Talks
Editorial
Stabroek News
June 30, 2002
At this stage it is probably only the politicians who have any idea as to why the dialogue cannot get underway again, and even some of them might be a bit hazy on the subject. As for the rest of us, we simply don’t know and neither do we care. Will the parties which dominate our lives in this neck of the South American rainforest not try and grasp the notion that sane, sensible, law-abiding citizens of all races are weary. Simply weary. We don’t want to hear another word about who is responsible for what, or who has traduced whom, or who has said what in which arena, or why the obvious cannot be done. There is nothing that either side can say which in one form or another we have not heard until we could recite it in our sleep.
There can be few societies in the Western hemisphere which have been so held to ransom by their politicians, and so ruined by them. The passage of forty years and three generations may have brought some new actors onto the political stage, but it surely has not brought any additional lines, let alone a different play. So true to form, in this, the second year of the new millennium, we are still enmeshed in one of our traditional political tangles, except that this one is even more complicated than any of its predecessors - if that is conceivable.
As has been noted before in these columns we have to distinguish between the immediate crisis, and the underlying problem of politics in Guyana. The last-named does not have an easy solution, and in the long term it might even require foreign mediation; whatever the case, it cannot be dealt with now, although it impinges directly on what is happening now.
The immediate issue is the crime crisis, a crisis, which it might be added, has taken on all kinds of political dimensions. What needs to be done is to isolate as far as is possible the crime issues from the political ones. And for that to happen the political leaders of both major parties have to begin by issuing a joint statement about crime, which potentially could encompass PNC/R concerns about extra-judicial killings and the like. At least then there will be some basic area of agreement which is politically neutral (as far as anything is politically neutral in this country), and which will allow some space for all the other matters like the parliamentary committee impasse to be tackled separately at a later stage.
Of course, as indicated above, the question of the resumption of the dialogue in general is ensnared in a controversy so convoluted that it would defeat the best efforts of the most dedicated dialectician to unravel. Somewhere between the PNC/R’s legalisms and the PPP/C’s imprecisions and the sheer cussedness of both parties, a knot was tied that would have made Gordius proud.
But is it beyond the capacities of both sides to imagine President Jagdeo (he is the head of the Government, after all) inviting Mr Hoyte to meet just on the topic of crime? He could suggest an agenda, and invite Mr Hoyte to add his items to such an agenda. And is it beyond the capacities of both sides to imagine Mr Hoyte accepting? And if everyone is so tied up with conditions and pre-conditions and whatever else in relation to the dialogue, could not this meeting be viewed as being convened outside the existing formal dialogue process? Or is that too much strain on the imagination?
Of course, talking to the Government at any level would require that the PNC/R explain why this is necessary to its supporters. Is it really too difficult for them to go into the now radicalized East Coast villages in particular and set out to the communities what the parameters of possibility are? As the leaders well know, those parameters do not include the removal of the Government by extra-constitutional means; that is something which will simply not be tolerated by the international community. And those parameters also do not include lower-level violence directed against the Indian community.
Could they not reiterate that there are no short cuts? However painful, however tiresome, however tedious, however drawn-out, negotiation - and peaceful pressure when that stalls - is the only route to change. And that process of negotiation in the current circumstances starts with the Leader of the Opposition and the President.
The PPP/C has consistently said that it is prepared to continue the dialogue. But in a general sense at other levels of negotiation it has been reluctant to make substantial concessions which would allow the opposition a real say in decision-making. (The initial dispute over the dialogue related to implementation, not agreements as such.) That is because it has refused to acknowledge to itself that the underlying problem it faces when governing this country pertains to a structural flaw in the nature of our democracy. If the PNC were to condense into a little puff of steam in the over-heated air of Congress Place tomorrow, the governing party would still find itself facing the same problems.
If it could open its mind in principle, at least, to the possibility of the need for future fundamental change, and the current need for some level of meaningful inclusion, the path of negotiation would be less rocky. Is it too much to hope that the PPP/C will explain to its supporters that their security in the long term lies in political accommodation, and that concessions made with inclusiveness in mind do not equate to weakness?
Is it in addition beyond the resources of both parties to encourage grass roots contacts between the community leaders of the different villages in an effort to seek local solutions to violence, friction and fear, particularly along the Buxton, Friendship, Annandale axis?
In this country processes begin at the top, rarely, unfortunately, at the grass roots level. It is therefore particularly problematic that in our present circumstances the Government is tied up with the Caricom Heads of Government Summit, and Mr Hoyte is out of the country. There is no hope, therefore, that anything will happen immediately. Nevertheless, in the meantime will the politicians just stop talking at one another for a change, and listen to the people - not their own hard-line supporters - but to the silent, exasperated majority. That majority wants talks (however they are described and whether or not they are part of the official dialogue) between President Jagdeo and Mr Hoyte to begin again.