Dear Editor,
Emile Mervin (‘After sixteen years the government still has not revealed a long-term economic plan’ SN, 29.5.09) requested that I comment on: “whether it was not practical and possible for the government to do a double-barrelled approach to dealing with our struggling economy by tackling both debt relief and a major economic recovery and development plan that allowed for the constructive exploitation of our natural resources.” I take it that underlying Mr Mervin’s concern about planning is a belief that having such a plan is of the utmost importance and that there are favourable conditions for its successful implementation. In our context, I question both of these assumptions. Firstly, let me deal with the notion that a written national plan is of vital importance to Guyana’s development.
It is always good to have an explicit national plan that at least can help to integrate and focus national efforts. However, we should not forget that Burnham had more than one written “development plan” while Desmond Hoyte had none. Yet, Hoyte’s tenure and its legacy represents one of the most economically buoyant periods in recent Guyanese history. Of course, Hoyte had a plan similar to what presently exists; one devised in collaboration with the international financial institutions (IFIs) and of which they have remained the gatekeepers. On the question of planning itself, it is also useful to note that the first efforts at a ‘National Deve-lopment Strategy’ (NDS) began with Cheddi Jagan and that it was usual to attempt to locate the plans of the various ministries within NDS and IFIs’ “Poverty Reduction Strategy.” The reason I question the assumption that favourable conditions exist for the successful implementation of a national plan is somewhat more complicated.
Guyana is an ethnically heterogeneous society caught in the spiral of competitive politics. As a group, such countries were far poorer in 1990 than ethnically homogeneous countries and achieved a much lower growth rate of real per capita income in 1965-90. Ethnically heterogeneous countries were under-represented among the fastest growing countries and over-represented among the countries that were unable to raise per capita income between 1965 and 1990 (Ronald R Snodgrass (1995) Successful Economic Development in a Multi-Ethnic Society: The Malaysian Case).
The problems facing these countries have long been recognised. In 1861, John Stuart Mill, the eminent British philosopher of political liberty, argued that: “free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities” (Of Nationality as connected with Representative Government). And, believe it or not, this was, more or less, the conventional wisdom right into the 1970s. As late as 1982, G. Bingham Powell, “… found a positive relationship between ethnic fractionalization and government instability, with greater levels of instability correlated with higher levels of ethnic fractionalization.” In its 1998 report, Freedom House, the private United States foundation, stated that “countries without a predominant ethnic majority are less successful in establishing open and democratic societies than ethnically homogeneous countries,” and that “monoethnic countries are twice as likely to be ranked ‘free’ as are multiethnic ones.”
As if this were not enough, Guyana is in a category considered “bicommunal states” (states in which there are two principal groups, comprising about three-quarters of the population and exhibiting significant social separation) and social relationships within these are considered even more problematical (See David E Schmitt (1991) Problems of Accommodation in Bicommunal Societies). Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle argued that these states are as they are because their political leaders seek to gain support by “outbidding” each other on ethnic issues. Ethnic identities are important in multiethnic societies and in a competitive “winner-take-all” situation, “ethnic entrepreneurs” use them for voter mobilisation, thus giving rise to alienation and violence. ((1972) Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability).
Guyana fits well within the above framework. Once the British had signalled their intention to leave, the struggle for power between the major ethnic groups began. Writing in 1965, Ernst Halperin (Racism and Communism in British Guiana) stated that: “Most of the Guianese with whom we spoke during our stay in the country insisted that tension between the Negroes and the East Indians was a very new phenomenon, and that up to the early 1950’s the two races had lived together in harmony.” The Report of the British Guiana Constitutional Commission 1950-51 (Waddington Report) observed that: “race is a patent difference and is a powerful slogan ready to the hand of unscrupulous men who can use it as a stepping stone to political power.” And, a few years later, the Report of the British Guiana Constitutional Commission 1954 (Robertson Report) was extremely gloomy: “We do not altogether share the confidence of the Waddington Commission that a comprehensive loyalty to British Guiana can be stimulated among peoples of such diverse origins.”
Halperin claimed that apolitical Guianese tended to blame politicians for the racial tension. “Spokesmen of the Negro ‘People’s National Congress’ (PNC) consistently put the blame on the rival PPP, while PPP spokesmen blamed the PNC.” However, he concluded that: “The root causes of racial tension undoubtedly lie far deeper; they are not to be found in the… the unscrupulous imaginations of local politicians, or in a real or in imagined partiality on the part of the British rulers.” The burden of the evidence indicates that the cause of the problem of these societies rests not, as we are often told, in the machinations of unscrupulous leaders but in the very nature of the specific type of multiethnic communities. So, as Mills suggested, are these societies more or less doomed?
Apparently not, as Schmitt provided some solace: “Despite the apparent difficulties faced by societies dominated by two main ethnic groups, it should not be assumed that they are inevitably ungovernable… To the extent that Malaysia can be considered the practical equivalent of a bicommunal society, the post-independence history of that country also suggests the possibility of developing coalitions in Third-World settings.” Generally speaking, nowadays the environment is not as pessimistic and there is now “an emerging scholarly orthodoxy concerning the importance of political engineering and institutional design.” Thus, Benjamin Reilly ((2001) Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management) argued that “divisive zero-sum outcomes are not an inevitable characteristic of politics in divided societies, but often a reaction to the institutional ‘rules of the game’ under which the democratic competition of the electoral process takes place. Changes to these institutional rules – for example, by the introduction of electoral systems which facilitate cross-communal communication, bargaining and interdependence between rival politicians and the groups they represent – can have a major impact on the promotion of moderate politics, and thus on prospects for democracy, in divided societies.”
The dilemma is that in the process of democratic participation, the objective reality of an ethnically divided society such as ours gives rise to forces that are essentially counter-democratic. In this context, it is extremely optimistic to believe that it is mainly the malevolence of individuals, the PPP or the PNC or the lack of a national economic plan and strategy that has kept us in poverty.
I know of no politician who wants our roads, schools, hospitals, education, crime prevention, general administration and all else to be underfunded and in disrepair. If our leaders, and indeed many of us, are to be blamed, it is for either not truly comprehending the context in which we find ourselves or having done so, not having the political will to make the necessary changes.
Yours faithfully,
Henry B Jeffrey
