Dear Editor,
Mr GHK Lall has not confessed the core problem (`Ideas on power sharing’ SN March 31, 2020). If we don’t agree on the problem we will never fix it. What is the core problem? It is a problem of distribution and ownership. It is a question of who owns the stock of net assets (wealth) and the annual flow of income (GDP). In Guyana, a large share of GDP is distributed each year via government patronage.
Therefore, capturing government by feigning to be great defenders of democracy is one strategy, especially if your ethnic group is larger in terms of percentage. The other strategy involves twisting and bending the pernicious and backward Burnham-Shahabuddeen-Hoyte-Jagdeo constitution in your favour, mainly because your ethnic group and those other folks identifying as such are smaller in terms of percentage. However, your smaller group can credibly commit to bending and twisting the backward constitution because you own the army and the disruptive capacities, and perhaps parts of the judiciary. You can collude with GECOM to rig the election – even clumsily and after going to church on Sunday – because of the lure of patronage and the power which comes from distributing it mainly to your ethnic masses and to a few elites from the other side. The opportunity cost of losing the election for both groups involves missed civil service jobs, kickbacks, government scholarships, contracts, cocktail parties, El Dorado 15/21/25, foreign trips and the hefty per diems, newspaper headlines, and many other privileges.
How do we address this malaise? First, we confess the core of the problem. Second, we create a new constitution – written in simple language – that sets new incentives and reduces the cost of losing the election. As long as the opportunity cost of losing the election is too high for the losing group, it will have to implement a rig strategy and the other a destabilization strategy. It is imperative that if one group of leaders rig, another must destabilize. And if those with numerical advantage wins, those who lose will destabilize (see post-1997). This is the iron law of political economy when we have an ethnic bifurcation.
Having said that, one of GHK Lall’s proposals of an upper and lower House makes sense. I myself have listed that one as a sufficient condition but not the necessary one. However, I don’t believe Mr Lall has addressed the core fact on the ground that determines the necessary condition, which relates to a distributional conflict.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Tarron Khemraj
