The Leadership and Democracy (LEAD) project proposed by the United States government has sufficiently broad support among the Guyanese people for the Guyana Government to have second thoughts about it. Some of this support is somewhat belated, e.g. the support of the Private Sector Commission (PSC) came a month after the government’s rejection of the project and only after the latter had stated its intention to discuss its possible continuance with the US Embassy. Rather than suggesting independent action, the PSC support places it more in its traditional role of backstopping the regime’s most recent position.
The popular support of the people themselves is rooted in the general awareness that it is the political system that has largely been responsible for our being the second poorest country in Caricom, with consequent deleterious impacts on education, health and our social issues. The system needs to be urgently fixed and one would have thought that any project that could contribute to the process of construction/reconstruction would have been universally welcomed by all. Of course, in Guyana, where so much is at stake at both the institutional and personal levels, any such assumptions are and have been proven to be naïve.
Obfuscation has become the order of the day, with all kinds of absurdity being bandied about, for example, that the project is somehow forcing constitutional change when we know that changing the constitution in any meaningful manner requires a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, and in some cases even a referendum. It is clear that those who make these kinds of objection want to dictate what it is the people can be allowed to talk about in any democratic discourse. It is beyond me to see how talking about and encouraging objective democratic participation can be anti-national except in a dictatorship, such as exists for example in Syria. It will be interesting to see what kind of useful outcome can possibly result from the discussion between the government and the United States Embassy on the project. But what this episode indicates quite clearly to the Guyanese people, who are facing the brunt of the poverty, crime and general underdevelopment, is that it is not the general interest but the interest of the political leadership of the PPP/C that has become paramount!
The world has changed, but not necessarily to the advantage of failed and fragile states that are hubs of money laundering, migration, trafficking in narcotics and people, etc. All states now have a duty to protect their citizens, and under the threat of institutional or informal sanctions, must show a willingness to accept help to improve their financial, democratic and other institutions. Thus, the regime knows quite well that when it objects to democratic institution- building it is running counter not simply to US policy but to the entire ‘club’ of Western democratic nations: an extremely costly gambit.
The PPP/C came late to the realisation that should LEAD project funds of $300m be expended as programmed, they could negatively affect the party’s electoral fortunes, and now want the project gone. The details of the belated and largely erroneous excuses given by Dr. Roger Luncheon and the latest unenlightening histrionics of Ms. Gail Teixiera have been solidly dealt with by Sara Bharrat (“If we do not question endlessly how will we arrive at the truth?” SN: 15/01/2014) and so will not detain me.
Concretely, the project may not be directly funding political parties, but it has already funded additional incursions into the political process by the likes of Messrs. Ralph Ramkarran and Raphael Trotman, who have spoken of the need for shared governance and other such anti-establishment concerns to enthusiastic and sizable student audiences at the University of Guyana, and this kind of activity is certainly not kosher with the PPP/C.
The party has been in government for over twenty years and has used its own and the state media to good effect. It has become closely associated with abuse of office and its message is overworked and stale. Furthermore, people’s lives have not improved in keeping with our national resources, the promises made to them and thus with their own expectations. As such, anti-regime type messages, particularly when organised by and coming from credible sources, must be nipped in the bud.
Ideologically, the entire emphasis of the democratic approach is to encourage people to eschew racism and vote on issues, and this runs counter to the PPP/C’s fundamental strategy of scaring traditional supporters into staying in their camp. Some PPP/C supporters tend to argue that it is a contradiction to claim in same breath that the party depends on racial voting and that its racial base is now below fifty percent. This is a puerile contention as elections are about actual votes cast and the PPP has always had comparatively better capacity to get its supporters to turn out. This is not to argue that the PPP/C has not been able to garner some significant support among Amerindians, if not among Africans.
But we should not allow our support for the project to negatively affect our longer interest. The regime has invoked state sovereignty to insist that the US Embassy withdraw the project, and we should not simply dismiss this claim, for in it is contained, even in this era of globalisation, much of our basic right to independence and self-government.
State sovereignty has been around for over three hundred years and while it has never been absolute, according to Article 41:1 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, diplomatic representatives “… have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that state.” Only the United Nations Security Council can legally authorise direct state intervention when citizens are not protected from gross violations of their human rights.
So, outside of some specific agreement of which I am not aware, the US Embassy has no right to implement the LEAD project simply because it is “good” for Guyana and supported by many of us: that is for our government to decide.
It has also been said that “In trying to force change on recalcitrant governments and societies, moreover, outside interventions undermine internal motives for reform by transferring responsibility for a better future from local leaders to external actors. … The result is a dependency paradox that impedes reform” (Michael J Mazarr, “The Rise and Fall of the Failed-State Paradigm:” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2014).
Dealing with the PPP/C government is the task of the Guyanese people, albeit with support from its internal and external friends, and unless the regime becomes unusually brutal and grossly neglectful of our human rights, direct foreign intervention of any sort should be avoided.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
