President Irfaan Ali continues to break entrenched shibboleths in his obvious impatience with our dysfunctional political system that has retarded our growth and development since the heady days of independence from Imperial Britain. On the foreign policy front, he has struck a chord of reconciliation and cooperation with his counterpart in neighbouring Suriname, who also seems determined to strike a new path. Much can flow from the obviously easy relationship that has already developed between the two Presidents and their staffs.
On the domestic front, President Ali has moved with uncommon energy and decisiveness to get our country and its economy back on its regional record-breaking growth trajectory after the vacillation and dithering by the former A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition Government. One clear thread that can be discerned in his approach to the political economy is his recognition, unlike his predecessor, that wealth must be first created before it can be redistributed. There have been initiatives in every sector of the economy – agriculture, mining, services, infrastructural development and housing – that are already bearing fruit in the four months of his Administration.
But as Guyanese know from the experience of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government after they were returned to office in 1992, after 28 years of authoritarian People’s National Congress (PNC) rule, economic improvement is not enough to deliver peace and stability in our country. By 1999, conditions had been improved across the board – for instance poverty had been significantly reduced on the coastland for all groups – yet the PNC launched massive protests that transfixed the nation in fear for the following decade. They refused to acknowledge that the PPP had frontally attacked the crushing debt burden and unleashed the pent-up energy of the economy that had been repressed by PNC state control. In a word, we have discovered that to a large extent, the problems in our political system flow from the PNC’s refusal to play by rules they themselves had crafted.
Guyana, therefore, suffers from a political problem caused by the PNC’s intransigence that insists when it comes to the PPP governance structure, “what is mine is mine, and what is yours is negotiable through violence”. From this perspective, President Ali’s invitation to PNC leader David Granger as one of the living four ex-Presidents (Sam Hinds, Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar being the others) is historic. President Ali set out the parameters of the objectives of the December 15 meeting: “We will talk about how we see Guyana’s development – different perspectives and then work out a model and framework on how we will engage in the future and how we have continuous contributions.”
While some have remarked that we will be having “three PPP ex-Presidents” and one PNC, we should keep in mind that in addition to Sam Hinds coming from the PPP’s Civic experiment to broaden its perspective from outside its ranks, each of these presidents faced different contingencies at different historical conjunctures. It is, therefore, pertinent to note that, as the President noted, we will have these “different perspectives” hone in on the overriding criteria of the meeting: a focus on Guyana’s “development”, which, as we know, goes far beyond economic growth. The latter is necessary but not sufficient to deliver the former, which incorporates the flowering of all our potentialities that lead to our greater happiness and satisfaction.
Secondly, and most critically, the President is making it clear that he does not envisage this meeting to be a one-off or conclusive event. He noted that he was expecting a “model and framework” for future engagements to ensure “continuous contributions”. For those who are calling for wider inputs into the governance system to ensure the greatest involvement of the people’s’ representatives, what could be more inclusive than to have the leader of the PNC engage directly the head of the incumbent Executive and his ex-peers, to supplement the PNC Opposition Leader and his MPs in the National Assembly?
Bravo to President Irfaan Ali for this ground-breaking move.
