed to convince Mr Hoyte on the evening of October 5, 1992 that he had lost the elections and that steps should be taken to restore order in Georgetown which had been terrorized by marauding gangs and had earlier in the day witnessed the siege of the Elections Commission which the police force shockingly allowed.

It is important to remember these interventions, as without them the road that the PPP, WPA and other opposition parties faced would have been a lot harder. There were many hardliners in the PNC totally opposed to any electoral reforms – some are still around – so Mr Hoyte was in a very difficult spot and had to calculate very carefully when and how to concede ground.  The PNC had implacably rejected approaches from the opposition alliance, the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy – cleverly demanding the name of its leader before first engaging it – and the internal tensions in the alliance, ideological extremes and programmatic differences made the task of pressurizing the PNC more difficult.  So had it not been for the voices of Messrs Kennedy, Richard Lugar et al the pathway would have been even more difficult.

It brings us back now to the present. Should a government be immune to this type of intervention simply because it is democratically elected? The answer is, of course, a resounding no. We exist within a community of nations with a shared set of values that straddle respect for fundamental human rights, good governance and a range of other ties that bind. This shared responsibility is manifested in our presence in a multitude of organizations to which we reach out in times of crisis. Indeed, the community we identified with the most – Caricom – assisted in the aftermath of the controversial 1997 elections, particularly in relation to the audit bureau that was set up, and then in facilitating the St Lucia Statement on the stalled Herdmanston Accord.  Electoral democracy is a seminal aspect of the commonalities we share with Caricom. It legitimizes governments and sets the course. That is all. The other attributes of just governance are not automatically derived from free and fair elections. They have to be nurtured in a variety of ways – three important elements being a distinct separation of powers, the proliferation of institutional checks and an absolute commitment to the rule of law. It can be easily argued here that several of these and other important areas of governance are at extreme risk and that the government is single-mindedly inflexible when it comes to conceding any ground to other groups in society, especially where this could put the administration and the ruling party at a disadvantage. Under these circumstances and where an entrenched majoritarian form of government prevails, it is clearly in the interest of the people that international help in the form of pressure, aid conditionalities and exposure of the administration in international human rights fora be among the repertoire of measures available to groups here and their allies overseas.

There were two recent instances where the government balked at what it saw as undue interference by friendly countries. The Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Luncheon got quite worked up about British complaints about the pace of security reforms which the government itself had solicited from the UK, but which reforms it doesn’t seem interested in any more. There will be nary a Guyanese who doesn’t welcome the UK assistance and who wouldn’t have urged the government to take full advantage of it, even if it meant loosening its controls on the police force and having foreign law enforcers take up key positions here.

The other example was the Presidential Advisor on Governance, Ms Teixeira’s outburst against the considered and thoughtful letter by the ABC countries plus the EU – the very ones who spearheaded efforts for fair elections in 1992 – on the local government reform laws being presented to Parliament. There were several essential points raised in the letter including concerns about ministerial powers and the composition of the Local Government Commission. The latter issue brilliantly sets out how far the PPP/C has departed from its pre-’92 outlook. The PPP/C bill proposed that of the six members of the commission, three be appointed by the President, two be appointed by the President after consultation with the Opposition Leader and the sixth by the local government minister after consultation with local democratic organs – essentially all six were being picked by the President. Now, how in tarnation will the opposition have confidence in a body dominated by the ruling party given the legendary inflexibility of the PPP/C? Is this the same PPP that had so militantly lobbied against the Bollers Commission which the PNC controlled by naming two out of the three members? Had the PPP/C been really sensitive to the pre-’92 concerns about the commission and that fairness and balance were very important to the local government system, it would not have been so cavalier and small-minded about proposing this formula. As currently constructed it is far worse than the hotly-debated Bollers formula from 1992.

The same dilemma confronts the nation in relation to the Roger Khan saga. No matter what reasoned position is presented for there to be an impartial probe of his rampage here and his possible links to the government, these will be denied and rejected as an insufficient case for investigation. The government is now faced with a document inscribed with the alleged signature of Minister Ramsammy in relation to the purchase of spy equipment. Yet it continues to bob and weave, although with the unmistakable gait of a punch-drunk boxer who has had enough. The longer the government denies reasonable compromises, reasonable expectations and reasonable responses the more it forces the opposition to lobby internationally for pressure to be brought on this administration, for aid to be withheld and for moves to be taken in international human rights fora against those who have been accused of human rights abuses.