By Dr. Mellissa Ifill
This article is the first in a two-part series that examines the transition from the private to the public model of accumulation during the immediate post independence period. It explores the reasons behind the changes implemented and the new features of Guyana’s political economy and notes that despite this transition, there was the maintenance of an ethnically divided labour force. The socialist oriented redistributive model implemented from the early 1970s not only failed to protect the local economy from the ravages of a global economic downturn but, along with authoritarian governance structures, further solidified the ethnic division of labour and fostered ethnic contestation and conflict.
Although the acquisition of universal suffrage in 1953 was an important accomplishment, this individualised marker of democracy could not address the specific group ethno/cultural identification that characterised political identification and participation in Guyana, especially after the PPP split in the mid 1950s and the ethnic riots in the 1960s, as thereafter, the connection between political parties and ethnicity became concretised.
For a number of reasons, the great difficulties that the post independence coalition government quickly encountered were not unexpected, as its foundation was brittle. The coalition government of Burnham’s PNC and D’Aguiar’s UF, despite their ideological differences, initially seemed committed to the private model of accumulation and implemented the model based on domestic expansion and import substituting industrialisation (ISI). This model, which was embraced and promoted by the capitalist D’Aguiar, was adopted throughout the Caribbean region, and was popularised by the regional economist Sir Arthur Lewis. This accumulation model however was not fully implemented in Guyana as the UF became subsumed by and ultimately unnecessary to the PNC after independence. Burnham, who espoused the socialist ideology sought to erode the restrictions imposed by an alliance with a conservative capitalist partner. In addition, his ethnic followers expected political partiality in policy along with patronage and this was hard to satisfy when inhibited by a coalition partner. Ultimately, the UF’s backing became less necessary as Burnham effectively ethnically controlled two key sectors – the public sector and the security forces. Burnham used his control of the administrative structure to embark on the practice of manipulating the elections beginning in 1968, when he engineered a parliamentary majority for the PNC in an election which was characterised by most independent observers as fraudulent.
Guyana’s experience with democracy immediately after independence is hardly unique. As in virtually all other newly independent states who acquired independence through non-violent confrontation with the colonial power, the liberal democratic institutions adopted in Guyana were not locally determined but the withdrawing ex-colonial power decided what systems ought to be implemented prior to granting independence. Not unexpectedly, these democratic institutions soon disintegrated. In the case of Guyana, liberal democracy did not answer the question how to ensure access and participation for all ethnic groups and appeared certain to fail even before its implementation. The leaders of the two major political parties/groups disagreed on the type of democratic structure that an independent Guyana ought to adopt since each wished a structure that favoured its ethnic group. The failure of liberal democratic experiments in developing countries like Guyana demonstrated the problems associated with maintaining democracy in ethnically polarised and economically underdeveloped states or in states without adequate social and economic reforms that could assuage the negatives of capitalism. Elites in newly independent states generally had sufficient power to deny comprehensive democratic and social changes. In fact, the failure of democracy in the developing world during the 1960s and 1970s was so widespread that many analysts expressed the opinion that liberal democracy seemed inapplicable to all but core capitalist states.
The adoption of cooperative socialism in the Guyanese state from the early 1970s as the private led development model was abandoned did not result in the stated intention of undermining the structures of capitalism that had generated an export orientation that reinforced an ethnicised labour force. On the contrary, as Clive Thomas argued, this replacement simply substituted the European elite with the African middle class elite under a state capitalist structure. Additionally, the adoption of the public led model maintained ethnic contestation through the application of exclusionary and discriminatory practices.
The Burnham government enunciated the socialist ideology at the beginning of 1970 that transformed and guided the social philosophy, policies and programmes implemented over the next 15 years. In essence, Burnham was impeding private capital in the domestic economy and thereby betraying the implied condition behind the American and British orchestrated constitutional changes that led to him acquiring political power. Tabled on 22nd December 1969, the 1970 Budget proposals presented strategies for a new direction in national policy. The budget revealed the new and diminished role for the private sector in the domestic economy and detailed proposals for the creation of a profitable co-operative sector. The government’s adherence to the co-operative ideology was signalled more clearly by the country’s name change to the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, after a constitutional transition to Republican status on February 23, 1970.
Even Burnham’s arch rival Cheddi Jagan initially validated the constitutional changes by supporting and participating in the festivities. The history and evolution of the PPP and its affiliated trade union GAWU, with both institutions being inspired by the Marxist-Leninist ideology, meant that they embraced socialist-inspired policies although they might have rejected the party implementing them.
Though unconvinced of the PNC’s sincerity, the PPP in 1975 nonetheless proclaimed a policy of ‘critical support’ for the PNC administration in view of the ‘radical turn’ taken by the regime. This stance contrasted sharply with its position after the 1973 elections, when it launched a programme of ‘passive resistance and civil disobedience’. The PPP’s new stance was in response to the 1975 Havana Declaration which advocated that local socialist interests adopt a new united strategy so as to facilitate socialist transformation locally and better resist coercive strategies from the capitalist west.
Indeed, an effort to mend the political and ethnic divide was made during the early 1970s when the PNC and the PPP negotiated an agreement termed the Burnham-Jagan peace plan. The latter was intended to promote national reconciliation and unity which were deemed crucial for social and economic progress. This peace plan was created in the circumstance where opposition support was needed by the PNC to revise the constitution before DEMBA could be nationalised. However, the PNC and the PPP were unable to agree on a number of issues including the election of a president for the new Co-operative Republic. The two parties were also unable to agree how the details of the peace plan should be implemented, thus destroying the prospect for a new ethno/political order.
However, even when the PPP disagreed with certain aspects of the PNC’s policies and programmes, it still meant that the only effective opposition confronting the PNC was oriented towards the left of the political scale as by this time the UF, the lone capitalist political force ideologically opposed to these developments, was unsuccessful in galvanising support. In the early days of the PNC/UF alliance, the UF held executive and legislative power greater than its true strength in the government, with the party leader, Peter D’Aguiar heading the strategic Finance Ministry. However, after D’Aguiar’s resignation in September 1967 due to a combination of ideological discord and dissatisfaction with the lack of consultation between the two alliance partners, coupled with the dubious outright victory of the PNC in the 1968 election, the UF was for all intents and purposes silenced and ineffective.
The declaration of Guyana as a co-operative republic specifically entailed the adoption of four new fundamental features namely: the expansion of state property over the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ through a programme of nationalisation; the national development strategy would be embodied in a programme of feeding, clothing and housing the nation; given a trisectoral national economic programme (private, state, and co-operative), the co-operative sector should be the dominant sector and; as part of ‘socialist doctrine’, the governing party (the PNC) was ‘paramount’ over the state itself and all other parties. The second instalment in this two-part series will critically examine the specifics of these features and the implications of their implementation.
