It is good that more people, including letter writers and bloggers, are demanding that those who are calling for the formation of a national unity government give more details of what it is they intend. Indeed, it is astonishing that after nearly three years as the official opposition, APNU, which has been the main proposer of this kind of arrangement, has not yet been able to explore with the public how such an arrangement is intended to work. It is as if the party holds the simplistic and dangerous view that the terms “national unity” or “shared governance” speak for themselves.
Last week I promised to complete my consideration of some of the more recent suggestions and critiques of the current power-sharing discourse. Today, I want to consider a few of the thoughts provided by former speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Ralph Ramkarran, and, by extension, Mr Vishnu Bisram who strongly supported his suggestions.
I have argued before (“Where liberal voices are muted greater atrocities result” SN: 04/07/2004) that Mr Ramkarran had been one of the liberal voices in the PPP and continues to be so publicly now he is out of the party. That commitment to social change, coupled with his experience in government and law, means that his contribution is well worth considering.
Mr Ramkarran and I are agreed on the need for the sharing of executive power in Guyana. However, I believe that notwithstanding his open mindedness, like so many others, he is being too casual about the possible negative consequences of shared governance.
I argued two weeks ago that “Given the nature of our society and our constitutional history, our goal demands that we seek to establish national governance arrangements that are ethnically as inclusive as possible and that those arrangements are constructed to prevent governments from remaining in power for long periods of time.” It was brought to my attention that in our ethnic condition these are contradictory goals and that our task must also be to establish institutions and an environment that will mitigate the effect of longevity in government and simultaneously create conditions for its ultimate demise ie,
