The demands for “power sharing” are once again rising to a crescendo in the Opposition camp; as they did after 2011, but had become a deafening silence after the PNC/APNU/AFC coalition government had been formed in 2015. The present PPP government is dubbed an “installed regime”, and there are strident calls to come out into the streets against it.
Post 2008, after the attacks on the state and perceived PPP Indian-Guyanese supporters by armed bandits based in Buxton had waned, the then PPP was described by some opposition supporters as an “elected dictatorship”, and street protests by the Opposition PNC were demanded. But the PNC changed course and adopted a “kinder, gentler” image with a new name, through the fig-leaf coalition dubbed APNU. It performed credibly in the 2011 elections and, along with the AFC, confined the PPP to the presidency.
The 2012 census showed that the PPP’s Indian-Guyanese population had dropped precipitously to less than 40%, and Guyana is now a nation of minorities. The African/Mixed Guyanese populace has now surpassed the Indian Guyanese population, thereby resolving the African Security Dilemma. The Amerindian population and moderates from the major communities are now a potential floating voter pool which could be swayed by either side to agglomerate a majority.
From a mobilization standpoint, the changed demographics have serendipitously delivered a situation in which power could be effectively shared among the various ethnic groups in the society at the polls, under the present majoritarian system. In many other divided societies, this needed explicit constitutional and electoral innovations, such as a 65% supermajority, the Alternative Vote (AV), and the Single Transferable Vote (STV). The PNC, as APNU, abjured street protests, and, in 2015, its subsequent coalition with the AFC – led by Khemraj Ramjattan and Moses Nagamootoo – deepened the coalition’s attraction to crossover Indian-Guyanese votes, and facilitated a win for the coalition. The coalition explicitly announced they were a “government of national unity”.
There will be objections to the claim that any government elected in Guyana by the present demographics will be a “power-sharing” one. This is primarily because our discourse on power sharing has been dominated by the notion of a “grand coalition” of all parties – part of what is called a “consociational” arrangement. Another power-sharing approach is “centripetalism”, connoting a force (here self-interest) that moves the parties towards a moderate centre. If our parties act rationally, as the PNC did from 2011 to 2015 and the PPP has been doing since 2020, either could win elections here. The APNU/AFC coalition lost the plot after 2015 when David Granger ignored the recommendations of his own CoI in regard to the sugar industry, shuttered four estates, and fired 7000 primarily Indian-Guyanese sugar workers.
Executive power-sharing proposals have been made since the 1960s – the latest being in the 2015 manifesto of the APNU/AFC coalition – but the reasons for them not being adopted are studiously ignored by the Opposition once again. The first is “adaptability”: whether the major political parties would adopt them. Consociational “Executive power sharing” has been a non-starter from the beginning by whichever party is in Government. It is also always threatened by the second challenge of “immobilism”, which is occurring presently in Northern Ireland, when the arrangement can be vetoed by one member of the grand coalition withholding their vote. We see this in our own arrangement to appoint the Chancellor and Chief Justice.
Centripetal power sharing, however, has been serendipitously delivered to us, allowing us to start from where we are, not where we ought to be. Unlike the Granger-led APNU/AFC coalition, governments would have to rationally address the needs of all sections of society – as the PPP is doing presently.
Lastly, the problem of “degradation” in coalitions – when the larger party breaks its agreement with its partner that attracted cross-over votes, as Granger’s PNC did to the AFC – becomes unnecessary. The post-2015 APNU/AFC coalition was “mannersed” in 2020, and the PPP’s test of centripetal power sharing will come in 2025. We have been delivered into the democratic comity of possible alternating governments.
