Political/ethnic dominance: Unsustainable and dangerous

Future Notes

You may recall that, like today with President Ramotar and Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, when the latter took the presidency from Ms. Janet Jagan in 1999, there was much talk of his being Ms. Jagan’s man and optimists opined that once he won his own presidency in 2001 we would see a different policy orientation. Yet all hopes were dashed as the policy orientation of the earlier Jagdeo period became even more entrenched.

Almost every political act in Guyana could be conceived in racial terms and this occurred even during the Cheddi Jagan 1992-1997 regime. Yet, in my view, Ms. Jagan came to her presidency with good intentions: intending to do all she possibly could for all Guyana’s peoples. However, the weight of history, real or perceived, was too heavy and the difficulties she confronted were insurmountable: after all, to many, even in her party, she represented the problem!

In the PPP itself, there were those who balked at her claim that, on his death bed, Cheddi Jagan bequeathed the presidency to her, and if they did not directly help to set the fire, they certainly helped to fan the flames that engulfed her presidency. Furthermore, nothing occurred in the intervening Jagdeo period to convince her that a change of heart might have been necessary after 2001: quite the contrary.

future notesBefore the 1997 elections the two parties agreed that voters could use their normal ID cards to cast their ballots, yet after the elections, the “demonic” PNC moved to the courts, claiming that the elections were rigged and thus null and void. The decision emanating from this process in early 2001 might have floored a person of less resolve. The court concluded that the elections were not rigged but vitiated Ms. Jagan’s presidency on the ground that it was illegal for the parties to have colluded in requiring voters to have to show their normal ID cards before casting their ballots.

If anything, this decision gave greater fillip to the PNC protest and after the 2001 elections, which it clearly lost, the party took to the streets again and boycotted parliament. But the worst was yet to come: the February (Mash Day) 2002 jail break led to a killing spree which the security forces were clearly incapable of dealing with and which compromised the major political parties caught in association with this illegality. There was an obvious mingling of politics and crime. So much so that in May 2002, in continuation of a discussion series I was doing on Establishing Normal Politics in Guyana, I wrote a piece “Normal Politics: Breaking the Link between Crime and Politics”, in which I argued that “Maybe the most important problem facing the nation today is the coalescence of crime and politics.” I went on to argue that there appeared to be a toxic intermix of normal crime with civil rights violations, extra-judicial and political killings and criminal subversion of the state.

From a long-term developmental perspective, this dangerous environment required greater political compromise: the normal state arrangements could not contain the strains of a bi-communal society. But the PPP would have none of it. Thus, in much frustration, in 2004, President Jimmy Carter left Guyana with the following words:

“Jagdeo is an intelligent and capable leader, but he takes full advantage of the ancient “winner take all” system in Guyana. Following my meeting with him, I was very doubtful that his political party (PPP) would commence new dialogue with the PNC, be willing to make any substantive moves to implement the National Development Strategy, share political authority with other parties, or permit members of parliament to be elected by their own constituencies instead of being chosen from a party list on a proportional basis.”

The truth is that the PPP did not belong to President Jagdeo and that the major player, Ms. Janet Jagan, was not intent upon compromise. She was at the other end of the management continuum: dominance!

President Carter’s statement is important in another way. It is a clear indication that the dash for dominance was not a natural or necessary outcrop of the situations occurring at the time, for the statement contains elements of an alternative vision. Going for dominance was a policy choice very much in keeping with the mindset of the PPP leadership and particularly of Ms Jagan.

Some would therefore lay blame for the disastrous road our politics has taken at the feet of the PPP for not wishing to compromise. Of course, the PPP would claim that it was the legitimate government and had all right to resist being bullied into what could well have turned out to be an unsustainable compromise that would have effectively seen it losing power.

President Carter only became involved in Guyanese politics in the 1980s; he did not have to go through the decades of perceived abuse Ms. Jagan and her PPP had to face. Further, his intellectual trappings and vision were of another, perhaps far more advanced, place and time to those who held power in Guyana. In the social world, so-called “objective” assessments and recommendations are even more socially constructed.

As of now, it may appear that the Janet Jagan vision has won the day, but in our kind of ethnic setting, dominance is unsustainable. I concluded last week that it is incompatible with the nurturing of an inclusive democracy. Specifically and less importantly, for the PPP, the methods necessary for the establishment of dominance are incompatible with the humanist, anti-racial, socialist, ideological outlook of Cheddi Jagan, which the party loves to project, and this explains why heavy weather is made trying to differentiate the Jagans from the Jagdeo regime.

But much more importantly, since the timely establishment of dominance must entail the realignment of state resources in favour of one’s supporters, it must lead to enhanced levels of “corruption” and engender moral revulsion and loss of support, even among traditional supporters.  Finally, political dominance in Guyana becomes racial dominance with the latter’s inherent levels of instability. Success requires the actual subversion of opposition leaders, organisations, etc. and history is quite clear: sooner or later the adversely affected communities come to recognise what is taking place and find new leaders and ways to, at least, reverse the balance. Those attempts, i.e., the roads to rebalancing, are usually hard and dangerous for the entire society.

henryjeffrey@yahoo.com