A missed opportunity?
The ancient Greeks used to believe that one of the ways in which the gods gave man his come-uppance was by granting his wishes too completely. Certainly, the unambiguous majority so sought after by the PPP in 1997 and which they achieved, has brought nothing but travail to the party and the nation. It is one of the ironies of history that a very much more slender majority in the last election, while superficially less appealing, would nevertheless not have stoked the fires of fear and distrust in the opposition to the extent that actually happened. That in turn conceivably might have allowed the politicians on both sides to work out the possible permutations for a more secure future in a less threatening atmosphere. Both sides of the political divide want security. Paradoxically, however, total security for the one means total insecurity for the other. The more institutions and senior government appointments the party in office seeks to control, the greater will be the anxiety of the opposition. No one can govern a country effectively if forty per cent of the population feels alienated and insecure. And without at least the tacit acceptance of the framework of governance by the mass of the people, any administration, unless it is going to assume dictatorial powers, will by definition be weak. Since December 1997 the PNC has challenged the legitimacy of the election and of the government. Although it has never articulated it, behind it all, nevertheless, is an implied challenge to the legitimacy of the political framework itself. While in the longer term the demographic balance might shift, and much sooner than that structural changes might occur at the party level with unforeseen consequences, from the vantage point of the present generation the party which represents Black Guyanese in this country can never hope to win an open election. It is for this reason that both the PPP and the PNC sometimes appear to be speaking different languages. The PPP believes that the problem is getting the PNC to respect the 'rule of law' and play by the current democratic rules. It fears a more flexible framework - in fact, it fears political concessions of any kind - possibly at least partly because it suspects that the PNC behind it all wants to seize power by illegitimate means. Its solution to the fundamental problem of Guyanese politics, therefore, is the rather naive one of a kind of constitutional status quo and a docile PNC. For its part, the PNC perceives the unwillingness of the PPP to make any meaningful concessions within the current framework as evidence of the latter's desire for total control. The conventional wisdom in the southern wards is that the governing party only compromises when Black people take to the streets, and in fairness, the administration has shown little flexibility when negotiating with its opponents. For all of that the PNC has not put up a coherent intellectual position on the matter of alternative options to the present political arrangements which would allow it to function within the mainstream and the rules. Its apparent attachment to the route of violence leaves it open to the charge that indeed it is really not committed to the democratic process. Leaving aside the fact that violence can find no justification whatever in our circumstances, the international climate too is such that it will not be tolerated indefinitely. If we cannot find a solution to our problems ourselves, then we run the risk of having one imposed upon us - which is hardly a true solution at all. The golden opportunity for both sides, but particularly for the PNC came with the Constitutional Reform Commission (CRC). Yet they do not appear to have taken advantage of it. What they offered was simply none-too-radical amendments to the current constitution, but the basic structure was left intact. The PPP, as expected, was conservative in its approach to change, but really it was for the PNC to challenge it with an alternative vision. Now the time has come and almost gone and we still do not know what fate awaits us around the corner. Will the modest amendments recommended by the CRC really be sufficient to bring the main portion of the PNC into the body of the church? What guarantee do these give the party's supporters that they and their interests will have real security? How do both parties see the future? Have they sat down in a hard-nosed way to consider the real options, as opposed to the imaginary options to which they appear so attached? Can they, at this late stage still cut the Gordian knot? The Guyanese public, inured to decades of political nonsense is not holding its breath.
|