Dear Editor,
It is a rare human being who works just for fun. A fortunate few work for self-actualisation, according to Maslow’s classification system, but the vast majority work because they need the income to live and meet their basic needs. This is the case of the typical Guyanese public servant – the impoverished, tax-bearing oilers of government’s bureaucracy. Compared to the USA, I have often boasted that Guyana has pursued enlightened policies that protect workers and citizens generally, entitling them to fundamental human rights of access to education, health care, job security, and decent work (particularly in the public sector). However, my belief has been shaken to the core with what has taken place over the last 7 months.
The spate of terminations of public servants that followed regime change, on August 2, 2020 has given rise to severe anguish, mental stress and enormous concern at the erosion of workers’ rights. It has called into question, also, the quality of jobs of those who remain in their posts as well as the toxic and uncertain environment within which they are forced to operate. These developments raise questions about the meaningfulness of Guyana being a State Party to the related UN Conventions. Recognising the role the UN can play in rolling back this angry tide of recrimination as well as acting as an honest interlocutor to prevent the undesired consequences of ethnic division in Guyana, one questions the lack of advocacy of this body (and others who were so prominent in the aftermath of December 21, 2018).
The philosopher, Philip Pettit, posited that humans strive for freedom from “dominance,” which he defined as living “at the mercy of another, having to live in a manner that leaves you vulnerable to some ill that the other is in a position arbitrarily to impose.” He went on to explain that domination occurs when one is “subject to arbitrary sway; being subject to the potentially capricious will or the potentially idiosyncratic judgment of another.” This definition represents the experience of people who have lived in servitude throughout human history. Professors Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, in their book “The Narrow Corridor”, have observed, however, that even though most workers in the Western Hemisphere no longer needed to worry about the most brutal forms of labour coercion, the absence of job security and payment at a level adequate to meet basic needs meant that the worker was still subject to “dominance.” This argument is not new, and neither Pettit nor Acemoglu and James were the original proponent of this point.
That honour goes to one of the architects of the British welfare state, William Beveridge, who, in 1945 contended that “Liberty means more than freedom from the arbitrary power of governments. It means freedom from economic servitude to want and squalor and other social evils; it means freedom from arbitrary power in any form. A starving man is not free…” In Guyana, public servants have lost their right to speak, to have an opinion and to freely associate, as guaranteed by the Constitution of Guyana. In the words of our own poet laureate, Martin Carter, the mouth is muzzled by the food it eats to live. Is this what we now accept as the new normal? Do our representatives in civil society, trade unions and parliament even realize the depth to which we have sunk? The consequences of this loss of independent thought and ideation are foreboding. A nation of sheep will be at the mercy of wolves.
Yours faithfully,
Winston Jordan
Former Minister of Finance
