Responsible Politics

Very sadly, the Opposition, such as it is, is focusing on playing to the gallery to exploit the desire of most people for a magic wand to be waved by the Government to resolve all their problems immediately. The cynical tactic resonates because the oil revenues do appear to be that magic wand. The French and Germans have a single word – “La politique” and “politik”, respectively – that encompasses what is distinguished in the English language as “politics” and “policies”.  Our Opposition, however, refuses to acknowledge the distinction as they focus unrelentingly on the attainment of raw power – sadly for very personal reasons on the assumption that political office will place them above the workings of the law. Politics, of course, involves the pursuit and retention of power – to decide “who gets what, when and how”. The “who” being the people. But less glamorously, policies imply rolling up one’s sleeves to craft and implement principles or rules to achieve articulated goals. And this takes time.
The Opposition could care less about policies. They have, for instance, had the chutzpah to criticise the Government on “corruption”. But examining their pronouncements, all they do is attack individuals within the Government or those they claim are close to the Administration – “friends and family” – and not look at themselves. This approach is not getting the country anywhere – except to discourage men and women of calibre from entering public service. Where are the policies of the Opposition to deal with corruption?
We have in mind what Max Weber called “a slow boring of hard boards”: a willingness to interrogate a criticised phenomenon and discern its causes before coming up with the broad principles to deal with it within an institutionalised framework. Returning to the vexed question of “corruption”, are there, for instance, deeper systemic causes operating within the neoliberal order that has been imposed on our economic system since 1989?
Is it just a coincidence that the same rules of ‘liberalisation” and “deregulation” that were developed and applied in the “advanced” economies have also led to questions of moral laxity there? Are markets the best arbiter of distributive justice, much less moral probity? Unless the Opposition are prepared to pose and then answer such questions that can lead to new and comprehensive policies which might ensnare themselves, they are just spinning wheels. Or maybe worse: they are leading their supporters into believing there will be real change after their theatrics. When the latter discover that it is the “same ole; same ole” then frustration might lead to explosions.
Politics rather than policies – and gutter politics at that – is ruling the roost. The AG had poignantly asked whether it does not bother those who clamour for a Leader of the Opposition (LOO) to be in place but who ignore the implications of having that person be one who declared that a Lamborghini was bought for US$75,000. Most insidiously for good governance, some in the Opposition leadership have condemned the Government’s attempts to include the entire populace in their developmental thrust – which inevitably means including erstwhile Opposition supporters – as “slave catching”. Such pernicious attempts at keeping our country’s citizens in hermetically sealed and antagonistic enclaves must be condemned by all responsible Guyanese.
When the Opposition PNC chose to introduce a policy – a Universal Basic Income (UBI) – that would be funded from the Natural Resources Fund (NRF), they just could not resist playing politics rather than sticking to the policy. They dubbed it “the Buxton Proposal”: deliberately tying it to an Opposition stronghold that immediately reminds everyone of that partisan nexus. The notion of UBI has been floating around for decades, even though no country has adopted it in toto, with mostly NGOs sharing out guaranteed small sums for a fixed number of years to villages mostly in Africa. The closest to a “national” deployment is Alaska, where their experience highlights the challenges when the funding runs out and citizens’ “entitlements” are cut.
But it makes clear why the Opposition refuse to focus on policies – the nuances would defang their politics.