It is clear that the Opposition does not understand the nature of the form of democratic governance they are operating under. A recapitulation of first principles based on our specific history may be in order. In Britain and very early on in its colonies, two questions were posed when the issue of democracy arose: who were “the people” and how were they to rule? On the first question, the British by the nineteenth century implicitly stipulated that middle-class men were “the people”. Women and the lower classes were not “ready”.
After emancipation, the British thus insist there had to be a period of tutelage for the responsibility of governance to be exercised “responsibly” by the “natives”. In Guyanese history, then, we note a long and painful process by the disenfranchised to win the vote and a determined rearguard action by the British to deny the same. As late as 1947, only about ten percent of the population were counted as “the people”; after 1953 it became everyone over twenty-one and finally in 1968 it was changed to include everyone over eighteen.
A second problem arose when the country incorporated what was labelled several “nationalities” – what would today be called “ethnic plural societies”. The Liberal theorist J.S. Mill, pronounced conclusively that the free institutions of democracy were ‘next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities’. For us, our challenge has been to deal with our ethnic divisions in the society to answer the question, who are “the people” who would govern?
On the second (procedural) question, how are “the people” to rule, the classical Greeks tried “direct democracy”, where, facilitated by their small numbers, every citizen could vote on every issue in one gathering. If more than fifty percent of the citizens voted for one particular position, then that became the position of “the people”. Majoritarian politics was born. This direct method of voting had to be abandoned in favour of “representative democracy” due to the larger number of citizens and their wider geographical dispersion, in the countries that resuscitated the democratic form of governance twenty-two centuries later. Majoritarianism remained with the representatives simply re-presenting those who elected them.
A further innovation was introduced by the British to accommodate local sensitivities and ensure that the residents of “geographical areas” could be ensured of their own representatives. This was the procedural basis of the “Westminster” system of democracy where several candidates compete within a “constituency” for a seat to Parliament and one off them could win with a plurality of the votes cast. The innovation introduced the possibility that a party could win a majority of seats nationally through plurality victories and secure control of the government without obtaining a majority of the total votes. Applied to Guyana, the constituency system up to 1961 served to over-represent the PPP whose supporters were more geographically dispersed that the. The Proportional Representation electoral system introduced in 1964 removed that distortion of democratic principles and we now have a “mixed” system.
Another challenge presented by procedural majoritarian democracy – very germane to our country presently – is that even if the party winning the elections were to obtain an absolute majority, why would the minority go along with the majority? Early on Rousseau asked, “…how can a man be at once free and forced to conform to wills which are not his own. How can the opposing minority be both free and subject to laws to which they have not consented?” The answer is that the minority should know it has the opportunity of becoming the majority on any given issue – it just had to persuade enough fellow citizens that their stand on that issue was the right one.
When Indian Guyanese supporting the PPP comprised an absolute majority, the PNC resorted to rigging elections and was excused by its constituents. They have no excuse now that we are a country of minorities: like the PPP, they should focus on securing “cross-over votes” to secure a majority and form the government.
