Back in 1991, the influential Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington observed the increasing number of autocracies that were turning to democracy as their mode of governance in the prior decade and dubbed it as the “Third Wave” of democratisation. The first one had occurred in the 19th century, following the American and French Revolutions but ebbed with the rise of fascism after the 1920s.
WWII opened up the floodgates to the “second wave” with the decolonisation movement that saw countries like Guyana obtain independence and constitutions that were based on the “liberal” democracy of the “mother country”, such as Britain.
This variant of democracy, while insisting on the procedural aspect to elect governments by a majority of the populace, also included substantive conditions as the right of private property ownership, individual civil rights and the protection of political rights of minorities.
Unfortunately, for any number of reasons which included an impatience at the slow improvement or fall in economic performance, soon precipitated another decline in the number of practicing democracies. In Guyana we experienced the logic and degradations of “cooperative socialism” which was supposed to overcome the limitations of what was now dubbed “bourgeois democracy”. That experiment, and most of the others, failed miserably.
And we arrived at Prof Huntington’s “Third Wave” with the fall of the Soviet Union. The very next year after his book was published, the PPP was elected in the first “free and fair” elections in 28 years. But the decade had not even ended when Huntington’s former student Fareed Zakaria (1997) observed developments in many of the new democracies and concluded they had become “illiberal”. In his words these were: “democratically elected regimes often re-elected or reinforced by referendums that ignore the constitutional limits of their power and deprive their citizens of basic rights and liberties.” They had become autocratic.
In Guyana, the PPP administration never had the opportunity to complete the substantive transition of liberal democracy to give meaning to the value of “the people” choosing their own government. First of all, it inherited a “Structural Adjustment Programme” (SAP) that shaped their economic policies which obviously impacted on social programmes. More pertinently, the PNC opposition launched a strident campaign to delegitimise the government by claiming “ethnic cleansing” informed the PPP administration’s moves to rationalise its staffing needs.
Actual violent protests were launched following the 1997 elections and these were not brought under control until 2008, with the elimination of the last members of the criminal gang that saw mayhem, murder, robberies, rape, and kidnapping almost becoming a norm. But very credibly, the PPP saw through a plethora of reforms that were intended to reinstitute liberal democracy here.
In terms of liberal democracy’s insistence on the civil rights of the citizenry, these included constitutional bodies such as an Ethnic Relations Committee, several “Rights Bodies” – Women, Indigenous Peoples, Children, etc. Just as crucial, they formed four Sectorial Committees” in Parliament which covered the full spectrum of governmental operations and through which, the Opposition was offered the opportunity to scrutinise in real time. While not perfected, Liberal Democracy was well and truly being established in Guyana.
Sadly, even though many persons, including some who were sympathetic to the PPP, felt that democracy needed the regular “alteration” of governments, they have become alarmed at the actions of this government which signal they are moving Guyana firmly into the “illiberal democracy” camp.
One move which both create and reinforce illiberal thinking in governmental circles has been the mass recruitment of retired Army and Police officers, who have been indoctrinated to make decisions in an undemocratic fashion.
Another sign has been the government’s refusal to observe the independence of constitutional bodies that were all explicitly given such powers to protect them and their mandate to ensure political and civil rights of citizens from Executive overreach.
Citizens must be vigilant to ensure that our liberal democratic gains are not further eroded and in fact, be expanded.
