In the wake of President David Granger’s unilateral appointment of retired Justice James Patterson to the chairmanship of GECOM, there have been intensified concerns raised about the mode of governance in Guyana leading to further polarisation, rather than cooperation, by the political parties in Guyana. Almost from the beginning of the modern political dispensation inaugurated by the universal franchise in the 1953 elections, there has existed a recognition that due to the fractured nature of our society, there needs to be a political system that would encourage the widest possible inclusion of the representatives of the various groups in the Government, to ensure legitimacy and stability.
The leaders of the first modern party explicitly organised for the universal franchise; the People’s Progressive Party explicitly included leaders from each of the fabled “six peoples” of then British Guiana. While the results of the 1953 elections justified their analysis, unfortunately world politics, driven by the newborn “Cold War” between the West and the USSR, entered the picture and the Government was ousted. Matters were never the same because of these foreign concerns.
The PPP was split during the 1957 elections ostensibly along ideological lines, with Linden Forbes Burnham’s faction claiming to be more “moderate” than Dr Cheddi Jagan’s, and as such more acceptable to the West. However, with Jagan coming out ahead, the split became permanent when Burnham launched the People’s National Congress, and unfortunately because of the ethnic identity of the two leaders, the electoral mobilisation became increasingly polarised between the two major ethnic groups, Indian and African Guyanese.
While the Western countries continued with their machinations, after the 1961 elections which the PPP won, the latter attempted to form a coalition with the PNC since they conceded these two parties were ideologically closer to each other than the newly-formed United Force. While the term was not very common then, the model proposed by Dr Jagan, would now be called the “Grand Coalition” since it involved sharing the major ministries of the Government between the two major parties.
With hindsight, it is clear the eventual coalition between the UF and the PNC in 1964 was essentially a “shotgun wedding” to oust the PPP, and it fell apart by 1968, when the PNC decided to go to the polls alone and ensure victory through “electoral rigging”. This was to be the pattern until 1992, when the concerns by the West about the “communist” PPP became moot, and free and fair elections returned the PPP to power.
However, during the long interregnum of rigged elections, the PPP pushed for a Grand Coalition (Patriotic Front Government) in 1977 which included the PNC while the recently-formed Working People’s Association (WPA) floated a Government of National Unity in 1979, which did not. As late as 1992, the PPP trumpeted a platform of “winner will not take all” – implying a sharing of power across the aisle. However, they entered into a coalition with a “Civic” component, which did not include the PNC.
In 2015, APNU (essentially PNC) also promised an “inclusionary” form of government that would include members of the PPP, but that was also stillborn. Since then, several NGOs have pushed for “constitutional change” to encourage some form of “power sharing” between the PPP and PNC, to lessen the political tensions in the country.
However, recently, Lebanon has been in the news with its Prime Minister Saad Hariri suddenly resigning his post while in Saudi Arabia. Lebanon is one of the first countries to practice ‘power sharing” among its major groups – in terms of religion. In 1943, it arrived at a “National Pact” in which parliamentary seats, the government bureaucracy and the top Government positions are allocated in accordance to a formula between Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims. The President is a Maronite Christian; the Speaker of the Parliament, a Shia Muslim and the Prime Minister, a Sunni Muslim.
As a caution, Guyanese should note this “consociational” arrangement has not solved their fractious politics.
