The security forces need ethnic balance

Dear Editor,

A critic of one of my letters raised an issue that is of paramount importance to this nation. The critic suggested that there should be ethnic balance in the public service and the armed forces. I wholeheartedly agree, provided that such ethnic balance is at all levels within those structures. I would like to focus on the armed forces/police. I see ethnic balance in the armed forces as key to reducing racial voting and ethnic insecurity in Guyana. The majority of Guyanese, meaning the majority of Indians and Amerindians and a significant percentage of Mixed Races tend to vote ethnic security when they vote for the PPP or refuse to vote for the PNC. Africans do the same when they vote for the PNC/APNU. The majority of these voters know of the evils of the PPP but have determined that hollow democracy under the PPP is better to outright dictatorship under the PNC/APNU. Why does this fear of the PNC/APNU persevere among such large swathes of voters? Because many of the denizens of the PNC dictatorship are still in control of the PNC/APNU and because the military machine remains African-dominated. That group of Indians, Amerindians and Mixed Races who vote for ethnic security or anti-PNC security associate the PNC dictatorship of the past with a compliant African-dominated military/police machinery that actively participated in rigging elections, murdering one of this nation’s greatest democracy fighters in Walter Rodney and other dissidents, and engaged in other sickening shenanigans.

There is deep mistrust of the role the African-dominated military machine would play if the PNC/APNU ever won power by some miracle. This is why reform and ethnic balancing of the armed forces is necessary. The PNC/APNU benefits the most from ethnic rebalancing of the armed forces since the reduced fear of the army and of its ability to wholly support the PNC/APNU out of ethnic allegiance would reduce ethnic fear of the PNC/APNU by the bulk of the population. An ethnically rebalanced armed forces would encourage the majority of voters to contemplate voting outside of race or ethnic security and to even consider the reformed PNC/APNU as a political option. More than any other party, the PNC/APNU needs crossover ethnic votes because it is the most rigidly ethnocentric party in terms of its support, which comes overwhelmingly from Africans and hardly anywhere else. For these reasons, the PNC/APNU must push an agenda of ethnic rebalancing of the armed forces/police or it will forever remain an onlooker in the political process. Beyond the political reasons, ethnic balance in the armed forces/police is good for the image of these bodies, the wiping away of the deep mistrust surrounding them by the majority of the society and their acceptance by the general populace.

Unless the PNC/APNU uses this current combined opposition-controlled majority in Parliament to fashion dramatic changes in this country to reduce ethnic voting, it will forever be stuck in its first runner-up role for a long time. The lessening of political and electoral ethnic fear is key to the advance of democracy in Guyana. The party that will benefit most from a reduction of ethnic insecurity is the PNC/APNU. However, all this talk about ethnic rebalancing of the armed forces is moot if the current apathy practised by Indians, Amerindians and Mixed Races with regard to joining the armed forces continues. These groups must confront their fears by doing something about it. Doing something about it means joining the armed forces. What Guyana needs is a leaner, smaller and more efficient military that plays an active role in reconstruction and disaster response. Shrink the military, ethnically rebalance it, decentralise military power by creating three fairly autonomous army and police divisions in each county (Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo) under a Joint Chiefs of Staff arrangement, create an army corps of engineers, allow the army to fund scholarships, fund a research division, pay soldiers better and arm them better. Ethnic rebalancing must either be an antecedent to or be tied to these changes. These changes will make the military appealing to all races.

The army and police are still answerable to the government of the day and the PPP has been the government of the day for 19 years now. I am a firm believer in ethnic balance in every aspect of our society. The police and army are always understaffed by approximately two to three thousand members. That is the reality facing this nation. Ethnic security cannot only be claimed, demanded and brandished without action. Forbes Burnham would have never been able to impose tyranny upon this nation if the armed forces/police had been ethnically balanced, sufficiently decentralized and out of the reach of political manipulation. David Granger who played a key role in the politicisation of the army under Burnham could attest to that fact. Similarly, a man like Walter Rodney could have become President of a democratic Guyana if there was ethnic balance in the armed forces reducing ethnic insecurity and fostering cross-ethnic voting and Indians would have voted for the PNC and Africans for the PPP and Mixed Races and Amerindians freely for both. Dictatorship cannot operate without force and might. The armed forces/police has been the might of the PNC’s unelected dictatorship and the PPP’s elected dictatorship. It needs serious reform and rebalancing.

Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell