In Guyana, from the beginning of modern politics in 1947, voting became increasingly influenced by ethnicity. With the Indian segment becoming a majority by the 1960s, it was not a coincidence that elections became ethnic censuses. One of the dilemmas of democracy in Guyana under the Westminster majoritarian/ plurality rules is how do we control this now reflexive formation of ethnic “factions” to preclude real or perceived tyrannies of the majority? It does not matter the majority may be wise or just, the potential permanent exclusion of the minority from executive office vitiates claims of substantive “democracy”.
The minority African section had to deal with the possibility of being forever excluded from the Executive after 1961. This was the “African Ethnic Security Dilemma” in Guyana: if they played by the rules of Democracy, they would be excluded from the Executive. As predicted by us in 1993, because of other structural conditions, they resisted that exclusion by parliamentary (1992-1997) and extra-parliamentary means – including armed rebellion, between 1998 and 2008.
Democracy also presumes that the State will be managed for all the citizens of the country: the managers should be servants of the people. Hegel called them the “universal class”. If the staffing of the institutions of the state are in the control of any one “faction”, this presents another dilemma for democracy. Typically, the majority faction controls the Executive and the organs of state, and in fact this is what produces the “tyranny of the majority”. However, if there are circumstances in which a minority has control of the state institutions, especially if these include the Armed Forces and the Civil Service and the Judiciary, then the will of the majority can also be denied, since the minority would calculate that they have the wherewithal to challenge the majority without state sanctions.
This was – and remains – the situation in Guyana, where the minority African section is vastly overrepresented in the key state institutions mentioned, especially in the Armed Forces, and used this incumbency to challenge the numerical advantage of the Indians between 1992 and 2011. This creates an “Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma”; for since, even though they were the majority under the Westminster system, and could form the Executive after “free-and-fair” elections, that Executive could not guarantee stability, especially for its supporters. Before taking any policy decision, the Executive – under the “Principle of Anticipated Reactions” – always has to take into consideration whether the opposition would initiate violence under cover of their control of State institutions. At the same time, the Indian supporters of the Executive are under an omnipresent fear of being physically attacked whenever the question of national power is contested.
With sustained post-1980 migration of Indian Guyanese exceeding that of African Guyanese, the former’s numerical advantage was lost by 2012, when the census showed them dropping to 39.5% of the population. The results of the 2015 elections showed that, with most of the growing “Mixed” population continuing to cleave politically to African Guyanese, the African Security Dilemma has been resolved. It is expected that the minority Amerindian population would also be induced to support the incumbent government with the politics of patronage. For insurance, the present contretemps over the GECOM Chair have convinced many that a surgical rigging is being arranged as insurance. With oil revenues expected to start flowing by 2020 when the next elections will be held, it would appear that the odds of the party of the Indians – the PPP – (not an Indian party) returning to power in 2020 is very slim.
The Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma, therefore, has now been transformed into a straight-out possible oppression of a minority group by a Government that combines the “authority” of electoral office with the “power” of being supported by the key institutions of the state – the Police, Army and the Civil Service. Even though the PPP was in office for 23 years and a Disciplined Services Commission – following the armed uprising against the state – recommended in 2004 that recruitment for the Disciplined Forces be structured to ensure its composition more broadly reflect the composition of the country, this was never implemented.
Yet, even as the present PNC-led coalition government moved to increase the numbers in the Disciplined Forces, the new recruits remain overwhelmingly drawn from the African Guyanese community. (To be continued)
