President Ramotar: the absence of ‘practical reason’

Commenting on the situation at the University of Guyana on its 50th anniversary, President Donald Ramotar has been reported as stating the following: “We might have different ideas, but for Christ’s sake don’t let the different ideas paralyze us. Let’s try them, one at a time. Life will tell us who is right and who is wrong and we must be bold enough to make changes when we have made mistakes. Too much of politics was reflected at the university that held it back, and (this) is still happening.” He was also reported as stating that the university is going in the right direction but habits need to change: “More emphasis should be placed on developing academic work, and university professors must give their marks to students earlier.” Furthermore, “We must be bold enough to make changes when we make mistakes.”

20131009henryAs an attempt to define, describe or explain conditions at the university, this statement is so full of misconceptions that it requires some comment so that in future the president will know that if he wishes to influence us he will have to be much more consistent and forthcoming.

Firstly, the president claimed that we should not allow our different ideas to paralyse us. I am certain that as an avowed socialist of the Marxist tradition who still avidly reads Marxist literature, the president knows that people are not paralysed by the mere existence of different conditions or ideas. Indeed, the existence of different ideas is the stuff of human progress. The paralysis is brought about by the absence or inadequacy of the institutional mechanisms to resolve conflicts, which may have the extreme result of a revolution, which will change existing relationships forever.

His statement also implied that there are fundamentally divergent views among stakeholders about how the university should be operated. Yet nowhere did he take the time to aid the process of resolution by indicating what he understands these contradictory views to be and/or who are the individuals or groups that hold these views. While there may be much disagreement with his view  that the university is going in the right direction there will be absolutely no quarrel with the contention that university people, lecturers included, must do their work in a timely fashion.

Indeed, I am not aware of significant divergent views concerning the management of the university. If anything, there is an across-the-board consensus at the policy level. For example, there is general agreement that the quality of university education needs to be improved and its offerings rationalised; that it should be financed by a mix of funding arrangements, with government funding at this stage playing the major role; that the management of the university needs to be improved; that remuneration, particularly to attract teaching and top management staff, is necessary and that all of this will not happen overnight.

Given this almost universal convergence of views of what should take place at the university, upon reading what the president had to say, it appeared to me that he had something of a thought transference.  His words appear better related to the Amaila debacle than to the university. There we saw some fundamental policy differences played out and what the government thought was a good project has been thwarted.

The problem is that the president and his party became a minority after the last election yet still believe that they can hold on to the authoritarian elements of the Westminster majoritarian system. His government has not established any sensible mechanisms to reconcile conflicting ideas in this new dispensation. Once the new parliamentary dispensation is recognised, the government should change its approach and put the entire idea of hydroelectricity back on the table.  Unfortunately, the regime has still not properly assessed its changed circumstances and continues to believe that somehow it will be able browbeat the opposition into accepting Amaila.

I agree with the president that “Life will tell us who is right and who is wrong and we must be bold enough to make changes when we have made mistakes.” But here I encourage that he take note of Keynes’ contention that in the long run we are all dead and of the fact that life’s judgment is more likely to be negative when we eschew proper immediate reflection.

This kind of regime behaviour suggests the absence of what the well-known philosopher Isaiah Berlin, possibly using a political capacity identified by Aristotle some two and a half thousand years previously, called “practical reasoning”, or the capacity to know what will or will not work.

As Berlin puts it, “Practical reason … is a capacity for synthesis rather than analysis, for knowledge in the sense in which trainers know their animals, or parents their children, or conductors their orchestras, as opposed to that in which chemists know the contents of their test tubes, or mathematicians know the rules that their symbols obey. Those who lack this (quality of practical wisdom), whatever other qualities they may possess, no matter how clever, learned, imaginative, kind, noble, attractive, gifted in other ways they may be, are correctly regarded as politically inept.”

This charitable interpretation is however rejected by many who believe that the president was simply being disingenuous: complaining about the existence of micro-managerial problems which require adequate funding to be resolved but not being prepared to immediately provide the necessary resources. This approach, they contend, has been the stock in trade of the regime when it intends is to frustrate the proper functioning of any institution, be it the university or the Georgetown City Council.

It is true that the amount of politicking that has been a standard feature of the university government has and is still preventing its optimal development. The PNC thought that left to itself, the university would have become a challenge to its autocratic rule and so tried to control it. Of course, at that time the PPP was among the most vociferous supporters of academic freedom!

Today, the PPP, believing that political/ethnic dominance is the best means of managing our bi-communal society, seeks to close all the gaps to possible ethnic/political resurgence. The political actors and their fears may have changed but the result for the university is the same!

henryjeffrey@yahoo.com