Dear Editor,
Mr Vincent Alexander claims (`Our democracy is dysfunctional’ SN 10-8-20) that in my riposte to a letter of his, I ignored the gravamen of his argument: to wit that “our democracy is dysfunctional”. “It is that dysfunctionality,” he argues, “which has its roots in the evolution of Guyana as a plural, conflictual and fractured nation state that persists and makes a mockery of the democracy to which Ravi Dev refers, although he himself has previously identified the said problem.”
Now Mr Alexander, as a Marxist to boot, is committing the cardinal sin (?) of looking at the problematic ahistorically, as I made clear in my reply. He is looking to fix a “problem” that no longer exists. The “dysfunctional nature of our democracy”, I had pointed out since 1988 was not because our political leaders Burnham and Jagan and their successors were “bad men” who created our ethnic voting pattern. Ethnic groups, in terms of their different origins and cultural repertoires, preceded them – in Marxist terms they were “groups in themselves”. But ethnicity, as a self aware “group for itself”, was triggered by the introduction of democracy when the question of “who rules” was raised.
I posited that ethnic security dilemmas were precipitated for the two largest ethnic groups – African and Indian Guyanese, if they voted ethnically – as was shown in the 1957 elections. The African Ethnic Security Dilemma (AESD) was if they accepted the majoritarian premise of parliamentary democracy, they would be excluded in perpetuity from government because of the Indian Guyanese majority. The Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma (IESD) was that even if their superior numbers delivered the government, they “would be in office but not in power” because of African Guyanese occupancy of the strategic institutions of the state, especially its coercive arms.
The PNC’s rigging of elections was accepted by its supporters from 1968 to 1985 because Burnham argued “there is no alternative” (TINA). His augmented armed forces further existentially checkmated Jagan’s majority. After free and fair elections in 1992, we saw the IESD play out as the PPP government was frontally challenged by armed bandits who called themselves “Freedom Fighters”. The armed forces were caught – as they are presently – between a rock and a hard place as PNC leaders from Desmond Hoyte onwards placed pressure on them to support their “kith and kin”.
Where I question Mr Alexander and all those who are trumpeting “shared governance” to fix our “dysfunctional democracy”, is they are ignoring the proven and demonstrated fact that with Indian Guyanese having lost their majority after 2006, the AESD had resolved itself. I argued this point from 2008 onwards with skeptics Eric Phillips, Lincoln and Freddie Kissoon after I suggested that if the PNC moderated its rhetoric and do a makeover to at least make Indian Guyanese neutral, they could compete effectively in elections. The 2011 elections proved my point and the 2015 elections sealed it.
As I pointed out in my letter, Guyana had now reached the happy point where the politics of “in and out” rather than “over and under” is possible. It is Mr Granger that undermined the premises of this new political plateau for the PNC and new leadership can rectify this.
We should allow democracy to take root and deal with the IESD by making all state institutions representative of our population. We can address economic distributive questions as it affects groups such as African and Amerindian Guyanese that have been historically marginalized frontally with tools like Affirmative Action Programmes, deep decentralization (including Federalism) and Ethnic Impact Statements.
I hope that Mr Alexander and others would not want to reify ethnic voting by pushing for ethnic power sharing and removing the needed discipline of an opposition in government.
Yours faithfully,
Ravi Dev
