No matter the depth and breadth of recrimination among the parties that preceded the November 28, 2011 general election, its sobering results offer the rudiments for a transformation of the present adversarial and enervating political environment.
However, the opportunities have to be discerned, nurtured and taken to fruition. They will not be fostered by obstinacy or implacability of the type that the PPP/C campaign manager Mr Robert Persaud exuded on the evening of the declaration of results. When responding to the point that voters had deserted the ruling party in droves, Mr Persaud’s misguided explanation was that voters were simply apathetic or were sure of a PPP/C win and so had therefore not bothered to trek to polling stations to cast a vote for the PPP/C. He said “Perhaps we have become a victim of our own success. When people become comfortable, when people enjoy prosperity, when people witness progress I think that they less have the hunger, perhaps, to turn out for the elections because for them…life has become comfortable and they take things for granted”.
There was no glimmer of recognition at all from Mr Persaud that the exodus of 44,000 voters since 2001 from the PPP is a seismic shift in support and that part of the reason for the desertion is disaffection with the party and in other cases a complete severing of ties to because of its policies and the unsatisfactory handling of major issues such as corruption, crime and the drug fight. It is even more damning in light of the hundreds of millions spent by the ruling party/government on this year’s campaign, the bevy of entertainers hired and pork barrel projects that were intended to lure voters. Mr Persaud was either engaged in superfluous damage control or is completely disengaged from the reality on the ground and the issues that led to voters punishing the party. Either way it is not the type of attitude that creates a salubrious atmosphere for engagement among the three groups in Parliament. It should be noted that former President Jagdeo adopted a similar line on Saturday.
Now that Mr Ramotar has been sworn in as President, it is the convoking of parliament that will provide an authentic forum for the testing of the governing party’s will in a new brand of politics. It is surely aware of the barrenness of attempting to continue with the arrogance and disregard for the views of the opposition exuded in the previous Parliament and which gave grander dimensions to the term rubber stamp. That construct has been dissipated and replaced by a new one which limits the government’s options. Nevertheless there will have to be a respectful engaging among the three groups in parliament in a manner that doesn’t pre-judge any of their positions.
What form this engagement will take is for them to decide as soon as is practicable and underpinned by the mandates from their constituencies. These options potentially range from executive power sharing to business as usual with the government proposing and the opposition opposing.
No matter the type of engagement one thing is certain: all three parties bring to the House a clutch of issues they believe are worthy of being up-fronted. Given the novel situation that has arisen as a result of the elections, there is the inviting prospect that parliament can be restored to its primacy in law-making and as a people’s forum. It is also the expectation that the balance of power, previously heavily weighted in the direction of the Office of the President and Freedom House will swing more significantly towards Brickdam. In our peculiar Westminster hybrid where the head of government is absent from Parliament and not accountable to it, there is the prospect that the three parties can make the House the premier forum for the resolution of their antipathies which over the last 20 years or so have traditionally festered outside the halls of Parliament.
It opens up a range of opportunities including fuller and more robust working of the standing committees of Parliament and more particularly the Parliamentary Management Committee which has had a chequered history in recent parliaments. The PMC is the logical forum for the prioritising and testing of the issues that the parties bring to the table and the reasonableness of their positions. The avoidance of gridlock would be the goal along with the eschewing of the prospect of a defeat of the government and the recourse to costly and divisive elections.
This new reality also provides the opportunity for the testing of Article 13 of the Constitution and deeper involvement of members of the public and civil society in the array of parliamentary committees. Article 13 which says “The Principal objective of the political system of the State is to establish an inclusionary democracy by providing increasing opportunities for the participation of citizens, and their organizations in the management and decision-making processes of the State, with particular emphasis on those areas of decision-making that directly affect their well-being” has been comprehensively ignored by successive PPP/C governments despite the entreaties of political parties and civil society.
Some of these matters had been finely dissected by Sir Michael Davies, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Senior Parliamentary Staff Advisor in his needs assessment report of 2005. He had pinpointed seven problems hampering the National Assembly. These were the lack of independence of the parliament and its management from the control of the Executive; members who are not sufficiently au fait with their role within the parliamentary framework; an Opposition which is angry, frustrated and, therefore, does not grasp the opportunities afforded it by the rules of procedure; standing orders in need of revision; a committee system which is not properly functioning; insufficient qualified staff with ill-defined roles and lack of procedural knowledge and no awareness of the National Assembly’s responsibility to relate with civil society, the private sector and the wider public. There have been developments and improvements in some of these areas of weaknesses but the new configuration of Parliament opens the prospect of deeper and richer reforms which should be grasped by all three groups.
As we noted earlier there are undoubtedly numerous issues which all three groups will present. It is our belief that foremost among these must be the vexed question of local government reforms in preparation for local government elections. This would finally resolve the matter of a fairly composed local government commission and formulae for fiscal transfers from central government to communities and municipalities
The three groups which will be represented in the next Parliament have an obligation to the people to ensure meaningful and fruitful engagement. The nation awaits.
