Most Guyanese would concede that ethnicity plays an outside role in our politics and that its effects on our political participation have not been positive. Since the claim – set into motion after WWII – that “modernisation” would soon make the “primordial” roots of ethnicity disappear proved quite premature, it behoves policymakers to always examine our political system and institute changes that could steer our political behaviour in more positive directions. In fact, evidence gathered during the last 50 years has demonstrated that ethnicity and other bases of “identity politics” have now become the predominant form of political mobilisation – even in developed countries such as Britain and the US.
The call for “constitutional change” in Guyana is one initiative to achieve the aim, and the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Opposition has stridently placed on the agenda “executive power sharing” as their preferred change. This would guarantee them – as the self-defined representatives of African Guyanese – power. But unfortunately, they have studiously avoided the elephant in the room: the changed demographics in our country since 2011.
Ethnic politics is concededly encouraged by the logic of democracy which focuses on agglomerating numbers to form majorities. In such a milieu, it is to be expected that politicians will exploit any avenue, including the omnipresent ethnic identity to achieve maximum agglomeration. As Guyana entered democratic politics in the 1950s, Indian Guyanese, however, formed an absolute majority which proved to be a disincentive to the other ethnic groups in the country.
But presently, no single ethnic group now constitutes an absolute majority. By the logic of politics, politicians should see it in their interest to moderate their rhetoric for any one group or against any other group and this behaviour should create a moderating centripetal mobilisation effect. APNU recognised this logic in 2015 when they negotiated a coalition with the Alliance For Change (AFC) and won the elections of that year. They promised constitutional change for “power sharing”, but reneged and were voted out in 2020.
Constitutional change, then, should offer incentives that would encourage politicians and political parties to not necessarily abandon any ethnic-perceived identification but to reach across their constituencies to accommodate the interests of other groups. The PPP, after an initial reluctance to accept the salience of ethnicity – for fear of reifying it – has enthusiastically begun to court groups outside their Indian Guyanese base, to positive results.
In terms of constitutional change, the present Guyanese Constitution, extensively amended in 2000 to address Guyana’s then challenges, unfortunately, left intact the requirement for a government to be elected with not even a majority of votes by the electorate but by a plurality. Additionally, it prohibits coalitions from being formed after elections, the most propitious time for groups, ethnic or otherwise, to modify their platform to strike bargains. These two stipulations must now be changed at a minimum.
But outside of explicit constitutional strictures, the idiosyncrasies of an ethnically plural society also pose challenges emanating paradoxically from the most fundamental modern norm of “equality”. In these societies, politics is dominated by the immanent feature of group comparison, leaving some groups “suffering” in that comparison, especially in the realm of economics. Equality of opportunity will not satisfy the “losing” group: they are looking to be guaranteed equality of outcome while ignoring the personal and group attributes that are mediating factors.
Such groups will attempt to subvert the norm of equality in the political realm by asserting greater legitimacy than other groups which should allow them greater access to the national patrimony. Today, we see this feature taking centre stage in Guyanese politics and rather sadly, but predictably, it is accompanied by rhetoric decrying other groups’ legitimacy to their own share of the national patrimony.
While in all societies, especially in ex-colonies, there might be disabilities induced via past discrimination in some groups in terms of truly enjoying “equal opportunity” and therefore deserving of circumventing the equality imperative through “affirmative action” programmes, these must be crafted quite transparently so that backlashes are not precipitated from groups that will denounce “ethnic favouritism”.
