Deepening ethnic politics

Last Wednesday was the third anniversary of the Cummingsburg Accord which sealed the coalition agreement between APNU and the AFC to contest the 2015 elections on a common platform. By the terms of the Accord, it could be reviewed after three years; and since very early on the AFC had expressed concerns that the powers allocated to the AFC Prime Minister candidate were not as per the agreement and had requested a review, it was widely expected one would have been forthcoming.
Instead, the AFC issued a statement which extolled the Accord as laying the “foundation for the restoration of honour, dignity, credibility and unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in executive governance in Guyana.” While this claim cannot be excused for its hyperbole, because it flies in the face of what has actually transpired with the coalition’s actions in almost every facet of its Governmental responsibilities – of which the oil contract is only the tip of the iceberg – we leave its interrogation for another day.
The following assertion, however, deserves to be addressed more urgently, since it reveals a fundamental disconnect with the actual framework of the kind of politics that is needed in Guyana, especially since the AFC claims otherwise: “The Cummingsburg Accord also dealt a significant blow to divisive ethnic politics which had ensnared Guyana for decades.”
It is now more than two decades of “free and fair” elections in Guyana, which have demonstrated the persistence of the salience of voting along ethnic lines in Guyana, rather than along some purported overarching “class” lines that were claimed to be more fundamental. Ethnic politics, however, is not seen to be some sort of “primordial” or atavistic throwback practice, but an outcome of political mobilisation along rational lines, structured by the imperative to garner majorities in transitioning democracies.
“Ethnies” – or groups identified culturally — were tailor-made for the post WWII decolonization and democratisation movements across the world. This movement has now reached its apogee with the universalism of being “white” through its several European variants, now acknowledged as also being particularistic and “ethnic” with the rise of Trump in the US and Brexit in Europe.
In Guyana, while resisted by some, many Guyanese felt some political progress was made when APNU reached out to the AFC because it wanted to acquire greater legitimacy to govern by adding Indian Guyanese votes to its African Guyanese-dominated base.
But three years after the experiment, the AFC cannot baldly assert that “a significant blow to divisive ethnic politics” has been struck. This is now an empirical question that can be answered only by examining the record of the coalition Government in that time. One of the innovations in the APNU/AFC coalition Manifesto was supposed to address a fundamental feature of ethnic politics: the proclivity for the various ethnic groups in the society to compare themselves to each other in having access to the patrimony of the state, as intermediated by the Government.
Governments in ethnic majoritarian systems were inevitably dominated by one ethnic group, and were assumed to “favour” that group both by their supporters and those “outside”. This was the source of most conflicts that ensued, and also acted to harden the ethnic divisions. The coalition manifesto proposed to issue “Ethnic Impact Statements” when initiating programmes to head off such rancor and conflict before, rather than after, the inevitable post-mortem evaluations.
Sadly, however, this direct confrontation of the adverse fallout of ethnic politics was never even tested. As a result, directly after the Government took office, the ethnic evaluations have been done in appointments to Ministries, Boards, Civil Service etc. and in awarding of contracts, scholarships, ambassadorships etc; in development of villages and, finally, in the decision to close four sugar estates and fire more than 5700 sugar workers, along with adversely affecting hundreds more cane farmers and thousands of their employees.
These actions, which predominantly affected Indian Guyanese adversely, have only exacerbated “divisive ethnic politics” in Guyana.