An opinion piece by Dr Bertrand Ramcharan, a long-time former official of the UN Human Rights system and now an occasional columnist in a local opposition-aligned newspaper, has precipitated a heated debate on his claim that he discerned “shades of autocracy” in the present governance of the PPPC. He read the slim, 167-page recent book by journalist Anne Applebaum, “Autocracy Inc.” The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World”, which – according to Canada’s Globe and Mail – “charts a web of global despotism – but glosses over the West’s role”.
While there have always been autocrats –rule by a single person – Applebaum claims that in the present dispensation, Autocracies aren’t “run by one bad guy”: they rely on sophisticated networks of kleptocratic financial services, paramilitaries and propaganda. They are now being run by sophisticated interconnected networks fuelled by surveillance and disinformation. To borrow a phrase, they now form a new “axis of evil”.
Now, while Applebaum’s claims may have some validity, Dr Ramcharran is straining at the bit to lump Guyana as veering into the global autocratic grouping, which earned Applebaum’s tag of “Inc” to suggest their coordinated actions to counter democratic imperatives. He fails to link Guyana to any of the members of the club, as say, our neighbour Venezuela which has developed ties with Russia that supplies it with arms and finance. Applebaum’s slip also shows when she fails to condemn autocracies like Saudi Arabia that are allies of the US to the familiar known suspects of Russia, Iran, China or Venezuela.
Or mention autocratic Singapore which has been ruled by one party since it was formed in the 1960s because of two factors: a supermajority of Chinese in the population was engineered and the People’s Action Party was able to literally deliver the goods to the entire population.
Elections are one criterion for judging autocracies: they are either absent as in China or N. Korea or rigged as in Venezuela. Dr Ramcharran declares, “Two historical facts stand out: first, the PNCR has a record of subverting elections; and, second, the PPP has a record of autocratic tendencies.”
In conceding that it is the PNC in its various incarnations that has rigged elections but stopping there, Dr Ramcharan elides the possibility that what he calls “autocratic tendencies” in the PPP might simply be rational responses to the overt and covert violent attempts by the PNC and its fringe elements to remove it from office starting back to Black Friday, February 16, 1962.
PNC’s refusal to accept its loss in 1997 segued into violent protests that lasted a decade and saw hundreds killed. Its latest rigging attempt after the 2020 March 2 election was only foiled because of the presence of foreign observers. The PPP was checkmated in the 2011 elections when they only secured the presidency through a plurality of votes and was ousted in 2015 when APNU and the AFC coalesced before the elections. This demonstrates the viability of competitive democratic politics which the Opposition refuses to concede because they appear unwilling to court cross-over votes – as the PPP does – in our present nation of minorities.
And independent judiciary is another feature of a democracy that is absent in autocracies. We recently saw the Venezuelan Supreme Court – packed with Maduro loyalists – disqualify Maria Machado who was his strongest opponent and then certify the elections even though the Elections Commission did not provide the voting machine tallies. In Guyana, the Judiciary has repeatedly demonstrated its independence – especially when our apex court is the external Caribbean Court of Justice based in Trinidad. The criticism of possible judicial overreach cited by Dr Ramcharan is standard in democracies as is seen in the US. Dr Ramcharran mentions the PPPC’s proposal to formalise the rules under which NGOs operate as threatening but elides the role they play in regime change by external forces. In calling for Opposition involvement, he also ignores the parliamentary institutions for the opposition to scrutinize governmental activities.
Dr Ramcharan has raised a tempest in a teacup.
