Back in 2012, as the polarisation of politics was becoming intensified both quantitively and qualitatively in the US, political scientists Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson offered some very salutary advice to our political elites in their book “The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It”. Since then, the polarisation has deepened both in the US and in Guyana, and the advice has become even more relevant.
“If politics is the art of the possible, then compromise is the artistry of democracy. Unless one partisan ideology holds sway over all branches of government, compromise is necessary to govern for the benefit of all citizens. A rejection of compromise biases politics in favour of the status quo, even when the rejection risks crisis.
“Compromise is difficult, but governing a democracy without compromise is impossible. Why is compromise so hard in a democracy when it is undoubtedly necessary? Much of the resistance to compromise lies in another necessary part of the democratic process: campaigning for political office. Though valuable in its place, campaigning is increasingly intruding into governing, where it is less helpful. The means of winning an office are subverting the ends of governing once in office. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that in (Guyana) “every day is election day in the permanent campaign.
“Resistance to democratic compromise can be kept in check by a contrary cluster of attitudes and arguments — a compromising mindset — which favours adapting one’s principles and respecting one’s opponents. It is the mindset more appropriate for governing, because it enables politicians more readily to recognize opportunities for desirable compromise. When enough politicians adopt it enough of the time, the spirit of compromise prevails.
“In general, compromise is an agreement in which all sides sacrifice something in order to improve on the status quo from their perspective, and in which the sacrifices are at least partly determined by the other sides’ will. The sacrifice involves not merely getting less than you want, but also, thanks to your opponents, getting less than you think you deserve. The sacrifice typically involves trimming your principles. We call these defining characteristics of compromise mutual sacrifice and willful opposition.”
Modern post-WWII Guyanese politics has been characterised by the manipulation of ethnic identities to garner electoral support within democratic majoritarian electoral rules that led to ethnic fissures and frequent eruptions of ethnically-directed violence. Because of its resort to rigging elections between 1968 and 1992 to hold on to power, the PNC felt there was no need to compromise in its policies or programmes. In fact, it declared itself paramount over the state, and ruled with an iron fist between 1964 and 1992.
After free and fair elections were resumed in 1992, it was evident that the spirit of unilateralism had percolated so deeply into the sinews of the PNC that compromise was a non-starter. They refused to accept the result of the elections of 1997, and unleashed massive protests that careened inevitably into ethnically- directed violence. The PPP was driven to the bargaining table under the auspices of Caricom, and made massive compromises to create a political environment that would be acceptable to the PNC. Among these was the truncation of its term of office by two years; a massive constitutional revision that reduced the monarchical powers of the President and introduced four Parliamentary Sectoral Committees to scrutinize governmental activities in real-time. There was also a Parliamentary Management Committee that would schedule the Parliamentary agenda. But none of these compromises satisfied the PNC, and Guyana careened into the worst outbreak of ethnic violence in its history.
Serendipitously, however, the demographics of Guyana had become altered, so there is now no ethnic majority to automatically deliver power to any one party. Political logic would suggest that this creates a structural condition to encourage compromise and eschew appealing to ethnic sentiments, but to reach across ethnic divides. Sadly, the PNC refuses to accept this logic, and ironically criticizes the PPP for practising such cross-ethnic mobilization as “slave catching”.
