…and ethnic demands
As your Eyewitness has observed before, the calls for changing the system of governance by activists and partisans of the PNC are coming fast and furious now that it looks like a recount might be on the cards. The latest is from Tacuma Ogunseye of WPA, ACDA and APNU; not necessarily in that order. Or the order itself might be irrelevant, since they’ve all evidently shed their coy posturings to become defenders of the PNC’s right to rule.
Ogunseye’s position is quite clear – no beating around no bushes here; and so offers a good opportunity to engage in a discussion of the merits or demerits of their position. He engages the recent statement of the US Ambassador Sarah-Ann Lynch, wherein she extolled the democratic values her nation has trumpeted since its “Declaration of Independence” in 1776. Ogunseye, however, insists to her and all of us in Guyana that such values “have to be seen in the context of a country’s history and stage of development. And in this regard, elections and democracy, if it means, or will lead to the political exclusion of Africans from governance in Guyana, and our economic marginalization – we reject those notions.”
What he’s saying – and this is the bottom line for all the adherents of the ‘new governance model” line – is that elections and democracy MUST include “Africans” in government, or else they’ll be “economically marginalised”. The representation of “Africans” in government will be by the PNC, since this is the entity Ogunseye and others are insisting is the political vehicle for “African” aspirations.
Now, right off the bat, your Eyewitness has a problem with this formulation.
After all, wasn’t the same PNC in power for 28 years using the very same argument to rig elections every which way in 1968, 1973, 1980, 1985 – and with a rigging of a referendum in 1978 thrown in for good measure??
So why did Ogunseye join with the WPA to fight off the PNC during those years?? Was that PNC not representing “Africans” then?? Didn’t all the managers appointed to run the “commanding heights of the economy” create an “African” middle class?? And the Co-op Movement didn’t “make the small man into the real man”??
So what exactly will the “new PNC” do differently this go around, after it left “Africans” at 43% poverty rate in 1992 – which the PPP reduced to 34% by 1999?? And oh…another thing. Didn’t the same rejected “democracy and elections” allow the PNC to take power in 2015?? What’s now different?? Is it that elections must only have the PNC winning, or else the winner must share with them??
What if “Indians” had made the analogous argument in 2015??
…and dealing with crises
Now, nobody says democracy is easy; in fact, it can be quite messy. As Churchill once observed, “Democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”!! And that’s the truth, ain’t it?
First, we had monarchies coming out of the might-is-right beginnings of society. It didn’t work. After democracy became ascendant in the 19th century, we had the communist experiment of the Soviet Union, then the fascist diversions of Hitler and Mussolini. Neither proved to be any improvement on democracy.
Well, some are looking at the rise of China in the last four decades, and especially in the way it has not only lifted so many of its citizens out of poverty, but also how it has handled the present COVID-19 crisis. But the dilemma that’s posed for countries like ours, that experienced the trampling of our fundamental human rights, is its violation of our human spirit.
Are we willing to pay this price? Your Eyewitness think not.
…and the elite choices
One of the reasons for the struggle to keep power at any price is that the winners were able to escape ordinary Guyanese travails – like shitty medical care.
But where will they now jet off to if ill?
