Building a healthy democracy

In this Information Age where knowledge ranks as the top traded commodity in the global village, our society seems deformed and dysfunctional. For we lack access to sensible, intelligent conversations that contribute to the national debate about the challenges we face as a nation.

With one radio station under inept state control, with a taxpayer-funded national newspaper that scorns the ethics of professional journalism, with local TV programming of the poorest quality of production, the society is caught in the vice of an information drought.

Ideas, opinions and sensible commentaries contribute solutions to problems. We see the value of information sharing in democratic societies around the world. In the act of national conversations and discussions, solutions emerge.

Free and fair elections plant democracy as a pleasant oasis, but it is the free flow of information that nurtures and cultivates that plant into a fruitful society of citizens.

Democracy stands on the three pillars of free and fair elections, a free flow of information across the society, including access to state documents within national security concerns, and a citizenry engaged and ready to discuss issues with each other, sensibly and respectfully.

The platform for such national conversations comes in the form of a national mass media institution.

Our society fails year after year to use the natural resource of the radio waves to foster intelligent, sensible conversations. The air waves become useless to citizens because of government control.

The Stabroek News stands out, for nearly 25 years now, as the independent, professional platform for a sensible national conversation. This newspaper played a defining role in winning the fight for free and fair elections in 1992. It continues the fight to open up the society to a free and fair exchange of information.

In Parliament lies two documents that would erase this problem overnight. The Freedom of Information Bill drafted by leader of the Alliance For Change, Member of Parliament Raphael Trotman, and the Broadcast Bill drafted by his colleague, Member of Parliament Khemraj Ramjattan.

These laws, by seasoned lawyers who freely contributed their time and expertise to the national democratic process, would breathe fresh life into our democracy. But government slams the door on any movement forward. Why?

Instead of a magnanimous gesture of reaching out, the government labels Trotman and Ramjattan, and strangely enough the Stabroek News as well, as “anti-government”.

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, who sits as the government’s overseer in Parliament – albeit powerless in the face of an Executive President who meets with his Cabinet rather than his Parliament –  must take responsibility for the tattered state of our democracy, after 18 years as Prime Minister.

The nation turns 41 years old as a Co-operative Republic, and we still only have one radio station, with the state-sponsored TV station and the state-controlled newspaper, the Chronicle, a severe national embarrassment.

Government is quick to label these discussions as “anti-government”, without offering a reason for its alarming sloth in reforming the national state-owned media outfit.

Coupled with the lack of local government elections for 17 years, this lopsided approach to a democratic culture, which seems to benefit mostly the party in power, seems draconian.
The People’s Progressive Party/Civic promised a wholesale reform and overhaul of the 1980 constitution, forced into law by ex-President Forbes Burnham and internationally condemned as a dictatorial document.

Although this government made cosmetic reforms such as deleting the prospect of a “president for life”  and replacing it with a two-term limit, we have a freely, fairly elected government governing us under a constitution that tends to dictatorial rule.

Knowledge, information, ideas, opinions empower the citizen. Any citizen should have a platform as a human right to air his or her view, within the boundaries of sensible, respectful ethical discourse.

Of course we have tabloid-style newspaper reporting and commentaries in certain sections of the press, and on some unprofessional TV stations. This does not pass for national debate, for much of it descends into personal vendetta and unprofessional attacks with a vengeful agenda.

Government must cultivate the society into a place where sensible, respectful conversations flow out of a genuine, authentic concern for the nation.

We want to see experts debating and discussing the flooding that swamps Georgetown. We want to see organized crime discussed nationally. We want to see debates about climate change. And so many more.

The stain of chronic poverty, the disgrace of embedded state and private sector corruption, and the threat of organized crime must be freely and fairly discussed in a national conversation about the state of the society’s body politic.

It is shameful for Prime Minister Sam Hinds, Manzoor Nadir, NK Gopaul, Leslie Ramsammy, Frank Anthony, Priya Manickchand and other Ministers to preside over such a dilapidated democratic structure without raising their voices against this deteriorated state of affairs.

At one time, many of these leaders expressed vehement opposition to the “Burnham constitution” and the “state control of the media”. Have they changed their views? For exactly the same thing is going on now, under their governance. The government abuse of the state media continues. The government monopoly on the radio waves continues.

We expect sensible people to act sensibly. When respected sons and daughters of the land allow themselves to tolerate injustice and dictatorial state behaviour, we must let them know that we are disappointed in their compromising weakness, of poor leadership character.

In this 21st century global village, information flow is crucial as the lifeblood of society’s socio-cultural ecosystem. Information flow constitutes the vital organ of a democratic society. Information flow empowers the citizen to engage his or her full human resource potential in the process of governing the land.

Governments are not omnipotent in knowing what is best for society. Government today works in partnership with experts in the society to come up with solutions. Many of these experts serve their society as a contribution, offering ideas, opinions and commentaries that guide forward advancement, a la Clive Thomas.

A free and fair flow of information is crucial for our society.

In an excellent book written by New York Times columnist Randall Stross, called “Planet Google”, we see the value of information to our world today.

Stross details Google’s drive to “organize everything we know” as information accessible for free to anyone anywhere in the world. How could the Government of Guyana think otherwise, shunning information flow?

Our society seems lost in the 21st century wilderness compared to the world Stross discovered in Google’s vision.

“The web was conceived as an alternative to closed communications systems. It was built as an open medium – open to anyone to publish or read, designed not only to make information easy to access, but also to make tracing the origin of an idea easy…. No geographic boundaries, no fences … nothing to impede … information that was both useful and free, wherever it happened to be, anywhere in the world”.

What Google is building is the most healthy society: where free and fair information flow becomes the backbone of building the society. In this vision is the health of our democracy.

This columnist can be contacted at  beingshaun@gmail.com