A Democracy, Human Rights and Governance assessment for USAID which we reported on last week has said that the major parties in this country needed to create a means of forming a functioning democracy “based on power-sharing rather than a ‘winner takes all’ mentality”. This, the report went on to say, “would ensure that the unprecedented wealth in oil reserves can be transparently and equitably managed for the benefit of all Guyanese”.
Coming as it does from an American state agency this is possibly revolutionary stuff, since it involves by implication a recommendation to abandon the Westminster elements in our constitution in favour of a political model which has no historical basis here. It is not as if power-sharing has proved an unqualified success in all the territories where it has been tried; it is a total disaster in Lebanon, for example, and the much touted Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland has not worked as intended, and in fact is not working at all at the moment.
As it is, there is not much appetite in the country for power-sharing, although at least one small party has adopted the idea as the foundation of its manifesto. Apart from various theoretical objections there is the practical one that the total absence of trust between our major parties would obviate any chance that such a system could be made to work in the present conditions. That said, it may be that the report for USAID did not have power-sharing in the strict political sense of that term in mind, and was just being somewhat careless with language given our context. For instance, the report also makes reference to inclusive democracy, as if the two terms were interchangeable, although they are not. Even the PPP/C says it seeks to promote inclusiveness, although it would not be in favour of power-sharing.
Inclusion along with consensus followed by compromise are the terms which crop up most frequently in the document, which says that weak political accountability is what makes these ends elusive. If inclusivity and thereby consensus is really what the agency report is seeking, then that is altogether a less contentious matter, although still by no means easy to achieve. The problem is that the definition which might apply here has not been spelt out, and whatever this might be, most of our politicians only pay lip-service to the notion; they don’t want it implemented in reality.
Seemingly undaunted by the obvious impediments, the report nevertheless describes it as being critical that Guyanese “achieve consensus on the conceptual, structural, management and oversight functions of the state”. A fiscal and legislative framework, for example, has to be arrived at by consensus in order to “subvert corruption and ensure equitable distribution of the expected funds” from the oil revenues.
The agency report it would also appear is under no illusion about why consensus and inclusion are currently elusive. It refers to weak political accountability, and the low level of meaningful participation on the part of citizens in decision-making at both the local and the national level. Most of what it has to say about the inhibiting factors will come as no surprise to anyone with an interest in the political field. The report makes reference among other things to power being concentrated in the executive branch, centralisation, weak governing structures and the low professional capacity of public sector officials at all levels. While decision-making at the parliamentary level could promote consensus building and compromise it says, in fact the opposite happens, since there the political divide is only exacerbated.
It might be observed that the concentration of power in the hands of the executive is not a problem which is easily amenable to reform, although there have been some attempts to address aspects of centralisation. This country has a history of authoritarianism, either unvarnished, or in more recent decades swathed in the mantle of democratic elections. Freedom House, while it may no longer be wedded to a Marxist-Leninist view of the economy, has never surrendered the autocratic style which went along with that. It is still obsessed with control, which is why the report’s emphasis on local government development and the empowerment of local officials as being the key to good governance, will require a change of mindset.
How to achieve this is not something about which the USAID report – no doubt for reasons of sensitivity and diplomacy – had suggestions to make. The ruling party’s general obsession with putting its loyalists in key positions, for example, so they could not challenge their projects on professional grounds is illustrated by the removal of Dr Vincent Adams from the EPA, and more recently the replacement of Dr Rudy Jadoopat as head of the Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. In office, both parties have favoured loyalty over merit, and to the best of anyone’s knowledge there is no miracle cure for that complaint.
The low professional capacity of public sector officials mentioned by the report is well known, although not always emphasised locally. But what applies to the public service has even greater applicability to local government personnel, where it too impedes development at the local level. Guyana’s brain drain is no secret, and while the report understandably had nothing to say directly on this, it might be remarked as well that some of those whom we elect to represent us do not inspire confidence in their capabilities.
As far as the public is concerned some MPs do not even seem to have done any work in their supposed spheres of responsibility. But then vulgarity and misogynistic insults such as those displayed by Minister Nigel Dharamlall recently are hardly conducive to worthwhile debate. For its part, the report said: “The National Assembly, a possible mechanism for initiating reform discussions and formalizing power-sharing, has been combative at best. The 2020 parliamentary sessions commenced with Members of Parliament (MPs) trading verbal personal insults rather than engaging in civilized discourse on matters of national importance.”
The report also alludes to the low professional capacity of public sector officials along with weak governing structures as affecting racial tensions and conflict, and standing in the way of consensus-building. Unstable socio-cultural and governance conditions will obtain, it says, until ethnic inclusion in the decision-making process is institutionalised. One suspects that what is meant here is ethno-political inclusions rather than simply ‘ethnic inclusion’.
Whatever the case, any level of consensus and compromise would have to involve the opposition at some level, and while at the time the USAID report made its assessment last year, there was still some kind of functioning opposition in place, that is no longer so. The government’s ability to steamroll ahead with whatever it wants is made easier by the fact that there is not even a Leader of the Opposition in existence at the moment, and when there was one, President Ali perversely refused to talk to him, so that critical posts and commissions requiring his input have gone unfilled. The disarray of the opposition is simply not good for governance in its larger sense.
So what does the report think the approach should be to address some of these problems? Interestingly, it suggested that the “most promising entry point for programming in Guyana” might be to encourage dialogue around a new national development strategy. The USAID report noted this has been done before, the last time under the auspices of the Carter Center in 1997, and that many of its recommendations remained relevant. However, useful and potentially liberating as the strategy was, it was never implemented, and one wonders if there might not be a repeat of that a second time around.
Other than that, the USAID report said it was “not clear at all how the Government of Guyana will build institutional capacity and a skilled labor force to manage its new wealth. Many of the public sector governance functions such as public procurement for government services, auditing and oversight of government revenue and spending, establishing business enabling environments, etc., will need to be outsourced while human capital development is advanced.”
It did have another suggestion to put forward, and that was for the Democracy, Human Rights and Governance programming to work closely with the international financial institutions as well as the Guyana Government to build “the capacity of the public sector to become more efficient and strengthen governing systems.”
There was one area cited in the report unrelated, a least directly, to concerns about Guyana’s governance. It drew attention to the fact that Guyana’s importance to US foreign policy had changed as a consequence of what it called “massive oil reserves.” However, it went on to observe, “the current government has not yet adjusted to this paradigm shift in the relationship.” This was a point being made in a very oblique way; there was no evidence in the Budget debate or at any other time that Takuba Lodge has put any effort into working out what all the implications are, and crafting a relevant foreign policy for new times.
