As we approach New Year 2025 a special significance beckons: barring any unforeseen circumstances, general elections are constitutionally mandated. Historically, our elections have unfortunately become flashpoints for triggering extreme tensions that often spill over into violence. It behoves all right-thinking Guyanese to try forestalling such a denouement. We must accept that we are embarked on a common venture to create a viable nation and are all responsible for contributing to its realization.
One of the hurdles we must overcome is the present insistence on stressing “rights” in a democratic polity without even mentioning our concomitant “responsibilities”. For democracy to succeed, citizens must be active, not passive, because they know that the success or failure of the government is their responsibility, and no one else’s. That is why it is said in a democracy, we get the government we deserve. In 2025, citizens will be bombarded with exhortations from the political parties competing for their votes. As the folk wisdom advises, their duty is to “pick sense from nonsense”.
How can this be done? The answer was offered in yesterday’s editorial, “21st Century Skills” which identified “Critical thinking” as the very first of those skills. As citizens in a democracy, we must take the time to listen not only to all sides in the political debate, but also to seek out independent views on the issue so that we can best evaluate what is on the table. In a democracy, there will be both procedural and substantive issues to be considered. Let us begin with the former which is the electoral procedures which can be considered as threshold issues.
The Opposition, for instance, has raised two objections in this area when complaining about a “bloated list” and also demanding “biometrics” for identification of voters. They concede that 99% of any such “bloating” is due to names of citizens on the OLE who have migrated, but which, according to a Judicial ruling, cannot be removed without a constitutional change. Citizens must ask if they propose this. The demand for “biometric data’ to better certify voters’ identity to prevent duplicate voting – using names on the OLE- has been conceded by all parties. Citizens must evaluate not necessarily whether the “biometrics” are foolproof – they are not – but whether the objection that time does not permit their introduction before the end-of-year elections is valid. In the meantime, citizens must demand that party agents at the polling stations be rigorously trained since there has been no proof to date that shortcomings in this area have ever been significant enough to alter any of the elections’ results.
Substantively, there does not appear to be any ideological difference among the political parties as was the case before 1992. However, with the premises of liberalism – which has been dominant in the US and UK and are models for our democratic practice – now under fire there, citizens should make themselves au fait with what our parties competing for office in 2025 are proposing for better governance. For instance, procedurally, the incoming Trump administration in the US has promised to abandon the old, British putative “value-free” standard for civil servants and replace them with individuals who adhere to their worldview. Will the acceptance of this model now be the norm in Guyana?
In terms of economic development, it would appear that all our political parties also accept the neo-liberal premise of the “private sector being the engine of growth”. There are differences in views, however, as to what extent the free market should be the arbiter of distributive justice. The PPP has opted to continue with a Nordic-type welfare state where critical services such as health and education etc. are delivered free by the state, but private institutions are permitted. The Opposition has pushed for an expansion of welfarism to deliver a “Universal Basic Income” – which has not been adopted by the government of any country. The government evidently prefers episodic cash grants.
If these issues are debated using critical thinking maybe we can avoid electoral trauma.
