Dear Editor,
One statement in the final paragraph of Mr Sherwood Lowe’s letter (‘We may require social cohesion impact assessments’, SN May 30) nicely summarized our essential difficulty ‒ ‘social cohesion boils down to perception (how people feel)’ ‒ but his proposals will not solve it.
I cannot understand how, being acquainted with our unfortunate political history and the literature that is now available to us, Mr Lowe can possibly believe that “the means already exist in Guyana to address even the most challenging of social cohesion issues. We do not first need constitution reform to, for example, put in place effective measures to attend to the fears and concerns of sugar workers with regards the contraction of the sugar industry. Nothing now prevents us from ensuring that sugar workers feel represented, involved and respected.”
I suspect that Mr Lowe has forgotten John Stuart Mill’s 1861 contention that when “An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and another of the other,” representative democratic government is “next to impossible”, and countries such as ours are doomed to the ethnic political disruptions to which we have become accustomed. It is only during the last seventy years, a period almost coterminous with our struggle for and gaining of independence, that scholars have posited a way out through consociationalism, shared governance, etc.
After over sixty years of political meanderings, during which Guyana under the PNC reached its lowest ebb, but in 1992 the vast majority of Africans still voted for it, and when, in 2015, although more than 60% of PPP traditional supporters claimed they did not believe the party cared for them (Latin American Public Opinion Project 2014 Survey), there was a similar outcome, how can Mr Lowe believe that without PPP support, this APNU+AFC government could make the PPP’s constituency accept and feel good about its policies to a degree that will allow our country to develop into a cohesive one? Put another way, does Mr Lowe believe that APNU+AFC is likely to be successful in appealing to PPP supporters behind that party’s back, so to speak?
I think not. So if he thinks that PPP support is required, it will not come cheap for at least two reasons. That party will require important places at the executive decision-making table to ensure that their interests are well represented and protected and to not be in a position, à la AFC, to be taking the blame for policies their supporters may in fact oppose. For these and other important reasons, such as protecting the citizenry from an overwhelming majority coalition, constitutional reform will be a necessary if not a sufficient condition for success. If this kind of government is not possible, the PPP will continue to play competitive politics, which, notwithstanding all the preaching, cajoling and social cohesion plans in the world, in our situation will result in the continuance and possible escalation of ethnic politics.
When in ‘The strategic plan for social cohesion’(SN, May 24), I spoke of the need for “appropriate consensus-building governance mechanisms” this is the kind of formulation I had in mind. I certainly did not intend the simple appeal to ‘good governance’ that would be appropriate in conditions of normal politics, for Guyana is not a politically normal country.
So far as impact studies are concerned, in my opinion, social cohesion, economic development, livelihood and political concerns, etc should be important elements in a social impact assessment. However, any such assessment worth its salt will have to facilitate our becoming a more consensually driven society and, like the strategic plan for social cohesion I criticised, it will have to address and attempt to find adequate solutions for our highly divisive politics.
Yours faithfully,
Henry B Jeffrey
