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Federalism: A Framework for Dealing with Ethnic Conflict in Guyana By Ravi Dev |
Carter's Letter to Guyanese Caribbean Intellectual Tradition Indians in the New World
Indians Book Publishing in the Caribbean The jJmaica Progressive League & Adult Suffrage
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By Anand Sawant Mulloo |
March 22, 2008: This paper is meant to outline the evolution of the Indian diaspora, loaded as it is with historical, sociological and psychological complexes that render it so fascinating and so challenging as it undergoes dynamic changes under pressure from contrary local and international influences.
Policy of Assimilation.
It was under the French governor, Mahe de Labourdonnais, around
1735, that the first batch of Indian Immigrants, then called
esclaves a talents or skilled slaves, were brought from Pondicherry,
then a French station, into Mauritius, called Ile de France,
under the administration of the French East india Company, to
build the port and urban infrastructure of Port Louis. Since
they were mostly males and were mixed with the African slaves
they had no alternative but to inter-marry African women and
they gave birth to subsequent generations of Creoles- of mixed
African and Indian origins. As slaves, they did not enjoy any
individual freedom whatsoever, including cultural or religious.
And as had happened to all African slaves throughout the colonies,
they were Christianised, particularly under the powerful Roman
Catholic Church. This was to mark the future history of multi-racial
Mauritius dominated by French culture and European civilization
and which pursued the policy of assimilation, otherwise absorbing
them into French culture and wiping out their ancestral culture.
The result was that the Creoles learnt to emulate the white who
kept them at a social distance while they imbibed the white racial
prejudice against Indian and African traditions.
Since the Creole descendants were cut off completely from
their ancestral homelands, they had to live and share the same
conditions in the colony. In course of time the descendants of
Indians lost their Indian identity and became Creolised in the
process of adaptation to the new social reality under the demanding
French masters. They lost touch with their ancestral values and
began to adopt a hybrid French culture and manners while maintaining
Indian cuisine, some surviving Indian habits in their folklore.
In other words, they lost their Indianness, the Indian brand
of culture, language, civilization, pride in Indian history and
in Mother India.
Most of the Creole women who worked as domestic servants in
the French houses began to assimilate some of the French habits
and manners which were held up as European and therefore as superior,
like the drinking habit and the lavish living which would land
them into adapting the pleasure-seeking and spending habit. Naturally
enough, they discarded the more rigorous Indian customs which
they thought did not adapt to their Euro-centric, easy-going
social and cultural environment. Alongside these manners, they
absorbed the racial and colour prejudices of their masters which
denigrated the Black and Brown races as primitives. This meant
that whatever came from the West was deemed necessarily superior
and what came from Africa and India was inevitably inferior.
From the beginning, the Catholic Church has had its share of
blame in propagating the anti-Hinduism virus in its eagerness
to proselytize the Hindus and it ended up spreading a general
anti-Hindu hatred in the colony. Thus, the Creoles were made
to believe that they were heirs to European culture and were
consequently vastly superior to the pagan Hindus. From this time
onward, many of the Creoles developed the anti-Indian complex
which was based on the anti-Hindu prejudice they picked from
their priests and their white masters who played the dirty politics
of divide-and-rule. .
Now, this process of Creolisation arising from the mixture
of Black and Brown races, took place mostly in the urban areas
affecting pockets of Indians stranded from the bulk of their
rural and agrarian stock. The erosion of Indianness and the spreading
of Creolisation became a permanent feature in all the colonies-
in the Indian Ocean, or Mauritius, Reunion, Rodrigues, or in
the Caribbean countries, in Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, Martinique,
Guadeloupe, Guyana. It has continued unabated even into our own
time with the spread of westernization, tbe US-funded evangelization
campaigns, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and other political
and international forces.
The old Indian diaspora. In contrast, a century later,
with the abolition of slavery, in 1834, the first batch of
Indentured Indian Immigrants, mainly from the hilly areas of
Bihar, was introduced into the Crown colony of Mauritius on a
trial basis. Unlike the French, British colonization adopted
a more liberal approach to religious freedom to the Indians.
They ruled the colony with the partnership of the big French
planters, just as they did in India with the partnership of kings.
Later, this was followed by successive arrivals of shiploads
of other Indian Immigrants, known as the old diaspora, sourced
from inside the villages of Bihar, Madras, Andhra and Bombay
provinces. On landing at the Immigration depot, now Apravashi
Ghats, they were distributed to different plantations where they
could live together as close-knit communities and were able to
retain their distinct cultural, linguistic, religious and civilizational
identity.
After the successful adaptation of the Indentured labourers
to the plantation labour in Mauritius, the Indenture system was
extended to the other plantation colonies of South Africa, the
Caribbean and in Fiji. Taking over from the slaves and working
under White masters who were still impregnated with the slave
masters' mentality, the Indians had to face harsh conditions
in the plantations. The colonial laws smacked of slavery and
were extremely oppressive, including abuse and violence. Wages
were kept extremely low, aggravated by the obnoxious double cut
system on every single day's of absence. They were granted poor
quality food ration of rice,. dhall, oil and salt. Undaunted,
the Indians could pull through as they were traditionally used
to simple living and hard-working, believing in the virtue of
self-sacrifice and performing good karma. The ambition of the
indentured labourers was to save the maximum possible within
the shortest possible time in order to free themselves from the
grips of the estate camps and set up life as free labourers and
small planters on their own in a village, at the expiry of the
Indenture contract. This is why they worked day and night and
got engaged in a variety of occupations to maximize their income
by growing vegetable, keeping cows, goats, poultry and doing
a variety of craft jobs for sale in the local market.
If they had been able to put up with the hardship, it was
due to the resourcefulness of Indianness which was rooted in
the preservation of their family and social structure, the strength
of their ancestral values, their close-knit community living
which ensured solid social control and maintained law and order,
kept the creeping social evils of divorces, domestic violence,
delinquency, criminality at bay. However, it was their very doggedness
to stick to the values of Indianness that rescued them from self-degradation.
This was made up of a package of ethical-moral and spiritual
values which pulled them together and invigorated their individual
and collective strength. It comprised of a rare combination of
winning qualities, including a sense of self-discipline, of personal
endurance, a fighting spirit- both physical and moral. They
were respected for their proverbial patience, their tolerance,
their honesty, their work ethics, their adherence to the values
of peace, non-violence and truth, their spirit of fraternity
and their willingness to help one another to share the social
burden and face the white oppressors.
Contrary to what had happened earlier to the Indian slaves
who had given up their Indianness too easily though under duress
as they were forced to embrace French culture and Catholicism,
the Indian villagers had no desire to emulate their white masters.
They preferred to live peacefully in the sugar estates while
cherishing the values of Indian culture, civilization and religion
which gave a meaning and purpose to their lives. Yet they kept
open the option of incorporating certain specific aspects of
European culture at their own free will without giving up on
their essential Indianness.
In the nineteenth century, the Indian Immigrants stuck doggedly
to their ancestral way of living. They wore the same simple dress,
the same headgears, lived in similar straw huts which they constructed
themselves, sat on mats, fetched grass and firewood from the
nearby wasteland or forests, drew water from the wells, washed
their clothes in the nearby river or streams, baked the roti
on the tawa, cooked the steaming rice, dhall, curry and vegetable
culled from the kitchen garden, grinding their cereals, pounding
their spices on the stone in the Indian tradition. The children
played the same traditional games and spoke the same Bhojpuri
or other Indian languages as were current in their ancestral
villages. Around their habitations, they would plant mango, banana,
pipal trees, betel and leafy vegetable creepers, some ayurvedic
plants like the tulsi, the ayapana. They would keep cows, goats
or poultry for milk and food and would sell the produce for profits.
Their mode of transportation was the simple ox-carts just as
it was in their ancestral villages and they preserved some of
their ancestral occupations as gardeners, carpenters, builders,
tinsmiths, tailors, hairdressers, cowkeepers, carters, milk sellers,
money lenders, small manufacturers and traders.
Village Soliarity. They used to meet in the village
shrine, temple, kovil, or mosque, where they would chant chowpai
from the Ramayana and draw sustenance from the exile, the trials
and tribulations of Ram and Sita, assisted by Hanumn, the monkey
God whom they visualized as flying on the hill tops and hovering
over the fields for their protection.They used to plant a Hanuman
"jhandha" in their yard overlooking their simple shrine
where they would offer daily worship. They joined together in
a spirit of solidarity in the performance of the elaborate birth,
death ceremonies, particularly the colourful Hindu weddings,
complete with the rituals, the songs, dances, open house reception,
involving the voluntary community solidairty in the organization
of the different phases of the weddings. By way of rituals and
entertertainment, they continued to celebrate the same festivals
of holy, Divali, Dasera, Taipussum, Eid in a sober manner. From
time to time, they organized drama and dance performances from
the Ramayana and held regular soul-stirring bhajan sessions to
add colour and gaity to their hum-drum lives.
More important still, they cherished the Indian ethical values
of family life, of strict monogamy, caring for their children
and for the elderly, the respect of the master and of authority
and the reverence of nature and of their deity. These ancestral
values made for peaceful living and social harmony- vital in
a multi-racial society. In other words, these simple Hindu folks
laid the foundation of independence and of democratic living
based on the principles of mutual co-operation, tolerance, understanding
and respecting the rights of others. This is no doubt, in a wider
context, a reflection on the success of India as the world's
largest democracy in contrast to the neighbouring Islamic countries,
home to fundamentalism, intolerence, authoritarianism and chronic
violence.
Gradually, the Indians began to drop some of the more oppressive
features of the Indian traditions - of dowry, early marriage,
caste rigidity while the practice of widow burning or suttee
never took place in the colonies.
It was distinctly a "them and us" cultural confrontation
between the Indians who generally bonded together under one
common cultural identity, speaking the common Bhojpuri, as against
the arrogant French-speaking oppressors, and their allies the
Coloured. Under this dormant racial antagonism, the Indians needed
the White as much as the latter needed the Indians to oil the
sugar industry and the island's economy. Functioning in a capitalist
economy, where private enterprise and risk-taking are the economic
pillars, the white Oligarchy valued the entrepreneurial spirit
of the Indians, their hard work and self-sacrifices. Indirectly,
they used the Indians as their economic levers in the process
of the centralization of the sugar industry when they parcelled
out their old sugar estates to the small Indian planters. Slowly,
from this class of small planters there arose the future independent
middle class Indians, whose descendants would emerge as professionals,
businessmen, traders and rulers of this country and ready to
spread their wings across other western countries.
But with the dawn of the twentieth century, with the arrival
of Mahatma Gandhi ( November 1901), followed by Manilal Doctor
(1907-11), and the frequent visits of Indian religious leaders
and reformers, Indians in Mauritius began to take cognition of
their distinct Indianness. The message was invariably less on
Bhakti Yoga and increasingly more on Karma Yoga as advocated
by Lord Krishna. The new interpretation of Karma Yoga was examplified
by the lives and teachings of foremost Karma Yogis, namely Swami
Dayanand, Swami Vivekanand, Lokmanya Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale
and Mahatma Gandhi. They all taught that one should elevate oneself
by one's own efforts and one should not act for one's selfish
interests alone but for the welfare of others in a spirit of
duty and sacrifice.
Swami Dayanand (1824-83). Inspired by the lesson of
the First War of Indian Independence and the awakening of the
spirit of Indian nationalism in 1857, Swami Dayanand founded
the Arya Samaj in 1875. He initiated new intellectual and rational
traditions, different from the emotional and non-intellectual
Bhakti traditions which only induced a spirit of docility and
blind acceptance of authority. He used public debates and a critical
and rational spirit to denounce the false teachings and superstitions.
His followers, both in India and abroad, adopted his critical
and argumentative traditions. He validated his teachings by referring
to the Vedas as the source book of Hindu scriptures. He urged
the Hindus to go back to the basics as taught in the Vedas with
its focus on the search for truth and rationality against the
prevailing ignorance and superstitions. He laid stress on the
value of social reforms, of the emancipation of women, the remarriage
of widows and the granting of equal status to women in society.
Author of ten books, he stressed on the primacy of acquiring
education, the need to make personal efforts for self-improvement.
Consequently, the DAV College was founded in Lahore and a large
number of schools were founded giving way to a vigorous intellectual
movement which spread across India and abroad. A stalwart and
fearless yogi, he highlighted the importance of the full development
of the body-mind- and spirit. By rejecting untouchability and
the caste system which he associated with traditional priestly
domination, he championed the Dalit cause. He used Hindi as
the medium of unification. In other words, he contributed immensely
to the emergence of modern independent India. His message went
directly into the heart and mind of the downtrodden Hindu who
felt called upon to rise on his feet and claim his dignity, his
honour and civic rights and do his share to throw out foreign
domination. ( Satish Chandra, 6 August 2004).
Consequently, an army of dedicated Arya Samaj missionaries
and reformers, led by Pandit Cassinath Kistoe, scoured the towns
and villages of this island to propagate the Vedic message and
set up branches of the Samaj. The result was that it re-invigorated
Indian society physically, socially and mentally and inaugurated
a new era of reforms and of modernity based on the acceptance
of truth and rationality and the rejection of superstitions.
It triggered a vigorous intellectual and educational movement
and a nascent Hindu nationalism and a tremendous interest in
social emancipation that paved the way for the struggle for independence
and the democratic tradition.
The emergence of Indian nationalism, championed by Mahatma
Gandhi and represented intellectually by Rabindranath Tagore
and the western-educated Jawaharlal Nehru awakened their sense
of dignity, honour and self-respect. It fuelled their spirit
of Indian patriotism and identity destined to culminate in the
long-term struggle for political freedom from foreign rule under
the leadership of the Mauritius Labour Party, headed by Sir Seewoosagur
Ramgoolam.
Chacha Ramgoolam (1900-85) stands as a bridge between the
East and the West, the past and the present. As the son of an
Indentured Immigrant and the brother of a small planter, living
in the remote village of Belle Rive, Ramgoolam was destined
to emerge as the future leader of this country, the man who brought
it to independence and who endowed it with a solid, democratic
constitution. Having studied in London as a doctor, he fell
under the spell of the Fabian Society and the British Labour
Party where he mastered the fine art of British politics and
adopted the value of freedom, democracy and human rights. Rooted
in the village of Belle Rive in the district of Flacq, Ramgoolam
never forgot his humble rural origins as he kept in permanent
touch with the villagers throughout his exceptionally long political
career, 1935-85.
After leaving the prestigious Royal College in Curepipe, Mauritius,
for London, he must have undergone a sea change during his fifteen
years stay in the British capital, then the intellectual and
political platform of the universe. There, he saw himself caught
in the stormy struggle for Indian independence as he joined
and headed the local branch of the Indian National Congress and
mixed up with Indian nationalist students then militating for
the freedom of India under the glare of the Scotland Yard. While
retaining all the characteristics of Indianness as the the son
of an Immigrant, he remained loyal to the values of Indian culture
based on peace, non-violence, tolerance, hard-work, humility,
respect of elders, of women and of the common people. He skilfully
blended these Eastern values with the British intellectual values,
particularly its gentlemanly culture, its British dress code,
a strong love of reading and of permanent learning, its scientific
and rational thinking, its technology, its modernity, its sense
of justice and fair play, its political pragmatism, its diplomatic
finesse and its philosophy of gradual change- all of which put
him far ahead of his Mauritian contemporaries. .
Perhaps from among the vast array of contributions of SSR
to this country, we may single out his adherence to democratic
values which he securely embedded on the Mauritian soil as his
lasting legacy. Thanks to his long stay in power as the Premier,
the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister of Mauritius from 1957
to 1982, he was able to endow the country with a liberal, democratic
constitution which guarantees the two party system, majority
rule, the fundamental freedoms and liberties of the individual,
human rights, the rule of law, the guarantee of minority rights,
religious freedom, an impartial judiciary, the separation of
powers between the Parliament, the Executive and the Judiciary,
an independent police, independent Public Service Commission
and other rights. These have stood the test of time and democracy
is firmly entrenched since 1968, the year of independence.
As the modernization process gathered speed under Sir Seewoosagur
Ramgoolam, the Mauritian villages were being transformed out
of recognition from the backwaters they were under the former
White oligarchy and British colonization. Suddenly, in the wake
of new prosperity and national planning, the straw huts made
way for lovely bungalows, equipped with modern amenities, including
running tap water, electricity, green lawns, good road and transport
infrastructure, telephone, children's playgrounds and sports
fields, shopping areas, schools, dispensaries, markets. But
the underlying spirit of Indianness which had constituted the
essence of the villages had remained as the undying theme except
that it had been upgraded with a touch of modernity. Similarly,
cars and buses have replaced the ox-carts. Modern fashions,
electronic devices, the bharat nattyam dances and pop music,
the internet and telecommunications manned by professionals have
replaced the earlier days of amateurism and folklore.
It must be added that Indians, particularly the professionals,
who have migrated into certain democratic Western countries feel
secure in the exercise of their rights. As a matter of fact,
many of them feel happier and more prosperous than in their own
homeland where they are victims to political manipulation, hampered
by the allocation of reserved seats enforced by law for the benefit
of certain specific minorities, so that meritocracy is often
sacrificed for mediocrity.
Indians Under Fire. Mauritius is among the rare former
British colonies which has witnessed the proper working of democracy,
the establishment of peace and social harmony, the Rule of Law
and the guranteed rights of its citizens. It contrasts sharply
with other former British colonies, including Guyana where Dr
Chady Jagan, its first prime minister, was ousted from power
to make way for Burnham who ruled with an iron fist and resorted
to dictatorship and State terrorism to impose Black minority
rule on the Asian majority. In Fiji, the rights of the Indians
have been foiled on more than two occasions when the elected
Indian Prime Minister had been ousted from power by military
coup.
In Malaysia, the situation facing the 2.3 million minority
Indians amidst 60% Moslem Malays is really precarious as the
constitution does not guarantee minority rights, and religious
freedom. The BN Coalition government, in power since independence
in 1957, rules like an autocratic regime with the semblance of
democracy as it wields absolute power over Parliament, the Executive
and the Judiciary and over the media. The Opposition and the
people do not enjoy any freedom of protest as the oppressive
Internal Security Act is clamped down on the least display of
public demonstration or opposition and the leaders are simply
arrested and jailed without being proved guilty in a court of
law. Religious freedom does not exist as the government proceeds
from time to time with the demolition of Hindu shrines and temples
in a bid to force them to embrace Islam. The civil service, the
police, the government institutions and even private business
companies are packed with Malays to the exclusion of the more
meritorious Indians and Chinese.
In Pakistan, in 1948, after Partition, 15% of the population
who were Hindus, the original inhabitants of the country, had
preferred to stay behind on their ancestral property. But under
the authoritarian Islamic Republic of Pakistan they were under
pressure to convert with the result that today only 1 % of the
population are Hindus. So, when you look around at the fate of
the minority Hindus in the Islamic or Moslem-dominated countries,
you come across the same dismal picture of anti-Hindu oppression
and the marked absence of democracy, minority rights, religious
freedom or the rule of law.
The creation of Pakistan has had negative repercussions on
the Moslem population of Mauritius, who, despite being of Indian
origins, tended to identify themselves with the anti-Indian posture
of Pakistan. As a matter of fact, in the crucial 1967 elections
the vast majority joined the PMSD in its divide-and-rule policy,
dictated by the Franco-Mauritians, to oppose independence. The
same thing happened with a section of the Tamil population of
Mauritius who joined the PMSD under the banner of Tamil United
Party under the false slogan that "Tamils are not Hindus".
The consequence was that the Indo-Mauritian majority was whittled
down and the PMSD scored 44% votes in the elections. After the
decline of the PMSD in the 1970, the rising MMM opposition was
to harvest the PMSD"s anti-Hindu electoral support.
But the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1970's in the
wake of Ayatoola Khomeini in Iran and its spread across the world,
aggravated by the Middle East crisis and the rise of the oil-rich
Gulf countries have had the effect of driving a wedge between
a majority of the Mauritian Moslems from their Indianness. The
geo-political and ideological situation is further complicated
by the geographical nearness of the Gulf countries, helped by
the ease of travels and of telecommunications, the annual contingent
to the Hajj pilgrimage, the effects of mass media and the inflow
of oil funds- all put together- have produced a new Arabisation
trend among the majority of the local Moslems. This can be seen
in their assumption of a new Arab identity which is rendered
visible in their wearing long beards and Islamic dress, the long
white robes, and the veils..
Despite the above anti-Indianness trend, secular India has
pursued an open, all-inclusive policy which provides security
and equal opportunities to all its citizens, Hindus, Moslems
and Christians alike. At the same time, it reflects on the liberality,
democracy, tolerance and magnanimity of the Hindus. It emphasizes
the permanent characteristic of the maturity of their character,
culture, civilization and religion. It should be remembered that
India, the world's largest democracy, is home to 140 million
Muslims who enjoy super-privileges as a minority amidst a population
made up of 80% tolerant Hindus. Obviously, during a millennium
of Moghul rule, Hindus were persecuted with the "Hindu Tax"
which forced many of them to embrace Islam to escape payment.
However, the Indian Moslems, mostly of Hindu origins, sharing
the same culture, language, entertainment and environment, enjoy
equal access to all the facilities available in India. As a result,
they are far better off than their counter-parts in authoritarian
Pakistan plagued with serial military dictatorships, instability,
chronic terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, poverty and backwardness.
Secular India accomodates all its citizens who have generally
refrained from engaging in anti-India terrorist activities. This
is despite the fact that since the time of President General
Zial-ul-Hak, Pakistan has been pursuing an aggressive proxy war
on India, exporting terrorists, training camps, instructors and
weapons into Jammu-Kashmir and deep inside India, targeting its
economic symbols and mass transportation system as well as the
Indian Parliament. Briefly, it can be said that India has managed
to keep its Moslem population happy and contented so that they
have refrained from joining the camp of Islamic terrorists in
Pakistan, Afghanistan or in the Middle East. This shows the triumph
of Indianness which is rooted in democratic principle, in freedom
of opinion, in tolerance and peaceful and non-violent living,
dating back to the Vedic and Buddhist period. The effects of
India's inclusive secularism have ensured that the Indian diaspora
are spared from the instability and insecurity sparked by imported
fundamentalist terrorism.
Finally, when we compare the figures of the percentage of
Hindus in Mauritiu over the past four decades since independence,
we are startled at the rapid decline of its demography. This
is explained by the fact of the large erosion caused by the intense
US-funded evangelization campaign which has gained every single
street and nook and corner of the island with their numerous
houses of God and Christian sects vying with one another to convert
the Hindus. Independent Mauritius finds itself plunged back into
the conditions of Ile de France under the French East India Company
when the skilled Indian slaves were forced to convert and Creolise.
History is now repeating itself, It won't be long before the
Hindu majority- as is also happening very rapidly in the Caribbean
countries- will be depleted into a minority and exposed to oppression
under an intolerant majority. This why we have to watch out and
safeguard our precious heritage of Indianness, a gift to the
world.
Editor's Note: Anand Sawant Mulloo is author of Voices
of the Indian Diaspora
Email: anandmulloo@intnet.mu
Website: www.writeranandmulloo.com
Presented at Conference on Democratization and Conflict Resolution, University of Guyana, February 4-6th 2004
"The essence of Federalism is not to be found in a particular set of institutions but in the institutionalisation of particular relationships among the participants of political life."
Modern Guyanese political history
is characterised by bouts of intense conflict between the two
major ethnic groups in Guyana Indians and Africans. There
have been several explanations proffered for the enduring conflict,
including the cleavages in the society stemming from cultural
and class differences; unequal power-resources (political, social,
economic) in those different groups; an inappropriate political
system; power-drunk leaders, racist views of other groups, political
ideologies that stress armed struggle, etc. Unfortunately, for
the majority of Guyanese the explanation comes down to bad
people especially "bad people" from the other
ethnic group, creating mayhem.
It is even more unfortunate that of recent, even some academics
have joined the chorus of blaming individuals and particular
groups for the violence. These academics do this somewhat more
sophisticatedly by imputing mindsets on these individuals and
groups, such as racism and casteism, without taking due care
to uncover and delineate structures that would have structured
such mindsets. This amounts to proposing that the only way to
eliminate the violence would be to eliminate the bad people.
This is nihilistic and such approaches must be condemned.
If nothing else studies from the social studies must grapple
with the social construction of reality and actions and
therefore hold out the possibility of social change.
After, inter alia, examining the specific instances of
ethnic violence and the several purported causes, this paper
concludes that there are no mono-causal explanations for the
enduring conflict and that additionally, one has to distinguish
between proximate and systemic factors. Even the systemic factors
operate at different levels. The political elites have defined
their goals for Guyana in terms of the achievements of the developed
Western nations especially Britain, which was the governing
colonial power for most of Guyana's history. One of the deeper
systemic factors precipitating the proximate causes stems from
the politicians' attempts to reach an end-state in Guyana that
their erstwhile models achieved only after undergoing, sequentially
over many centuries, three massive macro-societal revolutions
- centred on national identity, political participation and economic
distribution.
Attempts to conflate these three revolutions, which sought to
expand the equitable distribution of power in the model societies,
and achieve them simultaneously, have engendered severe contradictions
in Guyana leading eventually, in some instances, to ethnic
conflict. These contradictions are almost inevitable since institutional
innovations sought to be introduced in one area may require institutional
precursors in other areas. Sequencing of institutional changes
becomes critical because of this dynamic interaction. In Guyana,
the "cultural question" implicit in 'national identity"
has been put on the back burner even though culture narrowly
defined as the value system of the people provides the
contexts for the success or failure of all institutions. Institutions
cannot be imposed on societies that violate entrenched values
and if stipulated formally, will only be observed in the breach
and be ineffective or dysfunctional. Inappropriate institutions
are the prime systemic causes of political tension and violence
in Guyana.
The paper will be divided into the three broad areas of national
identity, political participation and economic distribution that
have structured our national endeavour to distribute power as
equitably as possible. Within each area, contradictions will
be identified and their institutional frameworks analysed from
the their origin in the developed countries and their application
in Guyana. Institutional changes, more in consonance with local
realities will be introduced. The concept of Federalism will
then be introduced as an overarching framework to integrate the
proposals into a internally consistent paradigm.
The paper will therefore begin with the "national question"
by analysing British society in the development of the "nation-state"
ideal that has served as the model for Guyana. It contrasts Britain
of the early twentieth century, where by and large most individuals
saw themselves as "British" following centuries of
homogenising efforts, with Guyana celebrated as the "land
of six peoples". It concludes that Guyanese society can
best be characterised as a reticulated stratified ethnically
plural society.
In Guyana, however, the politicians of the modern era felt that
the question of national identity had more or less been settled
a la Britain, the "motherland". The national
motto adopted after Independence - "One People, One Nation,
One Destiny"- assumed that everyone would assimilate into
"Creole" culture, which was defined as "Guyanese"
culture. This assumption led to two contradictions in the society.
Firstly, the cultural values of Creole culture and those retained
by later arrivals from their original cultures may sometimes
contradict institutional demands vis a vis present national
goals. Secondly, groups arriving after the abolition of slavery
contested this assumption as oppressive, and were later resentful
that they were excluded from the composition of the national
culture. This created strains between the later-arriving groups
and those that defended the status quo, which played a part in
precipitating extreme ethnic behaviour. The concept of a multicultural
state and Multiculturalism as the approach to the "national"
culture will be introduced to address these strains.
The paper will demonstrate that the various ethnic groups are
differentially incorporated into the power relations of the society.
This differential incorporation has driven the political competition
as each group struggles within the rules of the political system,
to take the reins of power, which most see as a prerequisite
for economic security, and also as an end in itself. It is not
apparent to most that there culture is also a reservoir of power.
The paper looks at the political system under-girding the Westminster
majoritarian form of democracy developed, practiced and then
promulgated by Britain in the colonies. It was based on the political
philosophy of Liberalism, with institutions developed over the
centuries for British circumstances. These were decreed as appropriate
for Guyana, even though the societies were quite different. The
Westminster system assumes that enough individuals vote for parties
based on their stance on particular issues to produce a pool
of 'swing votes". This pool increases the probability that
governments will be changed on a fairly regular basis since it
is highly unlikely that any one party will have the answers to
all new exigencies year after year.
However in severely divided plural societies such as Guyana,
voting is not done on the basis of issues, but almost invariably
on the basis of ethnicity, personified by the identity of the
leadership of the particular party. The application of the Westminster
majoritarian system in Guyana produces dilemmas for the several
competing groups, in a dynamic and self reinforcing fashion,
in that if they play by the rules of engagement, they cannot
assume office or if they do cannot exercise power effectively.
In Guyana, where the Indian majority can vote as a bloc, the
minority African/Coloured bloc can be locked out of Executive
office in perpetuity, since it cannot form a majority even in
coalition with other ethnic groups such as Amerindians. In Guyana,
this is the Ethnic Security Dilemma of the African Guyanese.
When as in Guyana, the minority approaches the size of the majority
(at its highest numerical advantage Indians were fifty-one percent
of the population as opposed to the forty-two percent of Africans/Mixed
bloc) it is very unlikely that that minority will automatically
grant legitimacy to the government of the majority ad infinitum.
They have no incentive to go along with the rules of political
competition. There will be inevitable demands for a greater share
in the decision-making processes, especially if such minorities
have resources at their disposal to challenge the rule of the
majority. Within those rules, politics is viewed as a zero-sum
game especially by the major protagonists and encourage
extreme political behaviour, including violence. In Guyana, the
African minority, given confidence through their domination of
the state institutions, especially the Police, Army and Civil
Service, have challenged the Indian majority's physical security.
If Indians play by the political rules, they can accede to office
but cannot govern because of the threats to their physical security.
A "Mexican Standoff" has been created. This is the
Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma. The Ethnic Security Dilemmas
are addressed through a menu of measures that includes structural
aspects of federalism and a Government of National Reconciliation.
Another consequence of inappropriate political arrangements that
contribute to political violence is a centralised governmental
structure that has stubbornly resisted reformation efforts. This
centralised rule came out of the colonial era where administrative
efficiency for extraction of resources was the watchword. The
contribution of the centralised governmental and administrative
style and structures that lend themselves to authoritarianism
governance, on the precipitation of ethnic violence will be examined.
The non-centralised governance approach of Federalism will address
these contradictions.
In the modern world, the goal of political life is seen as leading
to increased standards of living. The economic improvements are
expected to be equitably distributed amongst the people, which
in the Western models, had been achieved after long and intense
struggle and tinkering of institutional arrangements. Since this
was the last "revolution' achieved by the West (and is still
in motion) economic equity is very much on the minds of the local
politicians. In fact it was on the question of economic injustice
that most of the anti-colonial struggle was waged and led to
many politicians, including the major ones from Guyana, to adopt
"radical" ideologies such as Marxism, which promised
economic equity.
It is also on the economic question that many of the contradictions
of inappropriate imported institutional have surfaced. With the
increased compilation and circulation of economic statistics,
it becomes apparent very quickly when economic development is
not equitably distributed, and by what manner that has been done.
In Guyana, during the PNC regime, Indians could point to such
statistics to buttress their claims of being discriminated against.
That, more than anything, fuelled their resentment against the
PNC and led to heightened tensions from their perspective. With
the installation of the PPP/C from 1992, there has been just
as persistent cries from the African Guyanese segment that they
are not receiving an equitable share of the economic pie. While,
the figures do show that there is no correlation between ethnicity
and economic standing (with the notable exception of the Amerindians)
it has confirmed that there is ethnic dominance in various sectors.
The government's policies in these sectors are rigorously scrutinised
for possible ethnic discrimination. These charges of "racism",
'discrimination", "marginalisation" and "ethnic
cleansing" have, more than any other proximate factor, contributed
to the present increased levels of tensions. The economic tensions
are addressed by ethnic Impact Statement for all Government programs
and policies, ethnic economic participation goals, and affirmative
action for disadvantaged groups.
Ethnic conflict is not unique to Guyana; in fact it has become
the most prevalent form of conflict within States all across
the globe in recent years. The approaches towards ameliorating
such conflicts are all imbued with the principle that power,
in all its forms, must be shared more equitably amongst the groups,
as they identify themselves, in the various societies. There
are two broad approaches Consociationalism and Integrative
Federalism - that have been utilised to address such conflicts.
This paper does not consider the two approaches as mutually exclusive
and the writer has previously proposed elements from each (in
addition to some others) as a "menu of measures" to
address the political problems of Guyana. These measures can
be grouped within the three broad areas of national life that
are reservoirs of power, and which have been contested as being
unjustly distributed. The measures, mentioned in context above,
include multiculturalism (national culture); Government of National
Reconciliation, Federal Republic, Disciplined Forces reflecting
population of the states (political justice) and Economic participation
goals, Ethnic Impact Statement, Affirmative Action and local/state
control of economic development (economic justice).
The paper examines the concept of Federalism from three perspectives:
a) sociological/normative; b) formal/institutional and c) procedural/process/bargaining.
The perspectives are utilised to develop Federalism as a framework
for bringing together the proposed specific institutional changes
and measures, in a coherent paradigm to address Guyana's ethnic
conflict.
The paper does not see federalism as any kind of 'silver bullet"
for curing all the ailments of our political system. However
it does assert that federalism provides a macro-environment that
facilitates the lessening of ethnic conflict in Guyana while
simultaneously offering citizens a principled philosophy of action,
rooted in justice.
Part 1
ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN GUYANA
While there have been
sporadic incidents of violence between Indians and Africans from
the commencement of the former group's insertion into Guyana,
these incidents were spontaneous, isolated and based on local,
sometimes, personal issues. Organised and widespread overt acts
of hostility first appeared in the months preceding the 1961
General Elections, which was marked by a high level of tension
between Africans and Indians. Supporters of the PNC, took the
exhortation of their party to "sweep out the PPP" literally,
and used their party's symbol the broom to sweep
at passing Indians, while the latter flaunted their symbol and
dragged the broom in the streets. There were any number of minor
scuffles and confrontations countrywide, many reported in the
press. Eusi Kwayana, in his booklet, Next Witness, claims
that an African supporter of the PNC, Felix Ross of Rose Hall,
Berbice was murdered for political reasons on the night of the
elections and that this was the beginning of the "disturbances"
that was to characterise the sixties. This writer went through
the newspapers of the time and interviewed contemporaries of
Ross, but was unable to discover any corroboration of Mr. Kwayana's
claim. Local residents and the Police saw the murder, as a purely
private matter.
What is incontrovertible, however, is that while there had been
rising concerns about the ascendant Indian profile in Guyana,
the polarisation between the two major ethnic groups became entrenched
during the political mobilisation of 1961. The group boundaries
themselves became more pronounced. Some see ethnicity and ethnic
consciousness as consequences of political mobilisation but in
Guyana we see that the nexus between ethnicity and political
mobilisation is a dynamic one and the descent into ethnic violence
is quite contextual.
On what became known as Black Friday, February 16th 1962, large
sections of Georgetown's commercial section with Indian businesses,
was burnt down. In 1963, widespread countrywide violence erupted
during an eighty-day strike called by the Civil Service Union.
The violence took an ethnic orientation as Indians supported
the PPP Government and Africans supported the strikers during
civil disobedience "sit-ins" in front of Government
buildings. In 1964, the Guyana Agricultural Workers' Union
the sugar workers union supported by the PPP - called a strike,
ostensibly to gain recognition by the Sugar Producers' Association
as the official bargaining agent for sugar workers and precipitated
the most intense inter-ethnic violence in the history of Guyana
- one hundred and seventy-six individuals were killed, thousands
were injured and hundreds of homes were torched. Thousands abandoned
their homes and jobs and Guyana ethnic segregation deepened as
individuals resettled in ethnically homogenous communities. A
PNC-UF coalition replaced the PPP in December 1964.
While we now have confirmation that the U.S. and Britain backed
the destabilisation of the PPP regime because of their fears
of the PPP establishing a pro-Soviet satellite in Guyana (a not
unfounded fear, we now also know) this is a proximate cause since
we have shown that the seeds of hostility were already set in
1961 when there was no direct foreign intervention. The violence
of the sixties demonstrated that both parties had cadres who
were highly trained militarily. This tradition was evidently
carefully maintained since.
The period 1964-1992 was characterised by an authoritarian regime
of the PNC, especially after the PNC jettisoned its UF junior
partner and ensconced itself in office by routinely rigging elections.
Its illegal rule was secured by military personnel that by 1976
had reached the staggering ratio of one armed personnel to every
thirty-five civilians. During the period, private goon-squads
that supported the PNC, wrecked havoc on the civilian population
especially on Indians. By mid-1985, anti-Indian depredations
had reached such staggering proportions that one political activist,
Eusi Kwayana, wrote that "it had a flavour of genocide".
The House of Israel a PNC backed group that was armed by
the party, formed the core of what was graphically described
as "kick-down-the-door" bandits. The Working Peoples'
Alliance, which had presented the most effective opposition to
the PNC during the seventies, was also selected for violence
and murder. Walter Rodney, one of its leaders and several activists
were assassinated by Government forces.
A combination of domestic and diaspora agitation and most importantly
the fall of the Soviet empire, persuaded the U.S, to broker the
return of "free and fair" elections on October 5th
1992. After it became apparent that the PNC had lost the elections,
anti Indian violence broke out in Georgetown and was only quelled
when outgoing President Desmond Hoyte ordered troops in the streets
and gave the order to use deadly force, if necessary.
On January 12th 1998, following PNC marches in Georgetown that
protested the PPP's victory at the December 1997 elections, anti-Indian
violence on a massive scale broke out in Georgetown. This ethnically-directed
violence spread and continued sporadically in ever widening circles
around the East Coast of Demerara to 2002. In that year matters
escalated following the Republic Day (February 23rd.) prison
breakout by five notorious criminals. The bandits formed the
core of a gang of criminals operating with impunity out of the
African village of Buxton that created even greater mayhem, murder,
robberies and rapes against Indians in adjoining villages. The
gang claimed that they were protecting African interests and
the violence was once again ethnically directed against Indians.
Confronted by a special police unit, the Tactical Services Unit
the "Black Clothes", (formed by the Hoyte PNC
government) which the Government had increasingly relied on to
deal with high intensity crime sometimes with questionable
legality - this gang engaged and decimated the Unit. Following
this development several "Death Squads" appeared on
the scene and went after the bandits, apparently with both private
and official connivance. An orgy of violence followed in which
mostly young African men were executed many with criminal
records. It was asserted that drug interests were also deeply
involved.
There has been a persistent debate as to whether the violence
in Guyana is actually politically rather than ethnically
directed. As we pointed out earlier, there is a dynamic relationship
between the actors in the conflict and the rationales for their
actions. It is man who gives meaning to his actions. It is our
contention that while there are feelings of hostility or antagonism
immanent in segments within every group in Guyana, against other
groups, it is not the hostility per se, that propels the
violence but rather the drive to protect interests that are perceived
to be threatened by others.
If the violence was meant to subjugate other groups it would
have been correct to label it "racist" since the groups
are racially differentiated, but this is not the case. However
to the individuals affected by the violence the distinction,
akin to that in law between "intent" and "motive",
is irrelevant as they seek to secure justice against individuals
who invariably are from different ethnic groups. Some politicians
will seize upon this ambiguity if it can garner support in the
particular political system. The distinction, however, can be
useful for policymakers since it suggests that programs to defuse
the violence must focus on securing justice in the distribution
of resources between ethnic groups while other programs may deal
with "stereotypes" and other groups' perception of
each other.
There have been widespread accusations during the PPP regimes
that their actions were (1957-1964) and are (1992-present) racist
against Africans. Similar accusations have been made against
the PNC that they were racist (1964-1992) against Indians. If
the activities of any individual, organisation or group falls
differentially on citizens who have some distinctive characteristic
in common, it ought not to be of any surprise that they will
enquire whether they are any connections between the action and
the characteristic. With reference to the distinctions made above,
the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that if there is an adverse
impact on any specified group that that is statistically anomalous
for their percentage in the target population, then without the
need to prove intent, a rebuttable presumption of "discrimination/racism"
can be inferred. Analogously, when as in present-day Guyana crimes
statistical anomalies highlight that an overwhelmingly large
majority of the victims of crime are Indians; the overwhelming
majority of the perpetrators of the crimes are Africans and the
overwhelming majority of victims of police killings are Africans,
it is up to the authorities to rebut the reasonable presumption
in the minds of the populace that "race" is involved
as a motive in the actions. Scholars and politicians also, should
seek to demonstrate beyond mere assertion whether "correlation"
is equal to "causation".
NATIONAL CULTURE AND IDENTITY
The Proffered Paradigm:
The Unitary nation-state
The concept of the "nation-state" has become such a
ubiquitous international norm, that it is difficult for us to
realize that the modern state was only born in 1648 at the Treaty
of Westphalia and that the extension of the idea to the reality
of the "nation state" took root in the nineteen century.
From its European feudal origins where kings had to scrounge
their lords to raise armies, the State became omnipotent and
omnipresent as the monarchy centralized power: it was the formation
of strong centralized states that led to the sometimes brutal
consolidation of nations. It is important to note that in their
modern forms, the "nation- state", "nationalism",
"democracy" and "capitalism", were all born
together - part of a paradigm shift in Western Europe, centred
first in Britain and France arising out of the Enlightenment.
This shift occurred just over the last three centuries during
the rise of capitalism in its mercantilist and then free-trade
phases of that early "globalization". Each ideological
construct and institutionalisation obviously influenced each
other, in the service of capitalism. When sovereignty shifted
towards the people following the French and American democratic
revolutions, the state became a more liberal institution
insisting on dealing with citizens as individuals yet impelled
by the economic exigencies to mobilize the entire society. The
necessity for the "people" to perceive themselves as
one became even more pressing and E Pluribus Unum became
the call of the age. Territorial and ethnic boundaries were made
more or less coincident as "nationalism" became the
order of the day. Under the doctrine of cujus regio (ejus
religio) the religion of the Monarch became the religion
of the people and the culture of the dominant group around the
Monarch, the culture of the nation. The economic and political
concerns emanating from sub-regions were accepted and accommodated
by dealing with them as "counties" but the cultural
uniformity was non-negotiable.
Theorists of the nation-state have described how "nationalism"
engendered and constructed nations and not the other way around.
Actually what happens is that the elite of one of the ascendant
groups, using existing cultural strands, but privileging its
own, attempts to establish a hegemony over the rest of society
for instance, in Britain it was the English that accomplished
this task - to create what they defined as the nation-state of
Great Britain. The demands of the state are made coincident with
that of the "people" - "nationalism" - the
purported needs of the "nation" to be unified. Another
theorist agreed and defined the nation as a cultural artefact
- an "imagined political community" not created totally
out of thin air. But in leaving out the word "political"
in the title of the book he emphasized the symbolic artificiality
of national identity while allowing others who never get past
the title, to glide over the inherent contradictions between
the state and the nation.
While the state and nation were stipulated as identical, in reality
the state could never become identical with the people living
within its territory. The state may represent the people but
the people inevitably will identify easier with their "nation"
as constructed by their personal experiences lived within a common
language, culture and traditions, than their state. This does
not mean that the state cannot be a site of identification for
the people but since the values promulgated by the state being
more abstract and "drier", these will have to be transmitted
independently. Where there are different "cultures/nations"
within a state, inevitable systemic strains are unleashed since
to create the unified nation there has to be continued application
of force, symbolic and physical, on some groups to maintain the
"imagined community". It is self evident that groups,
defined as being "different" on account of their disparate
cultures have always existed in the same country. But for most
of the history of mankind it was accepted that these groups could
define themselves by their birth in a particular territory simultaneously
as "citizens" of that territory or state (legally
jus soli) or as a particular "nationality" depending
on their "ties of blood" culture and heritage
(legally jus sanguinis). While all citizens would
have all of the rights and obligations of citizenship, each "nationality"
was governed, for instance, by the personal laws of their culture.
Cultural communities, therefore, were the bearers of rights.
As mentioned, it was only in the last three hundred years that
Europe, led by England and France, began to insist that all citizens
of a particular state only had rights as individuals and they
must also practice one culture become "one nation"
giving birth to the nation-state.
However while the concept of the "nation state" has
become a central pillar of the dominant European political paradigm
and a dogma in modern politics, it is but a contingent moment
in European history that definitionally insisted on the "societal
consensus" and the "melting pot" theory of assimilation.
Even within Britain itself, the Scots, the Welsh and most obstinately,
the Irish never fully accepted the homogenizing premises of the
nation-state. Within the bosom of this arch, empire-building
nation-state, Ireland declared it would go its own way early
in the twentieth century. The cracks have now become yawning
chasms. The irredentism of German unification and secessionism
of the Soviet, Czechoslovakian and Yugoslavian republics were
simply flip sides of the rejection of the European claim that
"state" automatically equals "nation". The
actuality, of course, is that national unity is always ultimately
impossible if it means homogeneity, since such a unity will have
to be created (or more mildly, be represented) by a suppression
of differences.
The contradictions and problems of the nation-state were compounded
after those Imperialistic European states again with England
and France in the lead during their 19th century consolidation
phase, partitioned the world into empires and "spheres of
influence". Claiming huge areas, which they divided into
colonies for administrative convenience, the multitude of ethnic
groups, (which, in some cases, as in Guyana, were created) within
each enclave were suddenly told they had to become cohesive "nations".
The onus was even greater in the colonies, such as those in the
West Indies, where the local groups were practically wiped out,
ensuring there were no "natural" cultural strains as
in the European model, to evolve into any "national"
culture and the society had to be created almost sui s.
The local politicians who inherited the colonies adopted this
imperialistic homogenising arrogance and insisted on even utilizing
force, when necessary to create "nation-states". We
are reaping the whirlwind, for while in theory both the modernization
school of the West and the Marxist school of the East had prophesied
the eradication of ethnicity and the creation of unified "nation
states" (implied with the Marxists) history has proven them
wrong.
The reasons for this are complex but essentially lay at the heart
of the nature of power, the potential for its abuse, its relationship
to status, the power of the modern state and the fact that the
group that controls that power is invariably from one section.
In a cultural plural society then, power always has an ethnic
contour and will be challenged along that parameter. In ethnically
heterogeneous states, ethnicity became a dominant cleavage along
which mobilization took place even though those who led were
invariably from the dominant classes. Thus behind its egalitarian
façade, in Britain the English were always the dominant
ethnic group, and its elite, the ruling class. And in the communist
U.S.S.R. as late as 1989, nineteen out of twenty members on the
ruling politburo were ethnic Russians. In Guyana, whether the
PNC or PPP ran the government, it was seen by the group on the
outside as the "other" ethnic group dominating the
government.
The Consequences of trying to impose a "nation-state"
in Guyana:
Historical
The conflation of "state" and "nation", in
tandem with its corollary of ignoring the real nature of Guyana's
society, has been one of the major factors that have muddied
the waters of our political process. This is not been a matter
of simple semantic slackness but yet another instance of living
with the consequences (even if arguably, unintended) emanating
from the historically demonstrated wilfulness of hegemonic powers
to universalise their parochial particulars and forcing the rest
of the world to fit their different realities onto the procrustean
European beds. The greatest problem is that even those who can
obviously see that the arrangements are not working, end up dealing
with symptoms rather that (structural) causes.
The Guyanese State
From the inception of Guyana's creation as a European colony,
there were a number of consequences, flowing from the circumstances
attendant in its construction. Firstly, there would always be
the need to have a resident body to protect the interests of
the European power. Secondly, the fact that Guyana was not seen
as a "settler colony" that would be able to attract
large numbers of European immigrants, demanded that labour would
have to be imported in light of the "unsuitability"
of the local Amerindians. This implied absentee ownership whose
interests would also have to be protected. Thirdly, the resort
to slavery to fill the need for cheap labour further demanded
that control over the always potentially rebellious slaves be
high on the agenda. From their experience in Europe, all of these
needs demanded the formation of a strong state structure by the
colonists.
Even in the early days, when the Dutch West India Company was
governing the colonies of Essequibo and Demerara, and Berbice
Planters Association over Berbice, they assumed the cardinal
features of a state an arrogation of sovereignty over a
particular territory. They always created a militia to assert
that sovereignty, an executive body to formulate policy and a
bureaucracy (albeit small) to coordinate activities. After they
captured the colonies in 1803, the British merely expanded the
state organs of the Dutch as the colonies grew in size and were
eventually combined as in 1831.
Up to the abolition of slavery, it was felt that the forces at
the command of the state and on the plantations, were sufficient
to maintain order and realize the reasons for keeping a colony.
The abolition of slavery presented new challenges to that control.
All of the new relations of the society, whether between individuals
or groups or between ruler and ruled had to be cooordinated within
some macro- structure if the Colonialists were to maintain control
this could not be left to chance. Again drawing on their
historical experience, the Europeans introduced the notion of
the nation state as one device in their arsenal of control.
The Nation
The consolidation of the colonies are to be seen against
the backdrop of the development of the state in Europe. The refusal
of the British to give recognition to the various ethnic groups
in Guyana, their insistence on cultural homogeneity and their
use of the term "race" to distinguish Guyanese ("land
of six races") was not mere wilfulness. The hegemonic discursive
formation of "Guyanese culture" privileged British
culture and by definition suppressed, repressed or hegemonised
other cultures, all towards ease of control and domination of
the labouring populations. Their practices were part of the project
to maintain the unequal power relations between the governors
and the governed. The present Guyanese society is the result
of three centuries of a state induced homogenisation.
Even with the unequal power relations between the Imperialist
and the subject, however, the imposed culture on the subjects
could never be "homogenous" either in being "British"
or "Creole". The British expatriates within the colony
itself spanning the chasm between the young Scot overseers
and the Governor exhibited a wide cultural diversity and
then the subjects themselves brought their specific cultures
into their encounters. The initial encounter between the Europeans
slave owners and African slaves, one sided as it was, resulted
in a Creole culture which by the end of slavery did incorporate
significant (albeit innocuous, as it related to power) elements
of African cultures. Creole culture to a lesser or greater degree
was a European-African "hybrid".
Where, as in Guyana, the different cultural groups were chronologically
and geographically separated, the resulting hybrid cultures,
(e.g. Creole-Indian) while having some commonalities to the extent
of shared experiences with Creole or British cultures, would
definitely be anthropologically distinct to the extent that each
group brought a different set of cultural responses to the equation.
However, the British resolutely refused to cater for cultural
differences, insisted on the idealised British "high"
culture as the standard and focused on race rather than culture
as the point of difference in the population. They thus implicitly
postulated cultural homogeneity as the central founding ideological
principle in the construction of a Guyanese "national"
identity. The reality however, was that the society was resolutely
culturally plural and the contradictions created between the
reality and the "ideal" bedevil Guyana to the present.
Guyanese Society: The contradictions
There has been much discussion
in the social sciences, of the development of societies/nations
from a state of nature. One prevalent premise is that societies
developed in an organic or "natural" way and the institutions
that regulate or govern the people would have also undergone
such a natural growth and development. Flowing from this assumption
of the "organic society" view was that there would
be a consensus on values and ends, along with integrative institutions,
amongst the members, which would hold the society together
there would be, in a word, a community.
In Guyana one would have thought that, there could be no such
assertion: our society is comprised of people who were snatched
from several continents and dumped between 1621 and 1921 into
our land to join the indigenous Amerindians to labour for the
colonial enterprise. In Guyana, the various ethnic groups
Portuguese, Indians and Chinese - with the exception of the Amerindians
were brought as indentured servants by the Whites from all parts
of the world to replace the Africans after the abolition of slavery
in 1834. Separated chronologically to a great extent, they were
segregated into separate economic and geographical niches with
profound and lasting consequences for their future relationships.
While the separation may have prevented early sustained contact
and possible clashes, it further reinforced the initial cleavages
of race/ethnicity, language, religion and culture to demarcate
social boundaries, which were distinct and have proven long lasting.
At the end of indentureship in 1917, the now "free"
society was vertically stratified, with ethnicity and class generally
coinciding in a given stratum. The Whites were at the apex followed
in descending order by the Coloureds, Portuguese, Chinese, Africans,
Indians and Amerindians. It was almost the paradigmatic structural
hierarchical plural society, with the ethnic groups differentially
integrated into the power structure. It is this differential
integration that provides the dynamism for change as each group
tried to improve their position. It was not difficult to foresee
that "culture" would become a stalking horse for "power".
This fact alone of disparate peoples - should have alerted
our theorists and politicians for the need to possibly look at
our societal problems with more sensitive lenses, and grapple
with such problems utilising analytical tools different from
those invented for societies formed organically. Today there
would be few who would deny that Guyana is a multicultural society.
It is not that the society is simply culturally heterogeneous
in a superficial sense- every society in the world is that today
but that discrete groups in Guyana share enough culturally
distinctive features to enable themselves to distinguish themselves
from "others" and to act as a distinct group in a wide
range of activities. The individuals in each group tend to live
and work together, intermarry, (and of course, vote together)
and share more personal relationships with each other. They recognise,
in a word, their common "ethnicity".
Ethnicity
The term "ethnicity"
encompasses a wide range of meanings. It is derived from the
Greek term ethnikos, or ethnos, meaning "nation"
or "people". It refers to a collective group within
a society perceived by its members as having a common ancestry
and sharing an historic past or cultural tradition. Thus "ethnic
group" captures the biological and cultural nexuses of many
groups, without the invidious implications of "race"
- that biology is solely determinative of social practices. In
Guyana, "race" has been used loosely in the sense of
"ethnicity" with the pejorative bias. While ethnicity
has been regarded as either a "primordial" urge or
an instrumental manipulation by ethnic entrepreneurs, its salience
and even its resurgence in the modern era, may be explained as
a rational response of individuals responding to their circumstances
by forming ethnic groups that lower transaction costs. Ethnicity,
is always contextually defined and can be very fluid - but not
infinitely so. In all cases it is also a politicised categorization
as the ethnic group uses its distinctiveness as a mobilisational
tool for political purposes.
In his seminal work, Barth argues that the defining feature
of an ethnic group is not the particular elements of culture
or kinship that differentiate it from other groups, but the mere
fact that boundaries are perceived and persist. The membership
criteria, and the membership itself, tends to change over time
as people come and go and invent develop new traditions and ways
of life, but the group itself nevertheless endures as a way of
structuring social life . This is a very pertinent point in Guyana
where some observers have argued that because all the groups
in the society share so many cultural features in common
especially language, we cannot single out ethnicity as a salient
cleavage. Many, especially the Marxist dominant modern political
leaders of the PPP, PNC and the WPA, chose the cleavage of class
as a more salient cleavage for analysis, prognosis and prescriptions
for the society's ailments.
Class
Dr. Cheddi Jagan, founder of the first mass-based political
party in Guyana, especially insisted that the analytic category
of "class" was most "fundamental" and a much
more fruitful construct for understanding Guyana's social reality
and for formulating strategies for social mobilisation. He gave
short shrift to ethnicity at least in his analyses.
As a social construct, class had been proposed in a nineteenth-century
Europe that had dealt with questions of identity for over four
hundred years via the "nationalist" route. Especially
in Western Europe "ethnic" questions had transmuted
themselves into "national" questions by the time the
issue of economic justice surfaced during the expanding Industrial
Revolution in the late eighteenth century. A great disparity
had developed between the haves and the "have-nots' and
Karl Marx was to discern several wider societal effects from
that unequal economic relationship. Dr. Jagan and other Marxists
strained mightily to fit the Guyanese society into the Marxian
analytic categories of "bourgeoise", "proletariat",
peasantry, etc.
As the Marxists are fond of asserting, no one can deny the objective
existence of economic classes and this is true for Guyana. The
question for us is whether individuals in the society act according
to their class interest over other cleavages representing other
interests such as ethnicity. In Guyana, the reality is
that class interests are subsumed in ethnicity especially
when political choices are being made. As we pointed out earlier,
the society is stratified in a "reticulated" pattern,
that is within each ethnic bloc there are distinct classes but
these classes do not take concerted action across the ethnic
divide. In Marx's words, "classes in themselves" have
not become "classes for themselves" they have
not moved from being analytic categories to being social groups.
For the problematic of politically related violence that is presently
under consideration, it is noteworthy that in the episodes of
Guyanese modern history there has not been any broad, sustained
social action to challenge state power across class lines. Even
the economic strikes are split along ethnic lines. During the
1963 Public Servants strike, Indian workers generally did not
strike against the PPP government, while during the Burnhamite
years the public service workers generally supported the regime
against their purported "class interests". Presently,
the Indian sugar workers consistently vote the PPP into office
even as they rail against their PPP-controlled union to
stand up to the state-owned sugar company controlled by
the PPP.
The PPP and the PNC both claim to have worked to inculcate "class
consciousness" in the populace and in this way they avoided
dealing frontally with the central reality of political action
ethnicity, since the beginning of modern politics.
National Culture: The model
bequeathed
The Assimilationist State
The model imposed onto the Guyanese
population was strictly assimationalist, in that each of the
groups brought into Guyana were expected to jettison their "native"
culture and accept the superiority of British culture. While
during slavery the insistence on wiping out the original culture
of the Africans was more directly, by the beginning of indentureship
the superiority of British was achieved through what has been
described as the problematic of "hegemony". Aspects
of the original culture may have been allowed to remain but the
books, schools, and all the state and civil institutions were
directed to disseminate the moral and philosophical superiority
of all things British.
The assimationalist school totally privileges unity. It has been
the dominant model over the past three hundred years, and still
undergirds the policies of most of the states of the world, which
define themselves as "nation-states". Its premises
are that the people within a state must all share a common culture
and values so that they would feel a sense of "oneness"
to better work towards achieving the "national" goals.
The key question, of course, is who decides on what constitutes
the "national culture" into which everyone is to be
assimilated?
There have been several variants of the assimilationist school
ranging from the demand that, as with the slaves, individuals
entering such a society jettison their "old" cultures
and live and practice the new to such individuals being
told that they should intermarry with others from the "mainstream"
so that they physically disappear. The American "melting
pot" remains the most famous example of the assimilationist
school, even though there, the state through its school system
and its very explicit "citizenship" examinations, couched
the values to be assimilated in ideological, rather than cultural"
terms. It is possible that the "White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant"
(WASP) cultural ideal was so deeply imbedded in the state structure
that there was no need to emphasise them. In reality for citizens
to enjoy the full rights of citizenship, they have to conform
to the "societal" culture. The French, following Rousseau,
have been the most faithful to the model in terms of explicitly
demanding the French culture as the standard the best in
the world as a matter of fact.
The unfortunate fact is that the assimilationist project has
only worked at the price of great suffering and even then, never
very successfully. America has had to concede that instead of
being a "melting pot" it can only be a "salad
bowl" where culture is concerned. Britain has had to grant
autonomy to Scotland and Ireland in cultural as well as political
terms. In Guyana while everyone was told to assimilate into British
culture, there were always snickers from Whites when "natives"
talked about "home". Ultimately, assimilation can only
work if there is complete physical intermixing between the various
populations and this is very unlikely.
The Contradictions in the
present:
The PNC accepted the
premises of the British assimationalist school, during its long
twenty-eight year regime, accentuated the European/African hybrid
Creole culture with its "white-bias" - as the
official culture, even as it made some innocuous accommodations
to other hybrids. Many have insisted that the PNC had a multicultural
stance since they introduced two Muslim and two Hindu festivals
as national holidays. Actually, these were religious holidays
rather than "cultural" ones. Mr. Burnham advocated
a separation of Church and State, not least because it allowed
him greater autonomy of action over the State, which the Christian
Church colonial state had been privileged to such an extent that
it had great influence and authority on state matters. State
recognition of Hinduism and Islam as 'Guyanese' religions simply
served to dilute the old established Christian influence (which
had external masters) while Mr. Burnham quickly moved to control
the Hindu Maha Sabha and the Muslim Anjumaan so that they could
offer no effective counter challenge.
Burnham insisted, in his European "Enlightenment" tradition,
that religion should be a matter for the private sphere He saw
"culture", as 'secular" as opposed to "religious",
and which should be controlled as part of the public space. While
the ambiguities of such a disjuncture are legion, Burnham accepted
the homogenising premises of the European "nation-state"
ideal. He fervently opposed "multiculturalism" and
summed up his position as "One People, One Nation, One Destiny'.
The question, of course, was what would be the cultural practices
that would define the "one nation" and to which all
others would be assimilated. We can look at the record .
The symbols of a state signal its cultural orientation since
these are expected to ensure that the people can identify with
the state at an emotional level. The colours of the Guyanese
flag, chosen by the National Arts Council, were the Garveyite
pan-African colours black, green and red (which was already the
PNC's colours) along with yellow from Ethiopia"s of green,
yellow and red, which most African countries had chosen as their
pan-African colours. The National Hero was declared to be Cuffy
the African slave who had fought the Dutch in Berbice almost
seventy years before Berbice became part of a unified Guyana.
The National Anthem has no hint of an Indian raga, much less
any words from that or any other culture.
Mr. Burnham decided to modify the application of Marxist-Leninist
theory, exposing himself to ridicule from orthodox quarters,
to declare that Guyana's economic model would be the cooperative
- based on the Ujaama socialism of Tanzania. Mr. Burnham introduced
Mashramani as the grand festival for Guyana, with its Creole
Caribbean Carnival inspiration hardly masked by the asseveration
that it was about "cooperation" and taken from the
Amerindians. Even though there is a "National" Museum,
an African Museum and an Amerindian museum there in none
for Indians. This cultural imbalance, which is seen as a consequence
of the power-relations, adds to the complexity of the political
struggle.
Burnham went down the route of America, where the idea of multiculturalism
is seen as antagonistic to the integrity of the state, even though
the country is clearly acknowledged to be multicultural. The
U.S. (as Guyana) had followed the British practice of distinguishing
its citizens by race and expecting that all groups would become
"American" which they defined officially in ideological
terms such as equality, liberty, etc but privileged the British
culture and experience of the "founding fathers". Burnham
did the same with Creole culture as for instance when the PNC
mandated that "Mashramani" redolent with Creole values
and practices would be the national festival to commemorate Republic
Day. The moral and physical violence occasioned by the exclusions
of cultural minorities and the advantage of the "culture
bearers" are thereby masked but not eliminated in the assimilationist
state.
The PPP and National Culture
The PPP has declared
that it also accepts multiculturalism as the cultural orientation
of the Guyanese state. Its activities during its first 1957-1964
terms of office did show a greater sensitivity to the cultural
aspirations of previously peripheralised groups but implicitly
accepted the priority of the white-bias Creole culture. This
has been its stance since it was returned to office since 1992.
The Impact of Culture on National
Goals
If "culture"
is a people's "way of doing things", then it will be
the soil in which all institutional changes deemed needed to
achieve national goals, will either flourish or wither. In a
situation where the citizens of Guyana are attempting to emulate
the success of their erstwhile masters, they will have to re-examine
the values inculcated by Creole culture and decide whether these
values are in consonance with their desired goals. For instance,
during slavery, there was no point to slaves saving monies they
may have earned on their Sunday day-off since they could not
pass on property to their children. This encouraged an attitude
of living in the present and spending money as it came in. Modern
development economics insists that countries can only get out
of their poverty trap if they are to raise their rates of savings
but in Guyana, this value clashes with the entrenched value in
Creole culture and leads to a vicious circle of dependency.
Similarly, on the plantations even after indentureship, the Indians
were encouraged to depend on the managers of the plantations
to make all decisions on their living conditions as late as the
seventies. A spirit of dependency was inculcated by this paternalism
as it related to managing the affairs their communities. If local
democracy is to flourish in these communities, the people will
have to be weaned away from their proclivity to look at officialdom
to take care of problems of local welfare.
EQUITY IN POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
The Proffered Paradigm:
Liberal Democracy: Historical Perspective
Democracy, like most value concepts,
can only be appreciated within its historical context and development,
we must always keep in mind the historical specificity of all
institutions. The political institutions of Guyana were directly
imposed on Guyana by the European colonial powers which,
since 1803, meant Britain. In Britain, the development of the
democratic idea went hand in hand with the development of Liberalism,
and for most Britishers the two were coterminous, especially
during the phase of struggling for constitutional government.
They are not and the famous distinction by F.A. Hayek is apropos:
"Liberalism is concerned with the functions of government
and particularly with the limitation of all its powers. Democracy
is concerned with the question of who is to direct government.
Liberalism requires that all power, and therefore also that of
the majority, be limited. Democracy came to regard current majority
opinion as the only criterion of the legitimacy of the powers
of government." As we trace the development of democracy,
which the British insisted should be practiced by Guyanese, it
would do us well to keep in mind the distinction, occasioned
by the exigencies of the British experience.
Western theorists trace the idea of democracy to the Greek city-states
such as Athens of the sixth century B.C. At that time, to resolve
a severe conflict between the masses and the "notables",
Solon introduced rules of governance in 594 BC that was inclusive
all four sections into which he had distinguished the citizenry.
Within a century, as a consequence of an attempt by the "notables"
to seize power in 508 BC, the rules were further expanded to
form the "democracy" that we associate with Greece.
The term itself is a combination of the Greek words demos
"people", and kratos "rule"
or "power". The essence of democracy has always retained
the element implicit in its name - "rule by the people"
or "power by the people". In Greece, the citizens of
the city would all gather whenever they had to decide on critical
matters affecting their city they had a quorum of about
5000. They preferred to make their decisions consensually, but
if this were not possible, on a simple majority that is,
on a vote of one more than fifty percent of those assembled (hence
"assembly"). This "direct democracy" could
work because of the small size (between 30 40,000), and
the total homogeneity, of the voting population only Greek
men born in the city with women, slaves and other residents
excluded. Plato and Aristotle (b . 384 B.C.) , citizens of the
city state, were very sceptical about the efficacy of democracy,
especially the former, as were most thinkers up to two hundred
years ago. The democratic form of governance fell out of favour
for almost two thousand years as the continent-spanning Roman
Empire replaced Greece as the dominant power and adopted Christianity
as its official religion. Absolute monarchy became the norm and
"democracy" was thought of as "rule by the mob".
Christian insistence on faith (from St Augustine to St. Aquinas)
rather than active judgment shifted the rationale of political
action from the constitutional democratic state the "polis"
of Aristotle - to a theological framework that directed "true"
Christians not to focus on the politics of "this temporal
life". The belief that the Pope was "the Vicar"
of Christ and that Kings ruled by his prerogative in a hierarchical
structure with God at the top helped to give this period, for
very good reasons, the label "dark ages". It was not
until the egalitarian-oriented drive of the Protestant Reformation
and the Renaissance that the claim of divine support for despotic
monarchies was challenged. These imperatives obviously had to
be worked out through the feudal structures present at the time
aristocracy, clergy and commons and we should not
be surprised that these groupings and their relative status dominated
discussions of democracy. An early theorist, Niccolo Machiavelli
(1469-1527) during the turmoil in his native Florence, proposed
that the best form of governance to preserve liberty should be
"mixed" and combine monarchical, aristocratic and democratic
elements, which would tend balance the social forces and to fragment
political power.
In Britain, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) theorising in the chaos
of the English civil war contesting the absolute monarchy that
included the beheading of a king, proposed that men emerged from
a "state of nature", where there is no power or state
to enforce rules and life was "solitary, poor, nasty brutish
and short". He posited a social contract in which men give
up some of their rights to a powerful central authority (absolute
monarchy) that ensured that the peace is kept. While Hobbes emphasised
the liberty of individuals, and the need for social and political
order for that liberty to be meaningful, he posited that an all-powerful
state was necessary to achieve this. The important innovation
in this century was that sovereignty was conceded to reside in
the people (they should confer this sovereignty to a King) and
having a common citizenship did not automatically compel a single
belief. Hobbes' absolutist ideas were severely challenged, by
groups such as the Levellers in Britain. Simultaneously then,
theories of democratic and absolute rule had been formulated:
the former strand opposing absolutism - took root in Britain
while the latter prevailed in Europe . While to the older
British tradition the freedom of the individual in the sense
of a protection by law against all arbitrary coercion was the
chief value, in the Continental tradition the demand for
the self-determination of each group concerning its form of government
occupied the highest place.
John Locke (1632-1704) wrote within the context of the settlement
to England's "glorious revolution" which found the
monarchy restored, but with the acceptance that parliament was
sovereign. Locke proposed that it was hardly credible that people
who did not trust each other in a state of nature would repose
that trust voluntarily in an absolute ruler, even to guarantee
social order. Locke accepted Hobbes postulated "state of
nature" but held that "natural law" governed there
and made all men free and equal with the right of "life,
liberty and estate". To overcome the shortcoming that there
would be, at a minimum, severe confusion since everyone can interpret
the "law", he proposed that there should be a social
contract, first to create an independent society and secondly
a government. Sovereign power would remain ultimately with the
people, who could remove their deputies or government if it did
not protect their "life, liberty and property". Societies
and Governments existed to fulfil the rights of man and the latter
had a duty to fulfil their side of the bargain or the former
could rebel.
By the next century, during which slavery in the colonies was
abolished and "free"societies were established, the
tenets of what was called, the ideals of "Liberal Democracy"
was established and dominated Britain's political thought and
consequently the model held out to the natives in the colonies.
J.S. Mill (1806-1873) an employee of the East India Company,
summarized the tenets of liberal democracy. Mill was in favour
of "Representative Democracy" in which the people would
govern through their representatives who would be "qualified"
to make the decisions of state. Mill was wary of the "mob".
The state, liberals assert, exists to safeguard the rights and
liberties of citizens who are ultimately the best judge of their
own interests and the state must be made as small as is possible
in order to ensure the maximum freedom for each citizen. Liberals
also focused on the necessity for government to operate within
a constitutional framework that accepted the rule of law.
The contextual nature of the development of specific features
of democracy can also be seen in the contributions of two Frenchmen.
Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), on a visit to England became
familiar with the ideas of Locke and was impressed with the liberty
of the individual he witnessed there, unlike the situation in
centralized France. He latched on to Locke's mild suggestion
that the power of government ought to be separate and proposed
that this "separation of powers" was key to the preservation
of liberty. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) proposed a historical
Social Contract between citizens and their government in which
the community (the "general will") takes precedence
over the individual and is the source of the latter's rights
and is owed their obligations. The state, in a positive way,
is supposed to facilitate the opportunities of citizens to enjoy
his rights as defined by the general will. Rousseau was
part of the rationalist (constructivist) school of democracy
that ended up with totalitarianism.
The American extension of the democratic idea arose within the
context of their rebellion against the despotic power of the
State (Britain) and their concerns over "factions"
seizing power and oppressing the others. Their solution was to
utilize and extend the ideas of Montesquieu and divide power
vertically and vertically within a federalist structure that
betrays the fact that substantively, many of the founding fathers
were stirred by the Lockean prioritisation of "life, liberty
and property". Democracy's reintroduction in Europe in tandem
with the development of the nation-state and capitalism is not
coincidental. The economic middle class, newly-formed by the
spreading Industrial Revolution, were demanding greater political
power to go with their burgeoning economic worth. The diminution
of the powers of the monarch and the rise of the middle class
was in each instance the pragmatic accommodation to a reality
won through struggle. The struggle in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, based on the fight for equality, fuelled the growth
and spread of democracy and has inextricably linked the two concepts.
The slogan of the French Revolution of 1789 life, liberty
and fraternity has proven durable and has been a beacon for colonised
people in the modern era.
However, the elitist current of democracy, articulated by J.S.
Mill and other thinkers has remained strong into the twentieth
century. The question as to who are the "people" who
will give consent has been contested throughout the ages and
as we saw for most of the time it meant a qualified elite. The
argument was that the masses could never really govern and the
best that democracy can do is to select between competing elites.
In the Caribbean one commentator called it "Doctor Politics."
Eventually this elitist focus became one where democracy was
reduced simply as a method for choosing a government and
this appears to be the view of the PPP in Government. The innovation
of "democratic centralism" as an organisational and
procedural methodology by Lenin, which has been accepted by the
PPP as an orthodox Communist party in 1969, is the quintessence
of elitism. The question of the substance of democracy being
integrated in the societal relations was put on the back burner
that was being "utopian".
What we have seen in the survey above is that in every instance,
intense political struggles (often violent) preceded the introduction
of new democratic principles when the leaders of the contending
forces accepted new rules that accommodated the disparate contentions.
Secondly, while intuitively "the people" exercising
political power shapes democracy, it is not a straightforward,
uncomplicated idea that we can take for granted it is an
omnibus value expression. Thirdly, democracy was, and never can
be a static idea: the democratic institutions that we consider
to be the standard has only been around for a hundred years or
so and even in that time it has been considerably modified. Fourthly,
the change in democratic theory has invariably followed the actions
of citizens that changed the status quo democracy developed
through popular action. Theory, more than often, followed action,
than vice versa.
Application of the Paradigm
in Guyana
As in its country of
origin and Britain, very early on in the colonies, two questions
were posed when the issue of democracy in the context of political
participation, arose who were "the people" and
once selected, how were "the people" to rule? On the
first question, the British had conceded that middle-class men
were "the people". Theorists such as Hobbes and Locke,
who may have argued for an expansion of political participation,
certainly did not believe that the lower classes and women were
qualified to exercise the franchise.
In the colonies, therefore even after the abolition of slavery
there was certainly no assumption that the freed slaves could
vote. The British denied the freed Africans the opportunity to
control the governing structures and justified this injustice
by claiming that by the planters would outmanoeuvre the Africans.
This exclusion of ex-slaves from the organs of governance and
their struggle to rectify that historic wrong has had consequences
that still reverberate in our political arena.
There had to be a period of tutelage, the British asserted, so
that the responsibility of governance could be exercised "responsibly"
by the "natives". Thus in Guyanese history, we note
a long and painful process by the disenfranchised to win the
vote and a determined rearguard action by the British to deny
the same. As late as 1947, only about ten percent of the population
were counted as "the people"; after 1953 it became
everyone over twenty one and finally in 1968 it was changed to
include everyone over eighteen.
A second problem arose when the country incorporated what was
labelled several "nationalities" what would today
be called "culturally plural societies". J.S. Mill,
for instance, speaking from a Britain sure of its "British"
national identity could pronounce with finality that the free
institutions of democracy were 'next to impossible in a country
made up of different nationalities'. There are undoubtedly countless
issues that the institutionalisation of democracy will pose for
Guyana; but the most important one will be to deal directly with
the implications of the ethnic divisions in the society to answer
the question, who are "the people" who would govern?
On the second question, how are "the people" to rule,
as explained above, the classical Greeks tried "direct democracy",
where, facilitated by their small numbers, every citizen could
vote on every issue in one gathering. If more than fifty percent
of the citizens voted for one particular position, then that
became the position of "the people". Majoritarian politics
was born. This direct method of voting had to be abandoned in
favour of "representative democracy" due to the larger
number of citizens and their wider geographical dispersion, in
the countries that resuscitated the democratic form of governance
twenty-two centuries later. The representatives were supposed
to re-present those who elected them. However, even though the
circumstances were different, the majoritarian principle was
retained, and it was accepted because the British people saw
themselves more or less as one.
A further innovation was introduced by the British, to accommodate
local sensitivities and ensure that the residents of "counties"
could be ensured of their own representatives. This was the procedural
basis of the "Westminster" system of democracy where
several candidates compete within a constituency for a seat to
Parliament and one off them could win with a plurality of the
votes cast. The innovation introduced the possibility that a
party could win a majority of seats nationally through plurality
victories and secure control of the government without obtaining
a majority of the total votes. Applied to Guyana, the constituency
system up to 1961 served to over-represent the PPP whose supporters
were more geographically dispersed that the PNC's.
The Contradictions of the
paradigm in Guyana
The Ethnic Security Dilemmas
Another problem presented
by procedural majoritarian democracy is that even if the party
winning the elections were to obtain an absolute majority, why
would the minority go along with the majority? The answer by
the Liberal theorists was that the minority knew that it always
had the opportunity of becoming the majority on any given issue
it just had to persuade enough fellow citizens that their
stand on that issue was the right one. This answer, however,
only addressed an ideal situation postulated by Liberal democracy,
where individuals voted rationally according to his or her interest.
From the inception it was recognized that there could be what
Madison called "factions" i.e. groups of citizens who
would always voted as a bloc because of having entrenched common
interests and not viewing themselves strongly as "one"
with the majority. This proclivity acted to create or reinforce
the divisions in the society. Nowadays, in one sense, we can
refer to societies with entrenched "factions" as "plural
societies". In Guyana, the factions are "ethnic"
groups.
If one such faction forms a majority, then this poses a grave
danger to democracy in that society - a "tyranny of the
majority". In this situation, a minority would never have
the opportunity of becoming the majority and would have to go
along with that majority ad infinitum. Thus, in plural
societies with one ethnic group forming an entrenched majority,
"majoritarianism", a procedure for implementing democracy,
becomes an obstacle to the substance of democracy that
all citizens feel that their opinions will be taken into account
when decisions that affect them are made. This is the reality
in Guyana today, where Indians constitute nearly fifty percent
of the population and do vote as a bloc, and the Africans are
over forty percent and also vote as a bloc.
The operation of the majoritarian procedural principle of democracy
in Guyana precipitates "Ethnic Security Dilemmas" in
the several groups given that if they each play within the stipulated
political rules none can actually the authority that they may
acquire once ensconced in office. In a phrase made famous by
Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the group would be in "office" but
not in "power". Most recently, the World Bank, in its
report, "Development Policy Review" described the Ethnic
Security Dilemmas in Guyana rather succinctly:
"Despite the fact that the ruling party (PPP) enjoys
majority control of the legislative and executive branches, the
political system has been characterizes by deadlock. This is
in part due to the fact that the Afro Guyanese, who are the main
supporters of the opposition PNC, are dominant in the public
sector generally, and in the police and defence forces in particular.
By virtue of its control of the capital city Georgetown, the
Opposition also frequently paralyses the city to further its
political agenda."
Both the PPP and the PNC have
acknowledged the reality of the Ethnic Security Dilemmas
the PPP explicitly and the PNC, implicitly through the rigging
of elections between 1964-1992 and sustained protests after 1992.
The Ethnic Security Dilemmas are inevitable consequences of the
Guyanese demographic factors playing out in the Westminster-based
procedural model of democracy. Africans could never capture the
Executive and Legislature if they played by the rules of the
game and the Indians could be checkmated from governing by the
African-dominated incumbents of the state apparatus. This frustration
fostered a dysfunctional political system where the protagonists
have great incentives go outside the rules of the game to secure
power. The frustration, in turn, has led to some politicians
viewing violence as a political option and over the last fifty
years political competition has been characterised by regular
bouts of open ethnic conflict between the two major ethnic groups,
especially around election times.
This reality forms one of the dilemmas of democracy in Guyana
under the present Westminster majoritarian rules: how do we control
the ethnic factions to preclude a real or perceived tyranny of
the majority? It does not matter that the majority may be wise
or just, the potential permanent exclusion of the minority from
executive office vitiates claims of "democracy". 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 1960's it was not a coincidence
that elections became ethnic censuses. The African section, with
its numbers approaching the Indians, had to deal with the possibility
of being forever excluded from the Executive. This is the African
Ethnic Security Dilemma in Guyana.
Democracy also presumes that the State will be managed for all
the people of the country. Those who manage the affairs of the
State have to ensure that they are 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" then this presents another dilemma for democracy.
Typically, the faction that is the majority also controls the
state and in fact this is what produces the actual "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 violently.
This is the situation in Guyana where the minority African section
has a vast overrepresentation in the key state institutions mentioned,
especially in the Armed Forces, and has used this incumbency
to neutralise the numerical advantage of the Indians. Even though
the latter are a majority under the Westminster system and can
form the Executive after "free-and-fair" elections,
that Executive cannot guarantee stability, especially for their
supporters. Before taking any policy decision, the Indian-supported
PPP Executive has to always take into consideration, whether
the opposition will initiate violence, under cover of their control
of State institutions. At the same time their Indian supporters
are under an omnipresent fear of being physically wiped out by
their African political opponents, whenever the question of national
power is contested. This is the Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma.
Amerindians have remained the most powerless group in Guyana
since their first encounter with Columbus in 1498, even though
everyone acknowledges that they are the original inhabitants
of Guyana, and that their land was forcibly taken away from them.
They were denied contact with the rest of the world, resulting
in one of the starkest instances of underdevelopment and internal
colonialism in the world. Being a small minority nationwide,
if Amerindians go along with the present political rules, they
can never have the experience of Governance of their own affairs.
Their acceptance of their minority status within the majoritarian
political system has destroyed their self-esteem and self sufficiency
will continue to force them to accept the debilitating paternalism
that all Guyanese governments have practiced on them. This is
the Amerindian Ethnic Security Dilemma.
CENTRALISED AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT
The Paradigm
The Centralised State
The modern state evolved to accommodate
the accumulation of power in the absolute monarchy. It was a
very centralised state. The initial colonization of the "new
world" was established during that same period bracketed
by the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain (1492), Elizabeth
I of England (16..) and Louis IV of France (1780) who could famously
(and without irony) "I am the State". In addition to
inevitable imitation of the centralized model in the "home"
government, the local state was further centralised to facilitate
the regimentation thought needed to exploit the local resources.
The colonial state could be called an "integral" state
one where the controllers of the state and civil society
are the same the state had no autonomy. While analogous
to the struggle by the middle class against the centralised state
in Britain, in the struggle by colonials to obtain a more equitable
distribution of power, the centralised institutions of the local
state were much more extensive, entrenched and recalcitrant.
The Governor could arbitrarily change the rules to buttress colonial
rule at any time he determined they were threatened. Additionally,
the middle and ruling classes of England by and large did not
equate their struggle with the aspirations of the colonials but
posited that the latter needed to be governed firmly for their
own good.
The British had an obsession with the necessity for "sovereignty"
to reside in one single locus in their case their Parliament,
which arose from the historic evolution of their institutions
of state and later accommodated by "theory". The British
reinforced this postulated necessity by a theoretical and official
aversion towards concepts as "Federalism" that would
devolve power or the functions of the Government outwards to
the regions.
The Application to Guyana:
Historical
From the beginning of Guyana's
history c1621, its governance structures were very centralised
and authoritarian - from the Dutch West India Company and the
Berbice Association of Planters respectively, to the Dutch Government.
The latter handed over its colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and
Berbice to Britain in 1803 but on the condition that their legal
and constitutional systems remain intact. These three colonies
were united as one colony British Guiana - in 1831, just
three years before the abolition of slavery. But the unification
generated severe protest, especially in Berbice, to force by
1838, an agreement to administer them as three counties, based
on their historic boundaries. This administrative arrangement
remained in place until 1980.
The British retained the Dutch governing structures but fused
them into a "Combined Court", which consisted of a
Court of Policy and a College of Financial Representatives. While
the Governor had full power and authority, with the advise and
consent of the Court of Policy to make laws for the` colony and
was subject only to the articles of his Royal instructions, he
was checkmated in financial matters by the Planters. This feature
of governance would represent a source of tension between the
Crown and the Planters whenever their interests happened to diverge.
In 1891, the Constitution was amended by the Crown to reduce
the powers of the planters by expanding the franchise of the
locals primarily Coloureds. In 1928, the Constitution was
once again amended, this time to checkmate the burgeoning power
of the local African/Coloured elite. The new Executive Council
gave the Governor great discretionary leeway since even the two
elected members within it were both nominated by the Governor.
The interests of the Home country were never to be challenged.
The best that the elected officials could hope for was to "influence"
the Governor. This insistence and institutionalisation of total
control from the top has remained as a dominant feature of the
local political culture and has even been strengthened by the
successors of the colonial mantle. It remains one of the major
obstacles to a democratic Guyana.
It is a tribute to British certitude (or arrogance) in the rightness
of their institutions (and ways) that once they combined the
three colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice in 1831 into
the unitary state of British Guiana, they never tinkered with
the arrangement. After all if they ruled Scotland, Wales and
Ireland in a unitary framework after their conquests, as "Britain",
why not a mere colony: the only imperative was to facilitate
their ease of control. The administrative centre was Georgetown
and all decisions were made there. Even birth certificates, passports,
etc. necessitated a trip to Georgetown.
The development plans of the British were focused on the needs
of the sugar, bauxite and other expatriate interests: the one
indigenous large-scale industry -rice - was established on marginal
swamp lands by the Indian indentured labourers. Whatever spending
was undertaken were focused on Georgetown and Demerara; the outer
regions of Essequibo, Berbice and the Rupununi and the interior
were progressively underdeveloped. In the modern era all the
light industries, the airport, the major hospitals, all Government
Ministries, Hotels, etc were built in Georgetown and Demerara.
The outlying areas were treated as internal colonies to be used
for the extraction of primary products gold, manganese,
bauxite, sugar, rice.
The Contradictions: Extending
Centralisation
The PNC Dictatorship
In 1964, the British
changed the electoral rules from the constituency system, which
favoured the PPP (the latter's Indian supporters were less than
fifty percent of the population at the time but they were more
evenly distributed across the country and formed majority in
most constituencies no matter how gerrymandered) to a Proportional
Representation (PR) system, which allowed a coalition of the
PNC and the UF to defeat the PPP. The fragmentation of the votes
to prevent ethnic deadlock, which was the putative reason offered
by the British to introduce PR, never materialized. None of this,
of course, did anything to lessen the cleavages between the various
ethnic groups: it merely increased them.
After 1968 the PNC jettisoned its junior partner, the UF, began
to rig elections to remain in office. It explained to its supporters
that to act otherwise would be for them to be excluded from power
forever. The African Ethnic Security Dilemma was playing out.
To hold on to power as a minority regime, Burnham introduced
a form of governance, (post-1968) that sought to establish and
maintain absolute control over the state and society. The author
has applied a model of a totalitarian state to analyse the nature
of the PNC regime, utilising seven characteristics of the acknowledged
totalitarian Soviet State of the early fifties. The since qua
non of totalitarianism was the pervasiveness of the regime's
control, extending through and over every institution and every
individual in the society. This totality of control was the overriding
characteristic of the PNC's rule, under Forbes Burnham between
1968-1985.
First: a single mass party,
led by a dictator. While
Burnham allowed other parties to exist through the rigging of
elections, these parties never threatened the PNC electorally,
and Guyana in actual fact became a one-party state. That is,
while other parties might have been permitted to exist, they
were never allowed to effectively compete with the PNC. The other
parties such as the PPP, UF or newer ones like Democratic Labour
Movement (DLM) merely served to legitimise the PNC's monopoly
of power in the eyes of the international community. They were
to play the role of the "loyal" opposition. If they
ever posed a real threat to the regime, as the Working People's
Alliance (WPA) did briefly, then the totalitarian "sharper
steel" was bared. Witness the assassination of Dr. Walter
Rodney, the WPA's leading light, in 1980. In the same year (not
coincidentally) a new constitution confirmed Burnham's absolute
control over Guyana. For good measure, Article 22 of the PNC
's party constitution anointed him supreme leader of his party.
Second: A system of terroristic control. The House of
Israel - loyal to the PNC, "Kick down the door" -bandits,
arbitrary search and seizures by the police, police informers
in every locality, assassinations, ostentatious marches by the
army through apposition strongholds, etc. kept the opposition
under control, and the population, especially the Indians, in
terror. Indians responded to the pressure by mass migration:
joining the earlier wave of migrants - primarily Portuguese -
who had fled the P.P.P. initiatives during 1957-1964 terms at
the helm. Soon half the country was abroad
Third: a near monopoly control over mass communication and
education. The Government nationalization of, and PNC control
over, the media (radio and newspapers - television was not permitted)
and establishment of the Guyana .GPSA, in tandem with a program
of harassment of the opposition newspapers through libel suits
and bans on newsprint, consummated this imperative. The PNC removed
the schools from church control, and then used these institutions
to impose its vision of society, a new hegemony, on the population.
Organizations, such as the Cuffy Ideological Institute and the
Guyana National Service were created to mould the "new"
Guyanese.
Fourth: a near monopoly control over the "coercive"
apparatus of the state. The Guyana Disciplined Forces - Army,
Police Force, Fire Service, National Service, People's Militia
and National Guard Service - were expanded exponentially, staffed
with a ninety percent African membership and placed under the
command of a PNC loyalist in 1979. All Officers swore personal
loyalty to the leader of the PNC, to provide, along with the
similarly constituted Police Force, the coercive basis for the
P.N.C.'s rule. The society itself was militarised through the
formation of numerous paramilitary organizations such as its
youth arm the Young Socialist Movement and its Women's
arm.
Fifth: the central control and direction of the economy.
By the PNC's boast, they nationalized eighty percent of the economy
by 1976 and provided rewards far in excess of the "Guyanization"
of the managerial strata to which the middle class P.N.C. elite
had aspired. Not only was their class expanded, but also they
obtained a powerful device to keep dissent in line. Partly membership
and support for the Party's position became prerequisites for
maintaining a job. In Burnham's words those who were fired, stayed
fired.
The co-operative, which was to be the cornerstone of the economy,
was to be the vehicle for rewarding the lower class African Guyanese
supporter. However, it was never the top priority of the P.N.C.
brass even though they had persuaded their supporters it was.
When the economy faltered in the late seventies, and the largess
to be distributed to its supporters to ensure loyalty, vanished,
the co-op concept was the first to be jettisoned and lower class
Africans now also became peripheralised. African Guyanese now
joined the exodus to the "outside". For those who remained,
corruption was institutionalised, as it became the avenue of
relating to and dealing with the system. Corruption was power
and absolute corruption became absolute power.
Sixth: a near monopoly over all civil organizations. Trade
Unions, religious organizations, schools, cultural organizations,
and social bodies were all either subverted or controlled by
the PNC intimidation, by buying off compliant leadership, or
by the creation of paper organizations which were given governmental
recognition and a place at the Government's trough. Indian organizations
were co-opted through the opportunism of their leadership, to
rubber stamp P.N.C.'s policies. These leaders were placed in
highly visible, but essentially powerless positions, to create
a façade of a "non-racial" Government. Those
organizations that refused to "cooperate" were denied
the same privileges accorded to the others and ultimately the
former were miniaturised while the latter became paper organizations
with only sycophantic P.N.C. shell "executives".
Seventh: an official ideology. The PNC announced in 1974
that it was a Marxist Leninist party and was reorganized as the
vanguard of the masses . While there have been interminable discussions
as to the "sincerity" of the PNC in its avowal, at
a minimum, Marxism Leninism gave the PNC an appropriate vocabulary
and methodical postulate for its excesses. To his credit, Burnham
had always defined himself as a socialist and against all criticism,
stuck to that definition.
Present Political Structures
As we have adumbrated,
the PNC inherited a very authoritarian, centralised state and
then proceeded to take that authoritarianism and centralization
to new heights (or depths). In 1980 it introduced a new constitution
that gave extraordinary powers to the new Executive President,
Burnham. Simultaneously, a "Regional System" was introduced
but when one views this against the sweeping powers and immunities
conferred on the President and the central government in the
1980 Constitution, the decentralisation was more form than substance.
The Local Government structure created by the PNC consisted of
ten administrative regions with the express purpose of decentralizing
the governmental functions of Guyana. Each region would have
a "Regional Democratic Council", (RDC) that would be
elected during General Elections at the same time as the National
Parliamentary representatives. The RDC's were assigned a budget
and they were made responsible for a host of local functions,
primarily education, drainage and irrigation etc. However there
was not a clean realignment and delineation of responsibilities
and the Central Government ministries retained a host of "supervisory"
and administrative functions, which as executed ensured that
no real power was devolved from the centre. Additionally the
central government Ministries, such as Health and Education,
retained control of all these programs in Georgetown, which is
home to over a quarter of the population, further blurring any
clear decentralisation. The resulting structure is an overstaffed,
bureaucratic mess with overlapping and crisscrossing lines of
authority and responsibility that ensures corruption, mismanagement
and gridlock.
Agglomerating several contiguous villages within the RDC's further
created a third layer of government - the National Democratic
Councils (NDC's) - sixty-five in number, countrywide. They were
granted a nominal annual central governmental subvention, in
addition to being permitted to collect rates and taxes on homes
within their jurisdictions to perform their functions. The townships
across the country also function at the same level as the NDC's.
The Village Councils, which had been the backbone of local government,
especially by African Guyanese, was abolished.
After twenty-four years, (twelve under the PNC and twelve under
the PPP) the regional system in Guyana is an object lesson in
the pitfalls of "decentralization". Firstly, there
had been no real delegation of powers: the regional officers
remained completely under the direction of the central government
officials. Secondly, the overlapping and crisscrossed lines of
authority led to paralysis and an abdication of responsibility
since everyone could point fingers away from themselves. The
bureaucracy had simply increased in size without a commensurate
increase in the level of service. The politicians used the regional
system as simply another vehicle for delivering patronage to
their supporters.
The politicians in Guyana therefore, by and large, never really
questioned the premises of the unitary state even though they
railed against British Imperial machinations. It is another instance
of the local politicians envisaging their role to merely step
into the shoes of the British upon their departure and to rule
in the old authoritarian way. Unfortunately for Guyana, history
has demonstrated (and recently with a vengeance), that if there
is one law in the social sciences it is that a heavily centralized
state structure in a plural society will inevitably lead to instability.
A monolithic state exacerbates the inherent contradictions inhering
in plural societies.
Constitutional changes since
1992
While the PPP had trenchantly
criticised the 1980 Constitution when in opposition, it appeared
quite comfortable with its provisions, after assuming office
in 1992. Following ethnic riots in 1998 the PPP and PNC signed
two agreements the Herdmanston (1998) and St. Lucia (1999)
Accords that included within their ambit, the acceptance
of Constitutional changes to reduce the powers of the Presidency,
to decentralise governance and to make the Government more inclusive
of the opposition. An all-party Constitutional Reform Commission
was established and after countrywide consultations a number
of changes were recommended and implemented.
One change, implemented in time for the 2001 elections, was intended
to return some semblance of Parliamentarians being more "representative"
by being elected from specified geographical areas, somewhat
along the old constituency system. In an acknowledged one-off
arrangement, twenty-five (25) of the sixty-five (65) Parliamentary
seats were allocated to the ten regions. The agreement is for
a more structured approach that would be accomplished in time
for the next elections in 2006 and which would entail increasing
the number of 'regional' seats and correlating them closer to
their populations. Local Government elections were supposed to
be held under a revamped Local Government system.
The other structural changes went primarily towards the strengthening
of parliamentary oversight powers over Executive actions. There
are now four Sectoral Committees that can inquire into all of
the functions of Government. A Parliamentary Management Committee
is supposed to manage the business of Parliament. Because there
is a tacit understanding that the process of constitutional change
needs to be furthered, there is a standing Select Committee on
Constitutional Reform. Several Rights committees such as an Ethnic
Relations Committee, Indigenous peoples Committees have been
formed to help secure the rights of various constituencies against
abuses by the state and other citizens.
A Disciplined Forces Commission has been constituted and has
taken evidence towards fulfilling its mandate to inquire into
the structure and functions of the Disciplined Forces towards
making recommendations for their reform.
The tinkering with the Constitution has established that the
major political forces have reconnised that the institutions
of government need to be modified so as to distribute the powers
of the state more equitably in Guyana. However, the incremental
changes are evidently insufficient to change the centralised
imperative of governance in Guyana, or address the Ethnic Security
Dilemmas and other contradictions of the political system. The
ethnic violence has continued undiminished after the changes
in the Constitution have been implemented.
ECONOMIC DISTRIBUTION
The Proffered Paradigm:
Imperialism and Capitalism - Historical
In Guyana, the question of an equitable distribution of economic
goods has always loomed large in the minds of the populace. This
should not be surprising in light of Guyana's origin as a colony
founded on slave and indentured labour. As a non-settler European
colony, the Guyanese economy was structured to produce primary
products in agriculture and mining at the cheapest possible labour
cost, for export to the metropole countries. There, the goods
would be manufactured for resale to the very same labourers in
the colonies, at a huge profit by the designated agents of the
Imperial power.
The movement for the abolition of slavery and the agitation in
India for humane working conditions for the indentured labourers
left a legacy of sensitivity to the exploitation economic
and otherwise - of labour. In fact, the trade union movement,
conceptualised to agitate for economic justice on behalf of workers
was launched in Guyana as far back as 1919, long before political
parties appeared on the scene. Most of the modern politicians
came out of the trade union movement. The ethnic organisations
formed not long after by mostly middle-class elements, were also
concerned about the economic status and progress of their members.
This was truer of the nascent Indian middle-class, which had
a greater number of members from the world of business.
The historical development of the colony, by and large, led to
ethnic economic specialisation and this was to have far reaching
consequences. Within a decade of the abolition of slavery, the
majority of Africans left the plantation and were channelled
into becoming an urbanised workforce of lower civil service clerks,
messengers, transport workers, dock workers, shop assistants,
artisans, masons etc. The unbroken wave of migration, continuing
to the present, soon created a large African urban underclass,
which could be used to depress urban wages. Many Africans went
into the hinterland to prospect for gold and opened up a new
industry. Those Africans who remained on the sugar plantations
constituted the major of factory workers who were inevitably
separated from the mostly Indian field workers. When the bauxite
industry was developed following WWI, the workers recruited were
primarily Africans. The Portuguese and Chinese, small in numbers,
also gravitated to the urban centres directly after serving their
indenture contracts, with some remaining as shopkeepers in the
newly formed villages. The majority of Indians, even after indentureship,
remained on the plantations or formed rural settlements near
the plantations focusing primarily on rice and vegetable
cultivation and cattle rearing.
Economic competition was sustained with the rural migration continuing
as a constant feature of the colony's development since the towns
were promoted as the centre of "civilised" life and
higher standards of living. As mentioned, rural African migration
precipitated severe contradictions as the African underclass
grew while opportunities stagnated. The early success of the
Portuguese migrants in business, which squeezed out many Coloured/African
entrepreneurs, led to several African Portuguese riots,
notably in 1848, 1856 and 1888. The Portuguese were seen as unfairly
moving ahead of Africans.
It was the beginning of the movement of Indians into the urban-centred
occupations after the end of indentureship in 1917 however, that
precipitated the greatest stresses in the society some
of which are still to be resolved. The Indians, building on their
successes in rice, cattle rearing and petty retailing, began
to open businesses in Georgetown by the 1920's and also. to enter
the independent professions of medicine and law. These were very
highly prized occupations in colonial society that helped to
define status and when some Indians began to percolate into the
Civil Service by the 1930's, the Coloured/African elite began
to feel threatened.
The Indians were seen as a threat for a variety of economic reasons
in addition to the cultural and political ones. Firstly,
the government had financed part of the cost of bringing Indians
to Guyana from the national treasury, into which the Africans
had paid taxes. This was akin to rubbing salt into an open wound,
since the many African leaders had convinced the average African
that the Indians had undercut their leverage to bargain for greater
wages on the plantations after the abolition of slavery. Secondly,
Africans feared that the Indians, with their immigrant drive
for economic advancement coupled with their greater numbers (by
the end of indentureship) would become so economically dominant
even if they were to occupy only a proportionate share of the
valued economic platforms, as to overwhelm them. This fear increased
as the Indians slowly began to follow the path earlier trod by
the rural African to the urban centres. Because of their distinctiveness
however, the Indians stood our for continued comparison even
thought they became heavily creolised. This very entrenched fear
in the African/Coloured population by the beginning of modern
political mobilisation in 1950.
PPP: 1957-1964
The economic development
plans of the PPP administration of 1957-1964 stressed development
of the agricultural sector especially the rice sector.
Even though the plans were crafted under British tutelage, the
effect was to favour Indians, who were occupiers of the agricultural
niche, to an overwhelming extent than Africans. Similarly, the
opening up of trade with the Socialist Eastern bloc opened up
agency arrangements grabbed by Indian businessmen - that
bypassed the old British ones, which were dominated by the Portuguese
and Coloured interests. While the PPP established the first Industrial
Estate in urban Ruimveldt, most of the businesses were opened
up by Indians. These gains created a noticeable economic surge
in the Indian community and precipitated intense cries of discrimination
in the African community, which were a major issue in the 1961
and 1964 elections.
PNC: 1964-1992
State Capitalism
One of the prevalent beliefs in the African Guyanese community
by the PNC's accession to office in 1964, was that Indians were
in a position to control the economic activities and the wealth
of the country and if this were combined with political power
(in the form of the PPP) then the Africans would have nothing
left for themselves, as citizens of a country that they had literally
slaved to create. This conclusion about the "injustice"
of outcomes within existing institutions and structures was the
concrete manifestation of the African Security Dilemma. It led
them to justify and accept the rigging of elections and other
"innovations" by the PNC from 1968, which was explained
was the only way to level the playing field. When the PNC secured
sole control of the government after 1968 they moved to make
the "small man a real man". Very soon it was apparent
that the PNC saw only the "African man" as a "small
man".
Between 1964-1968, the PNC, in coalition with the US pursued
the "Industrialisation by Invitation" model proposed
by Arthur Lewis, who drafted Guyana's first (1966-1972) development
plan. A focus on infrastructure was supposed to facilitate the
strategy but served to move funds away from the agriculture sector
towards capital works employment. Massive restructuring of the
rice industry was initiated at this time.
By 1970, with the UF out of the way, the PNC jettisoned the Lewis
plan, announced that the model of economic development would
be "Cooperative Socialism" and formulated a new 1972-1976
plan intended to "house, clothe and feed" the nation
by the end of the plan period. Overall, the strategy could have
been as easily described as State capitalism since by the mid
seventies, it was characterised by a massive nationalisation
drive culminating in the state controlling over eighty percent
of the economy. The bauxite industry was the first to be nationalised,
with the expectation that the learning curve of running industries
would be first overcome by its supporters. The PNC then moved
to control those sectors of the economy in which Indians were
prominent such as agriculture and petty retailing. While the
PNC would like to justify their policies as guided by the model
of "Import Substitution Industrialization" where money
is squeezed from the agricultural sector to finance manufacturing
of items imported, the execution of the policy meant that the
burdens fell overwhelmingly on the Indian population. For instance,
the PNC mandated that all rice be sold to the government; bought
that rice at a low price and then sold the rice on the world
market at a high price thus placing a huge implicit tax on rice
farmers and in the process destroying the industry.
The proposed spending in the PNC's 1972-76 development plan reduced
the PPP's 55% of budgeted funds to Agriculture down to sixteen
percent and redirected sixty-two percent to various public works
where as in the previous plan, its supporters dominated. The
PNC exacted a levy on windfall profits in the sugar industry
(1974), nationalized it (1976), and further politicised and squeezed
the workers to eventually bring the industry down on its knees.
The PNC instituted an External Trade Bureau (ETB), which took
over all importation of goods into the country, distributed through
the intriguingly named "Knowledge Sharing Institute"
(KSI) - most located in African areas, and put most petty retailers
predominantly Indians out of business.
The co-op scheme was the vehicle for the "small man"
i.e. the small African man, to become a "real man".
Huge swathes of agricultural land, in all parts of Guyana, but
mainly in West Coast Berbice, were transferred to co-operatives
founded by African villagers. The newly established Co-op Bank
(more jobs for the PNC elite) provided them with agricultural
loans while the Ministry of Cooperatives provided land and technical
help and the Guyana Marketing Corporation provided a market.
Co-ops paid no taxes on profits. The PNC established at least
fourteen housing schemes, with thousands of homes, all for African
Guyanese. The upper and middle class supporters of the PNC were
empowered through jobs in the enlarged public sector (including
the nationalized industries) and the boards, and directorships
of the Government Corporations. Unfortunately, the sad fact is
that most of these policies failed and by 1980 Guyana was bankrupt
and defaulted on its international commitments. Finally in 1989,
Hugh Desmond Hoyte, who succeeded Burnham in 1985, had to enter
an IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Program in 1989, which
set as a conditionality that the economy be restructured to facilitate
a free enterprise system. What had gone wrong?
The PNC proved several things, all of which had been demonstrated
by the previous PPP regime. Firstly, no Government can exclude
or penalize half of the population of a country and still expect
development, unless it is willing to introduce slave camps. Secondly,
if a group is thought to be lagging in any sector of national
life, and there is a need for programs to rectify such disabilities
then the need and the programs must be identified openly. While
each Government may have been moving to rectify historical imbalances
against, respectively, Indians and Africans, efforts to present
the programs as facially neutral fuelled suspicions of discrimination
and racism. These suspicions increased the ethnic and political
polarisation, based on the nature of Guyanese ethnic politics.
1992-2004
PPP
Free Enterprise System: The "Washington Consensus"
Model
The economic program
of the present PPP regime is by and large driven by World Bank/IMF
conditionalites imposed when the PNC had entered into an IMF/World
Bank program in 1989 dubbed the "Economic Recovery
Program" (ERP). The Government has asserted that it does
not plan to exit the program in the near term, so it is very
important to examine the implications for Guyana in terms of
growth and ethnic politics.
In 1989, one analyst summarised the common features of the IMF/World
Bank programs implemented in the debt ridden Latin American countries
and labelled them the "Washington Consensus". Very
broadly the ten policies of the "Consensus" can be
grouped under three headings stabilization, liberalisation
and privatisation. Individually, these were: fiscal discipline
(2-3% budget deficits) to control inflation, public expenditures
directed towards primary healthcare, education and infrastructure,
tax reform to broaden the tax base, financial liberalisation
market determined interest rates, competitive exchange
rates, trade liberalisation tariff rates not exceeding
20%, removing barriers to foreign direct investment, privatisation,
deregulation to encourage competition and providing secure property
rights.
These policies are summarise the neo-liberal vision of the Free
Enterprise system and are based on the assumption that an exclusive
reliance on markets will of itself ensure that resources will
be reallocated across sectors, that is, that the appropriate
and adequate amount of investment will be made by entrepreneurs
to produce the desired high rate of growth.
In the present circumstances the strategy implied by the Washington
Consensus of the World Bank/IMF combine has grave implications
for ethnic relations in Guyana, apart from the extraordinary
leap of faith implicit in the above assumption. We have already
alluded to the implications of the levels of entrepreneurial
skills present in the various ethnic communities. More immediate,
fundamental to the program was a much smaller role for the state
especially the bloated state that the PNC had constructed.
A smaller government and privatisation of state-owned entities
meant retrenchment of workers and this affected African Guyanese
more than other groups since they were the dominant group in
the public sector. Even though the retrenchment was begun by
the PNC between 1989-1992, the perception that the PPP has marginalised
Africans is still very entrenched.
What is clear is that in a poverty stricken country like Guyana,
unless the economy is growing at a rate where there is clear
improvement in all sections of the population, there will be
an increased potential for ethnic conflict, since economic deprivations
will be automatically linked to political discrimination, due
to the proclivity for individuals to evaluate their condition
in relative rather than absolute terms.
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Application of the Paradigm: Contradictions
In Guyana, by 1997, five years after the PPP was returned
into office, the collective African Guyanese leadership asserted
that they were lagging economically behind Indians, who had been
helped by the PPP. The PPP had been accused of "ethnic cleansing"
by the PNC as early as 1993 when they changed a number of functionaries
in the Public and Diplomatic Services. Other African organizations,
along with the PNC, in the succeeding years have claimed discrimination
in the areas of house-lots allocation, contract awards, upgrading
of infrastructure, employment of graduates and the general "marginalization"
of the African Guyanese community. Most recently, the General
Secretary of the Trade Union Congress has charged that the PPP
government has practiced "economic genocide" against
Africans. The PPP, on the other hand, has countered with figures
in an attempt to demonstrate that their policies do not discriminate
against Africans and that their social status, including economic
standing and performances are quite comparable to Indians and
that in many areas they are ahead.
In 1992, a "Household Income and Expenditure Survey"
(HIES) was conducted, which showed that 43% of the population
was living below the poverty line. It also showed that there
was no significant difference between the per capita or percentage
expenditure levels between Africans and Indians. In absolute
numbers there were a greater number of Indians under the poverty
line. Amerindians were shown to be the worst off by all economic
indicators. A prominent African economist in analysing the data
concluded that the African condition was dire. It was but so
was the condition of the Indian. A World Bank's 1994 analysis
of poverty in Guyana, utilising the 1992 HIES report, had recommended
that funding for poverty reduction should focus on rural areas,
since "poverty was a rural phenomenon" and spending
there would have the greatest impact. Indians were overwhelmingly
rural, as were Amerindians.
In 1999 there was another HIES conducted and while overall poverty
decreased to 36%, this decrease was much more significant in
urban areas where Africans predominate. The level of Amerindian
poverty had increased, and so would that of Indians, who were
still dominant in rural areas.
What we can observe is that because of the polarised political
system in Guyana, the policies and programs of governments will
always be scrutinised very closely for signs of discrimination
by the group supporting the party out of office. During the PNC's
term of office, many such charges were levelled against them
by Indians. Cognisant of this reality of evaluation of governmental
actions through ethnic lenses, the Government of the day must
factor the "ethnic impact" into the formulation and
execution of its policies and programs from their inception.
To state figures after the fact is not enough by then,
the damage would have been done. For the present, that the charges
of economic marginalisation is prevalent in the African community
need to be investigated by a bipartisan body, since it has been
posited by activists from the African community as a prime proximate
cause for extreme reactions.
Even as we agonise over our failure to improve our circumstances,
we have overlooked the fact that not only "nation"
but the "state" itself and the other mega-institutions
are also variables and that they can each be modified to further
our goal of bringing justice and equity into the cultural, political
and economic realms and not so incidentally, deepening democracy
in Guyana. We will now look at federalism as such an overarching
political system.
Part 2
FEDERALISM
Theory
Like "democracy", federalism in its modern incarnation
was the consequence of a polity dealing with a historical contingency
in this instance the Britain's thirteen colonies in North
America deciding to form "a more perfect union". Unfortunately,
the American experience has resulted in most persons focusing
on the structural, territorial, aspects of federalism federalism
as a form of government - even though some of the early American
political theorists gave much broader rationales for introducing
the concept. The Swiss, however, not long after the US, adopted
federalist principles that went beyond mere governance issues
and dealt with the question of "national identity and culture"
in a multiethnic society, and forged a most stable society and
state. Just as with "democracy", the application of
federalist principles will have to be sensitive to the nuances
of the particular society as to which aspect of this omnibus
concept should be stressed.
Federalism is not just a form of government; any "form"
of human organisation is undergirded by an ideology or philosophy
about how human societies can and ought be organized. "In
its most general and commonly conceived for, federalism can be
considered as an ideology which holds that the ideal organisation
of human affairs is best reflected in the celebration of diversity
through unity." Federalism, then, has its particular perspective
on governance, to achieve stability with justice in pursuit of
the good life - the objectives of most human communities. Federalists
are sensitive to the Kantian caution that "ought" implies
"can", so that an understanding of the empirical conditions
of the society under consideration is an absolute prerequisite,
since each society will have its own idiosyncratic enabling or
retarding institutions and structures. And it is for this reason
that we have spent such a considerable time on describing the
Guyanese reality.
While it may not be a "purely self-referential" political
philosophy, federalism does have a substantive as well as a procedural
or structural/institutional component. The substantive aspect
concerns itself with the sociological values that the groups
in the particular society seek to realise, while the procedural
component focuses on processes, institutions and organisational
forms that the groups in society may utilise to realise their
values by living together.
Substantive Aspects of Federalism: Sociological Federalism
Substantively, Federalism is centred on the values of liberty
and freedom and seeks to give life to those democratic values
by integrating diverse groups within societies through accommodation,
and not obliteration, of their differences. In the post-modern,
post-colonial world there is not only an acceptance, but a celebration
of diversities. Even a staid British expert pronounced, as far
back as the middle of the last century that, "one of the
most urgent problems in the world today is to preserve diversitiesand
at the same time, to introduce such a measure of uniformity as
will prevent clashes and facilitate cooperation. Federalism is
one way of reconciling these two ends." Federalism thus
seeks to achieve and maintain unity and diversity: it addresses
the innate need of people (and politics) to unite for common
goals and yet to remain separate and preserve their respective
integrities.
Federalism means organizing our society around the principle
of freedom and autonomy rather than through the calculus of bureaucratic
efficiency. From this perspective, federalism demands quantum
changes in our conceptions about means and ends in politics.
Federalism keeps in focus at all times this concern about means
and ends and insists that we cannot intend to have people live
in democracy and freedom, while utilizing institutions that stifle
and restrict the liberty of the people. In general there is an
inevitable lag between the institutions honed during times of
more restrictive conceptions of human freedom and the more expansive
ones prevalent today. In Guyana, federalist principles would
have to infuse the new political culture to give life to the
values of democracy, while institutional changes would have to
nurture and inculcate these new values at the personal, social
and ideological levels.
Federalism deals directly with the fact of pluralism in the post-modern
world. John Rawls elaborates on the rationale for this reality
so well, that it is worth an extended quote:
"The diversity of comprehensive religious, philosophical,
and moral doctrines found in modern democratic societies is not
a mere historical condition that may soon pass away. It is a
permanent feature of the public culture of democracy. Under the
political and social conditions that the basic rights and liberties
of free institutions secure, a diversity of conflicting and irreconcilable
comprehensive doctrines will emerge, if such diversity
does not already exist." (my emphasis)
While there will be many expressions of diversity, from
a political perspective, we have seen that in the post modern
world ethnicity has become the most widespread one, leading to
severe strains and conflicts in many countries that are attempting
to pursue democratic norms. Federalism also addresses this seemingly
inevitable and intractable conflict between nationalism/ethnicity
and democracy. It combines kinship (the basis of ethnicity) and
consent (the basis of democratic government) into politically
viable entities through constitutionally protected arrangements,
involving territorial and non-territorial politics. This is the
central need of politics in Guyana. In the modern world where
groups, especially ethnic groups, have not disappeared into some
sort of mélange, and there are far more groups in the
world than countries, federalism performs a sociological function
by simultaneously facilitating the integrity of various groups
and their input into the political system.
Thus federalism combines the seeming contradictory impulses present
in all societies, but accentuated in plural societies such as
Guyana, the need to be united (the principle of solidarity
and shared rule) and the need for groups to live authentically
(the principle of autonomy self rule). To satisfy
the first need, societies have to engender a unity of purpose
to ensure effective governance and this inevitably leads to some
form of concentration of power - but with federalism, this is
achieved by shared rule, under a contractual basis. On the second
societal need, federalism facilitates the freedom and liberty
to make one's choices and this inevitably means a diffusion of
political power in some sort of shared-rule. In organising around
the principle of autonomy, federalism achieves a political compromise
union with autonomy, unity with diversity.
Procedural Aspect of Federalism:
Bargaining
In 1795, the philosopher
Immanuel Kant noted that the word "Federalism" was
from derived from the Latin word "foedus" -
meaning "covenant" - signalling the contractual basis
that is the root feature of all Federal arrangements. Federalism
proposes that people should make free choices in their relationships
and that these choices should flow from conscious, negotiated,
contractual agreements. Individuals are seen as autonomous and
should then be free to define their associations both privately
and publicly. At a macro level, for instance, the representatives
of the various groups in a country ought to negotiate as to how
they should be governed, that is to be able to craft their Constitution
through bargaining and negotiation. Constitutionalism and "constitutional
engineering" to allocate power authoritatively in
a society and state - are thus quite compatible with federalism.
This insistence on free choice is a fundamental point that flows
from a view of human freedom and autonomy - that individuals
know what is best for them and in terms of governance, should
choose their representatives. This view ineluctably leads to
the necessity for governments to have as wide a range of representation
as possible so as to be as legitimate as possible, especially
when those representatives are chosen on ascriptive criteria,
as in Guyana. Conversely, the federalist insistence for autonomy
of the individual is based on a view of justice that the individual
should ultimately be responsible for his decisions since each
individual had freedom of choice in making his choice.
As we have emphasised, while there are societies that may have
convinced themselves that they, and their forms of governance,
have evolved "organically" from some hoary past, we
in Guyana can harbour no such illusions. Even more than other
societies, Guyanese who were ruled for so long under rules imposed
by others, who were objects rather than subjects, should acknowledge
that the allocation of power within our society, and the basic
policies structuring our activities must be arrived at through
some sort of bargaining. Only in this manner will the necessary
legitimacy be conferred on our governing institutions.
In Guyana, because of the widespread denial of ethnicity as the
most salient line of cleavage, there is great reluctance, amounting
to a conspiracy of silence, to accept that bargaining on behalf
of ethnic groups is in no way morally inferior to bargaining
on behalf of, say economic classes. Since 1957, the electorate
has increasingly indicated at the polls that they consider it
best that their political interest be represented by ethnic representatives.
There can be no denial of the need to arrive at methods to deal
with this peculiarity. Even though, as with all contracts, there
will be the need to make concessions, negotiations at all levels
will ensure that there will be widespread sharing in the decision-making
and executing processes. We must have some sort of covenant for
governance, which is the basis of federalism.
Procedural/Formal/Structural Aspect of Federalism: Non-centralised
governance
Another value facilitated by federalism was also suggested
by Immanuel Kant who contrasted federalism with "administrative
centralism(which) leads to the loss of liberty of individuals,
communities and nations." He thus spelled out another of
the substantive aspects of modern federalism protection
of the individual from big government. As Kant pointed out, by
dispersing power to many centres, federalism acts to curb excessive
concentration of power against the always potentially tyrannical
government. In this way federalism serves the political end of
enhancing freedom and thus furthering democracy. This abuse of
state power has been a constant in Guyanese history and has to
be addressed within any democratic design for Guyana.
The principle of "subsidiarity" - articulated recently
in Europe as they grapple with unifying a multiplicity of societies
and cultures is an important initiative. The principle insists
that for the most effective and responsive governance several,
smaller centres of government and power should be created and
most importantly, that policies be executed at the lowest possible
level of government. This principle of federalism facilitates
the participation of citizens in the decision making process
and further enhances their freedom.
As emphasised several times in this paper, the unitary state
originated in conjunction with the movement towards the nation-state
during the last few centuries out of the same centralising impulses,
for the accommodation of capitalistic economic expansion. Today,
globalisation has moved capitalism to a different level and it
is obvious that the autarkic nation-state is no longer needed
when even small villages can forge direct links to the global
economy. Today there is a simultaneous movement of states towards
forming federations while within the individual states, there
is a loosening of control over social groups. Federalism addresses
the contradiction of a economically integrated world existing
within a politically fragmented one and the twenty-first century
will certainly witness an intensification of the movement of
statism to federalism already in motion over the last fifty years.
That seventy-five percent of the countries in the world are now
governed by federalist principles is an acknowledgement of the
paradigm shift in the relationship between man and state. Guyana
and other countries attempting to catch up with the developed
countries, have to leapfrog not only technologies of production
but technologies of governance.
Procedural/Structural Aspects
of Federalism: Form of government
As practitioners apply
federalist principles to particular set of circumstances they
would obviously arrive at a most wide array of political arrangements
because of the diversity of the human social condition. The variant
of federalism that is most popular in the average layperson is
a political structural one, exemplified by the form of government
found in the USA. where there are three levels of government
the Federal or central government, the State government
and the local government bodies (city/town/counties). From a
political standpoint, (i.e. from the standpoint of the allocation
of state power under a standard of justice) federalism achieves
its ends of freedom and autonomy, by diffusing state power amongst
a central common government and several region/state/province
governments, with each entity having constitutionally defined
authority or competencies. The distinguishing feature of the
federal structure is that the powers of each unit is constitutionally
defined and those powers cannot be altered unless all of the
parties agree to the change.
The functioning of both the central and regional governments
is based on bargaining and compact the principle of federal
comity. The regional governments' powers are not "delegated"
but rather the central government functions in such a manner
so as not to infringe on the integrity of the authority of the
component units. Most writers focus on this juridical understanding
of federalism, which stresses rigid divisions of power. The famous
British constitutionalist, K.C. Wheare defined a federal system
as one where, "powers are divided between a general level
of government which in certain mattersis independent of the governments
of the associated states, and on the other hand, state governments
which in certain matters are, in their turn, independent of the
general government. This involves, as a necessary consequence,
that general and regional governments both operate directly on
the people; each citizen subject to two governments." There
are three fundamental rights that characterize the legal
configuration of the states/provinces/regions: the right to existence,
the right to act in specific areas (competencies) and the right
to participate in federal/central government.
After surveying the development of the nation-state in the modern
era, one can appreciate the growing insistence by those who discern
the drawbacks of a heavily centralised state, that all diffusion
of power must be seen as "devolution" of power from
a centre. It is a reaction against the premises of most practitioners
and analysts of politics, especially Marxists, who conceived
of "integration" as making a centralized state even
stronger. Thus even when, for whatever reason, a federal structure
was introduced in a country, many viewed federalism as a form
of decentralization from a centre that remained strong. But the
very fact that power must be "de-centralised" should
alert us to the reality that in most instances of such initiatives,
the "power" still has a centre and since the centre
can centralize or decentralize at will; there is always the potential
for abuse. The power structure would still retain a hierarchical
pattern with the federal centre poised on top of increasingly
larger layers of first state, and then local authorities. The
federalist approach is to go beyond a mere division of powers
and to propose a model where politics functions from many distributed
centres.
Federalism therefore proposes a matrix of power centres in which
there is no hierarchy, since the centres are "non-centralised"
rather than "decentralized". It seeks to diffuse power
to such an extent that it cannot be legitimately re-centralised
without violating the letter and spirit of the constitution.
In the words of Daniel Elazar: "The measure of political
integration is not the strength of the centre as opposed to peripheries
it is in the strength of the framework: both the whole
and the parts can gain in strength simultaneously." This
does not mean that the central federal government has to be necessarily
small and weak: it should be as small as possible and as large
as necessary to achieve the goals set by the citizens of the
country themselves.
This vision originated with the US experience that turned the
traditional allocation of power on its head, when the founders
of the American republic located power and sovereignty in the
people themselves. The US Constitution delegated powers from
bottom up necessitating that the states, which were closer
to the people, were the original recipients of the delegated
powers. It was an early application of the principle of subsidiarity.
This is particularly unlike the experience of the British ex-colonies
(even federated ones), where the regions/provinces/ states are
creatures of the central government, to be made and unmade at
will.
The federalist allocation of powers spans a broad spectrum of
governmental arrangements and the precise mix of competencies
between central and regional governments are determined by the
people themselves as to which level of government could best
take care of the task at hand. To reemphasize the point made
earlier, we support the principle of subsidiarity that declares
that the task should be delegated to the lowest layer that can
handle it.
Part 3
PROPOSED INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS -
WITHIN A FEDERAL FRAMEWORK
Ethnic Impact Statement
Federal and State
Even if there were not a propensity for man to compare himself
socially with those around him (the social comparison process),
the politics practiced in Guyana over the four decades have definitely
ensured that every initiative of the Government is scrutinised
punctiliously by the populace to determine whether there is partiality
to one or the other group. During the first PPP regime (1957-64)
the Government's allocation of land in the new Agricultural Development
Scheme of Black Bush Polder, which resulted in a disproportionate
amount of land going to Indians, caused a huge outcry in the
African community, notwithstanding the protestations of the PPP
that the distribution was conducted in a facially neutral manner.
During the subsequent PNC's regime, the policy of the Government
in the rice sector was bitterly criticised by Indians as being
designed to destroy their economic base. In the current PPP regime
the PPP has been accused of "economic genocide" against
Africans by no less a personage that the General Secretary of
the Trades Union Council (TUC). These are only single examples
of a most pervasive reality that drives ethnic resentments that
can be fanned into hostile acts descending into ethnic conflict.
This social comparison process must be addressed right up front
if there is to be any chance of any initiative being successful.
We propose that an "Ethnic Impact Statement" be issued
with the promulgation of every Government policy and program
whether in the cultural, political or economic realms. Recently,
several Constitutional committees have been established that
are supposed to evaluate legislation and governmental, as well
as private actions, for ethnic discrimination but these will
always almost be "after the fact". The proposal for
an Ethnic Impact will operate in the same manner as the requirement
for the now accepted "Environmental Impact Statements"
that have to be issued before certain development projects can
get off the ground. The initiating agencies, from the onset,
would be made aware of the criteria that must be satisfied before
the policy or program would be approved.
The actual mechanisms to generate the impact statements can be
worked in detail out but at a minimum, would have to operate
at the Federal, State and local levels.
1. NATIONAL CULTURE AND IDENTITY
We had identified two
sets of contradictions stemming from the assimilationist cultural
ideal practiced by the Guyanese state up to the present, as it
clashed with the Guyanese reality. Firstly there was the relationship
between the state and national culture and secondly the question
of whether the state had a role in promulgating values that were
in consonance with (or facilitated by creation of appropriate
contexts) nationally defined development goals. We are proposing
that both sets of contradictions can be addressed by programs
that work best work within a federalist framework.
National Culture
There is no question that the citizens of a society must
see it as a "common venture" even if they reject conceptions
of "nation" that may be oppressive to existing diversities.
"Nation" and "state" have to be disarticulated
yet Guyanese have to achieve some commonality of outlook to survive,
much less prosper in the modern world. The modern state is a
reality and is the unit within with citizens act and which has
sovereignty in the international arena, to deal with other states.
At independence Guyanese inherited a state but not a nation,
since the reality of their coming together ensured that they
had no common culture. The experience across the world has demonstrated
that people do not identify with the state in a spontaneous,
automatic manner and that's partially why Guyanese have
clung to their ethnicities. The challenge would be to construct
a "unity" of the peoples within the Guyanese state
that does not seek to obliterate the diversities but is more
receptive and accommodative to self conceptions . One obstacle
to such as unity is the refusal to accept that diversity is not
the opposite of "unity" "homogeneity"
is; and the opposite of "unity" is "disunity".
The solution to the apparent dilemma is to accommodate diversity
without fostering disunity. Federalism provides a framework for
achieving this elusive goal.
Interestingly enough, Canada and Australia, two ex-British colonies, have taken the lead in redefining their "national" identity. They have both rejected the unitary "nation-state" model and chose "multiculturalism" as their ideology for unity. It is not coincidental that both these countries have federal arrangements of governance. In their understanding, multiculturalism is an official government policy that promotes cultural diversity, and the "national" is conceived as the space within which many (ethnically defined and even imagined) communities live and interact. It is to be noted that even though these were "settler" colonies where the vast majority of citizens originated in Britain and practiced British culture "naturally", they have pre-empted colonies such as Guyana, where British culture was imposed from outside, in accepting the legitimacy of other cultural strains to help define the "nation" .
Taking our cue from these states,
it is proposed that we demarcate our cultural sphere as a private
one, and not to be used as the criteria to build the overarching
unity we need in the public sphere. The Guyanese state would
adopt the policy of multiculturalism as a Governmental policy
response to a multicultural society i.e. a society that is culturally
pluralist. The policy response, "multiculturalism",
must be distinguished from the societal condition of being multicultural.
Most countries are multicultural but only a handful are multiculturalist.
Multiculturalism may be seen as a set of principles, policies,
and practices for accommodating diversity as a legitimate and
integral component of society. This does not mean that the state
has nothing to do with culture but that it does not privilege
any one culture over others.
What is being suggested is that we move from the idea of a "national
culture" as a site for identification to the shared practice
of a political ideology as the basis for engendering such identification
within the state. Rather than those, such as Rex Nettleford,
who demand that all ethnic groups assimilate into Creole culture
to become "one nation", we propose that a feeling of
"we the people" of "Guyanese-ness"
- can be engendered in the process of our conscious construction
of a democratic state.
We situate this construction of a national outlook within what
can be seen as a project of democratisation the creation
of conditions where we are all treated as one, equally, by the
state. Because of our diversity, such conditions can only exist
in a federalist state, where our diversities would actually be
accommodated and encouraged rather that become the basis of invidious
distinctions. Equality of opportunity; human rights, encouragement
of diversities, due process; justice and fair play and rule of
law may seem dry compared to the warmth of the blood ties of
"nation", but they can engender the unity of public
purpose and the recognition of individual worth where all can
be proud of their common citizenship. Citizenship of Guyana has
to become something that has concrete meaning to all of us.
It was the United States, made up of immigrants with diverse
cultural backgrounds like us in Guyana, that first attempted
to institutionalise this ideological definition of "national
identity" when they announced ringingly in their Declaration
of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness."
All Americans see these shared ideological values as defining
themselves their "Americaness" their national
identity. When they established as their motto E Pluribus
Unum- out of many, one they meant "one" based
on ideological criteria. The ideological foundations were intended
to become supra-cultural values that would transcend the specific
cultural inheritances of the immigrant. They succeeded to a great
degree but unfortunately their founding fathers undermined the
legitimacy of the ideological premises by implicitly assuming
that British culture was going to undergird and suffuse this
conception they universalised the British cultural experience.
This introduced the nation-state identity through the back door,
which inevitably became repressive and has rightly been rejected
by multiculturalist conceptions such as Afro-centricity.
Universalism is never power neutral its defenders always
have a certain interest in it. Contra to the local proponents
of the universalism of Creole Culture for the Caribbean and Guyana,
we should not repeat the American mistake here and privilege
any one culture, and consequently one group. Similarly, since
the state itself had justified its legitimacy through the goal
of all its citizens living by the principles and values of its
ideology, if this is seen not to be the reality for some, the
status quo will be challenged by the excluded. The movement towards
allowing citizens to constantly authenticate themselves ideologically
is always enabled: multiculturalism becomes part and parcel of
the "nation by design".
For Guyana then, our ethnicities would be defined outside our
"Guyaneseness" and to be African-Guyanese or Indian-Guyanese
would not be contradictory in any sense. The first part of our
identity would be specific while the latter universalistic. The
"national" will now be a space where ethnic communities
can live and share. To be Guyanese would be to share public moral
precepts norms, values and attitudes rather than
necessarily, shared cultural experience and practice. To the
extent that they are shared it is to be lauded but it must never
be at the imperative to jettison one culture. A "good"
Guyanese would be one who is loyal to this country and strives
to practice the secular universalistic ideological values it
extols. Not so long ago, for instance Guyanese of all ethnicities
held "hospitality" as a cardinal value of being Guyanese.
Guyana is therefore is at a critical moment where we are attempting
to ensure that state power is equitably distributed amongst the
several ethnic groups in our society which is a precursor to
the creation of the space necessary for such co-existence. Multiculturalism
is not just about cultural practices: it is also a signifier
of the power relations of the society. It is only when power
is distributed equitably that the ideological values mean anything
to the culturally embedded individual. This is the content of
a national identity.
But what would be the incentives for creating such a state? They
would be the same incentives that spurred the development of
every other democracy crises and social conflicts. Our
present crisis, starting in 1998, has already precipitated a
wide-ranging discourse as to what state structures may distribute
power more equitably in Guyana and there is now a permanent Parliamentary
Committee on Constitutional change. The test of our democratic
system would be to successfully mediate the social conflicts
in our society and achieve such goals as economic growth, material
security, cultural autonomy and freedom from arbitrary violence.
The state and national culture
The Balanced Federalist State
There are several models that have been proposed as alternatives
to the assimilationist state that we have rejected. At first
sight, the "neutral state" that announces an equidistant
stance towards all cultural strains, appears quite reasonable
but there are several inherent defects if it were to be applied
to Guyana. The neutral state privileges unity and would
take a purported complete hands-off position on the cultures
of the citizens and would only work to create an environment
where the various groups would be able to express their cultures.
The citizens would merely agree on a minimum program for the
state to deliver and the state would have a procedurally neutral
mode of operation in executing that program.
The problem, of course, is that there can be no such thing as
a "neutral" state and there is the ever-present danger
of a dominant cultural community imposing their cultural standards
over the operations of the State. Firstly, even procedures are
embedded in some moral premise and secondly, the state itself
in terms of its structure and its allocation of authority
would arise out of some conception of the good life. This
conception, which would include political life, may be oppressive
or contrary to the values of some cultural group in the society
and should be re-examined in light of other contributions. While
this model seeks not to privilege either unity or diversity,
the inevitable systemic continuities of our historical development
means that the status quo would be maintained and this
means dominance of the old hegemonic culture and the withering
away of the other cultures as each generation continue to try
to "fit" in by changing their behaviour. In the case
of Guyana, the white-bias Creole culture dominates the operations
of the state, which inevitably becomes its promulgator and protector.
The proposal we favour is the "balanced state" which
is the position of most Liberals in that the state seeks to give
unity and diversity an equal status, The state would insist that
all citizens must share a common political culture in which
all individuals, qua individuals, would share common political
institutions, values etc, and a commitment to the political community.
Groups that did not share the dominant culture would have to
assimilate to the extent that they would have to accept the premises
of the political culture to engage in its practices, but would
be free to practice the other tenets of their individual cultures.
Politics is seen a public realm in which everyone engages and
constitutes a "unity" while "culture" occupies
a private realm that accommodates diversity and in which everyone
"does their own thing". The culture of each culture
would have to be given space and respect and protection.
"Balanced" however does not mean that the state has
to be oblivious to inequities and inequalities in the cultural
sphere, Affirmative action does not have to be confined to the
economic realm alone: culture is as much a primary "social
good"- as any thing else. The fact that each group has a
cultural history that shapes its place in the social order, often
marked by inequalities of power can obviously negate the doctrine
of pluralism implicit in the balanced state, by giving the previously
privileged groups an advantage. Secondly, the democratic values
of liberty, equality etc. embedded within a constitutional order,
should give the community the commitment to ends. Unfortunately,
the neat compartment-alisation of public and private spheres
never works that way in practice. As pointed out above, the political
public sphere is inevitably embedded in the cultural practices
of segment. The prestige that the public imprimatur and acknowledgement
of these practices bestow on that segment, put other groups at
a severe disadvantage in that they are seen as marginal and second
rate something to be hidden from the public gaze.
This is where federalist practices and principles can be used
to overcome the deficiencies of the balanced liberal state. The
problem with the "balanced state" is that the political
culture into which everyone has to assimilate is not neutral
it would reflect the premises of the dominant "societal"
culture, which other groups had no role in determining. For
example, from their position as the authoritative citizens, Creoles
would be able to erect institutions and to behave in ways that
enforced their notions of social, political, and economic behaviour.
The federalist state in its promulgation would privilege both
unity and diversity and, in accepting that it is ineluctably
and dynamically shaped by forces in the society, work normatively
to facilitate inclusiveness in its structures. The federalist
state would not separate the political and cultural realms in
terms of support and would accept diversity as a given in all
realms and facilitate it. It would even insist that the political
realm is not beyond negotiation and would accept inputs that
would allow all groups to identify with the system. It has been
accepted in Canada, Australia and Sweden while India practices
many of its tenets.
The federalist state would ensure that no culture is treated
as second rate by ensuring that none is treated like second class.
Therefore, it is proposed that we should adopt a the post-modern
federalist frame of reference that includes factors that will
enhance diversity. In fact, the most powerful idea of the new
cultural framework is that a decent respect for the principle
of diversity, the integrity of the diverse groups, and the equality
among them will provide the basis of a truly democratic society.
To the extent that this notion is reflected in law and in social
practice among groups and individuals, the basis of a new democracy
will be laid.
National Culture and National Goals
We had posed the question of whether the state had a role
in promulgating values that were in consonance with (or facilitated
by creation of appropriate contexts) nationally defined development
goals. In the economic realm, there has been a school of thought
that posits that the economic development of the West was facilitated
by a "Protestant Ethic", which suffused the culture
of the European nations that led the way in the Industrial Revolution.
The remarkable success of Japan and other non-Christian countries
in the Far East demonstrates that the necessary values for development
may not only be present in Protestantism.
In a larger sense, however, we have to appreciate that all of
Western Culture, which is the dominant component of Guyanese
Creole culture, is suffused by Christian values. Groups in the
West who may have come from other cultural traditions have had
to deal with the implicit and explicit value-premises of this
paradigm on a daily basis. The activities of the state thus inevitably
have both a general and specific impacts on cultural practices
and these impacts must be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Culture
in its broadest sense would include all of a society's ways of
doing things and different cultures may have different perspective
on how a particular goal is to be achieved. The designated role
of the state to foster development would obviously have an effect
and be affected by various cultural repertoires present in the
society.
The key point would be to ensure that goals sought to be achieved
are "national" goals, that is, that most of the groups
in the society have decided that they want to achieve the goal.
What this means that if the achievement of the goal is dependent
on the introduction of a particular institution and all
institutions are centred on one or more values and these
are at variance with an entrenched value of one or more groups,
then there should be a discussion by the concerned as to whether
they will change or modify their cultural practice re the proposed
value. Culture is the soil in which all proposed changes will
either take root or wither. Innovations in consonance with entrenched
values will be more easily be accepted and succeed.
There are two points to note. Firstly Japan and the Far East,
as well as Malayasia, with non-Christian religions and non-Western
cultures, have demonstrated that there is not necessarily one
way to achieve a particular goal. This means that a group may
be able to utilise a cultural idiosyncrasy to achieve the desired
goal without jettisoning anything. Secondly, and following from
the first point, is that the wider the cultural resources of
a society is, the more opportunity it has of dealing with contingencies
including those of development. Diversity then, is an asset
in the modern world from even this very pragmatic point of view.
In every modern country, the goals of the society including
production and productivity will be achieved through the
operations of the right mix of three institutions the state,
the market, and the community. The state coordinates the activities
of citizens through command and coercion. It is supposed to be
acting for the common good. The state passes laws and makes regulations
that affect the economic activities of the citizenry every day.
As an example, the experience of the Far East shows that a high
internal savings rate is crucial for economic development but
if the Government's interest-rate policy is to facilitate this
goal the citizenry's perspective on savings and consumption will
have to be taken into consideration.
Markets function through competition using prices as the mechanism
to coordinate production and consumption they are based
on self-interest. It is very efficient mechanism from a production
point of view people will produce to make profits. But
one of the premises for its success is there should be enough
people willing to take the risks etc to make that profit (entrepreneurs).
This is partly a question of culture. The question arises as
what is to be done when, as in Guyana, the entrepreneurs are
primarily from one ethnic group? The PPP government has now jumped
on the neo-liberal bandwagon and is counting on markets to solve
most problems but is not considering the impact of the
cultural differentiation.
Communities also structure the activities of citizens through
voluntary cooperation engendered by close personal ties and relationships.
Communities work through trust and this is one on the reasons
for the increases relevance of ethnicity. The role of communities
has been a most neglected aspect in the development efforts of
third world countries such as Guyana. Let's take the rice industry.
A crucial feature of rice cultivation is the control and allocation
of water. In Asia where there has been intensive cultivation
for centuries, the communities have evolved intricate local,
non-government sanctions and rewards that ensure the most efficient
use of water. Compare this with our situation in Guyana where
farmers downstream are never willing to wait for water, in their
turn and they either surreptitiously open regulators or "talk"
to their friends in authority. Everyone ends up frustrated and
costs go up when they have to pump water. China's and Vietnam's
ability to produce rice at one quarter of our costs is not just
due to low labour costs.
The Federalist sociological thrust is to foster links that are
already in existence in the populace to be the nucleus of change
desired in other aspects of the society's goals. The perspective
of accepting communities as agents of change have been neglected
too long and it is only a federalist's approach that will get
the central politicians and bureaucrats off the backs of the
locals and allow them to rise to their potential. The federalist
emphasis on preserving diversities should engender intense analysis
as to alternative techniques to achieve of national goals and
make the whole society the richer.
Concerns on federalism reifying
ethnicity
Concerns have been raised
that federalism may reify ethnicity in Guyana, that is, give
it more substance and reality than it actually possesses at this
time, since the states/regions would have separate ethnic majorities.
The fear arises out of a false dilemma that posits "ethnic
identity" as in contradiction to being "Guyanese".
As we have shown, in the "balanced" multiculturalist
state, the cultural and political realm would occupy different,
and in most instances, non-conflicting realms. The concern is
alsoactually the reverse of the assimilationist argument since
the premise is that there is no problem with the present structures
and institutions reifying the dominant cultural practices.
Concerns over "artificiality" of proposed federal
boundaries for Guyana
- There is no feeling of togetherness/history in the states/regions:
This charge of artificiality in the proposed states/regions
ignores the history in which the three countries of Berbice,
Essequibo and Demerara were not combined into one country until
1831, just before the abolition of slavery. In fact at the point
of unification in 1831, Berbice resisted the then proposal for
all the colonies to be governed as one. The proposal was withdrawn
and the counties were administered separately until 1980 when
the ten regions were introduced for administrative convenience.
Over that time the residents have developed a strong sense of
identification with their counties for instance, Berbicians
are Berbicians in all areas of life. They even have their particular
way of speaking.
In each of these areas the residents have a highly developed
sense of commonality. The Amerindians have actually been encouraged
in retaining their indigenous culture and their system of village
governance with their Tachaus or Chiefs is being resusicated
to give them a unique type of local government.
The federalisation of Guyana will allow the old points of identity
to be rekindled and these identities encompass various
ethnicities and after some time may help to dissipate some of
the ethnic polarisation. In modern times Berbicians, Essequibians,
and the Hinterland inhabitants have been very proud that they
did not descend into the ethnic violence and riots of the sixties
and in the present and the relations between the various groups,
even at times of political conflict are much more easy and intimate
than in Demerara.
2. POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
:
Democracy
Equity in distribution of
Power
During 1963, in the midst
of the joint US-British operation to remove the PPP from office,
when the leaders of the PPP, PNC and UF could not reach agreement
on a way forward on Constitutional measures following ethnic
violence that had wracked the country, the British Secretary
of the State for the Colonies summarised the ethnic security
dilemmas of the Indians and Africans very starkly:
"the Premier (Dr. Jagan) told me that, if the British
troops were withdrawn, the situation would get completely out
of control.
The root of the trouble lies entirely in the development of party
politics along racial lines.Both parties (PPP and PNC) have,
for their political ends, fanned the racial emotions of their
followers, with the result that each has come to be regarded
as the champion of one race and the enemy of the other.
The Africans accuse the Government party of governing in the
interests only of the Indians, and demand a share in political
decisions. On the other side, the Indians accuse the Police,
which is mainly African, of partiality towards the Africans and
demand the creation of a separate defence force, recruited more
extensively from the Indian community, to counterbalance the
Police."
In their proposals to break the impasse, the British pointed
out that there was, in general, the need "to protect minorities"
and in particular, to address "the racial nature of the
problem". For the latter problem, "the Government should
endeavour to rule with the general consent of the population
(and a new armed force) should be constituted before independence
by the Governor, who would endeavour to ensure that recruits
were not drawn predominantly from any one racial group."
The first exhortation went to the African Security Dilemma and
the second, to the Indians'.
The British recognised that under the existing conditions, neither
the PPP and PNC would be able "to increase appreciably its
following among the other racial groups." They then concluded
that, "it must be our deliberate aim to stimulate a radical
change in the present pattern of racial alignments. It was therefore
my duty to choose the electoral system which would be most likely
to encourage inter-party coalitions and multi-racial groupings".
After choosing proportional representation (PR) and jettisoning
the constituency system, the Secretary predicted, "proportional
representation would be likely to result in the formation of
a coalition government of parties supported by different races,
and that this would go some way towards reducing the present
tension." The British therefore clearly recognised the need
for all the major races to be represented in the Government,
if it wanted to govern effectively.
Sadly, while the British had a very good diagnosis of what ailed
Guyana, their prescription of "proportional representation",
in and of itself, was inadequate to fulfil the stated goals.
The proposals were compromised because of the British's prior
agreement with the Americans to remove Dr. Jagan and the PPP
from office and precluded any arrangement that would give the
PPP, representatives of the Indians, any share of power. They
introduced no structural mechanisms that went to the nature of
the conflict PR on its own, was simply a device to allow
the PNC and the UF to coalesce and elbow out the PPP. The British,
however, had recognised the shortcomings of their proposals and
the need for more far-reaching changes: "the creation of
temporary alliances in Parliament between the representatives
of rival groups, though a step in the right direction, is not
enough. Normal conditions will not be restored until the racial
alignments are replaced by genuine political alignments based
upon a common belief in political and economic objectives."
The hoped-for new "political alignments" did not take
place after the 1964 elections, which were the most polarised
in the history of Guyana up to then and since. The whole
country was treated as one constituency and since every vote
now counted for the overall allocation of seats, this created
a great incentive for "not splitting the vote". As
we have recounted, the PNC during its long twenty eight year
regime attempted to obliterate the political divide through the
"control" form of governance even though they
promoted co-operative socialism as the "common belief in
political objectives". They did not succeed. After 1992,
the PPP has been forced to make some changes in the mode of governance,
to be more accommodative to the PNC.
The innovations, however have not go far or as fast enough, to
resolve the ethnic security dilemmas. The incremental approach
chosen is fraught with danger in that it holds out expectations
of resolving the impasse but can be, and has been, sabotaged
by elements in both camps who only see the measures as tactical
manoeuvres to make the other side look bad and who are merely
manoeuvring to gain advantage so as to secure all power for their
group. Federalism is the political approach, we believe, that
can move the process of participation and democratisation further
by incorporating the specific proposal adumbrated in this paper
From 1998, the writer and others reintroduced into the public
discourse the federalist proposals first proffered in 1988, as
the system of governance for Guyana. Responding to a series of
questions in the national press for clarification on the proposal,
the answer gives a good summary of the major structural changes
necessary:
Formal Structural Factors:
Application to Guyana
We feel that democracy
cannot be imposed in procrustean fashion but rather has to be
planted in the soil of Guyana only after taking full cognisance
of our local conditions.
The Future State
Q1: Would Guyana continue to be a sovereign polity?
A1: Yes.
Q2: What would be the jurisdictional parameters of the central
government in the areas of legislation, executive authority and
judicial competence?
A2: The federal government will have exclusive executive and
legislative competence over Defence, Currency (Central Bank),
Banking, Foreign Affairs, Federal Elections, Censuses and regulation
of Trade and Commerce. The federal government will also have
concurrent competencies with the states/regions over a specified
number of other areas. The Supreme Court will be a federal body
and will act as the Constitutional Court with the power of judicial
Review.
Q3: What office will embody the sovereign authority of this entity
and how will this office be filled?
A3: Sovereignty will reside in the people and will be delegated
to the organs of the Federal/State Executives, Legislatures and
Judiciary as specified in the Constitution; with all residual
powers resting with the states. The Executive and Legislative
branches will be filled through elections while the Judiciary
will be appointed.
Q4: Will the concept underlying the allocation and exercise of
state power be devolutionary, contributory or co-equal as between
the State and its constituent units?
A4: Co-equal. In Federalism, we envisage power to be "non-centralised"
rather than "decentralized", since the latter retains
a hierarchical relationship.
Q5: How will the exercise of state power, as between the central
foci of authority be mediated and balanced?
A5: There will be institutionalised meetings between the President
(the head of the Federal Government), and the State/regional
Governors in addition to the specific-purpose Commissions that
will coordinate the operations of the concurrent powers.
Q6: The Supreme Court will have the power of Judicial Review.
The members of this body will be nominated by the President and
confirmed by a simple majority vote of the Upper House of the
Legislature.
The Component Units
Q1: Will these units be defined by geographic boundaries?
A1: Yes. These will be Berbice, Demerara, Essequibo and Rupununi
(which will consist of regions #8 and #9 from the present "Essequibo").
A2: What methodology is being proposed for use in effecting the
demarcation of these boundaries?
A2: The boundaries are already demarked.
Q3: How is it proposed to obtain consensual and universal acceptance
of these boundaries?
A3: The concept will have to be voted on by the populace.
Q4: How will residency in, and movement between, the component
units be regulated?
A4: To become a resident of a particular state/region, one would
have had to be in continuous residence there for one year. Movement
between the states/regions will be free and unrestricted.
Q5: Will these units be sovereign? Will they have the right to
secede from the inclusive conglomerate?
A5: In all Federal countries, sovereignty is shared between the
Federal and constituent states/regions. The latter will not have
the right of succession?
Q6: What rights will persons who do not belong to the dominant
ethnic group in any proposed component unit have there? How will
their rights be protected and be made enforceable?
A6: All citizens will have equal rights under federal and state
laws. These rights will be secured through constitutionally justiciable
clauses effectuated through a Federal Race Relations Boards and
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission etc.
Q7: Is it proposed that functions such as policing, education,
health-policy, trade and commerce regulations will be vested
in these proposed units?
A7: Policing will be concurrent between Federal and state/regional
governments, education will be exclusive to the state/regions,
while the last two items will be exclusive to the Federal Government.
Q8: What is proposed regarding the political classification of
urban areas of Georgetown and New Amsterdam where the determination
of ethnic predominance might be problematic?
A8: Cities, towns and other Municipalities. Through the constituency
method of voting for the state assemblies and the Federal Upper
House, should be able to articulate and represent specific ethnic
interest?
Q9: What is the projected fate of normally centralized functions
such as maintenance of births, deaths, national identities, passports
and vehicles?
A9: Issuance and control of passports and national identity cards
would be exclusively Federal functions, while the others would
be state/regional functions with the Federal government being
supplied with the necessary data for national reporting or analyses.
Q10: Will revenue collection be divested to these proposed units
in relation to customs, excise and income tax levies? If not,
what rationale is proposed for use in effecting the distribution
of such tax revenues to the federating units?
A10: The three identified revenue authorities will be under concurrent
jurisdiction with the Federal share allocated under a formula,
which allows that entity the wherewithal to perform its constitutionally
delegated functions. For Custom collections, the remainder of
the revenues will be distributed to the state/region where the
goods are destined, for excise from where they originate
and for income tax, to where the individual resides.
Q11: Is it proposed to obtain the consent of the general population
for the implementation of this concept of Federalism? If so,
what methodology is it proposed should be employed?
A11: Consent is proposed to be obtained by a referendum in which,
if a majority in each of three of the four proposed states/regions
vote for Federalism, then it should be implemented for the entire
country."
Objections to the formal federalist
proposals
Most of the objections
to the federalist proposals have come from African Guyanese.
In itself, this is a remarkable position, since minorities across
the globe from Assam to Zimbabwe have been clamouring for federalist
principles to be instituted to protect their interests against
actual or potential majorities. The reason is that in Guyana,
Africans, literally do not see themselves as a minority. Their
history of having slaved to build the foundations of the country,
their dominant Creole values, their occupancy of the key state
institutions etc. have served to engender an entrenched belief
of greater legitimacy to the national patrimony. The corollary,
of course, until this belief is addressed, Africans will not
concede legitimacy to a government perceived to be representative
only of Indians. Federalism acknowledges the African right to
a just share of their birthright.
Federalism and Partition
When the federalist proposals were first broached it was
with a large measure of surprise that the present writer noted
that many Guyanese, including some in the PPP and PNC, saw it
as a Trojan horse for "partition". There may have been
two reasons for this mistaken assumption. Firstly, back in the
sixties, with the spectre of open ethnic conflict, Eusi Kwayana
(then Sydney King) had proposed that the country be partitioned
into three zones one for Indians, one for Africans and
the third for all those who wanted to live together. That this
proposal may have been the minds of Guyanese forty years after
its presentation leads to the second related, possible rationale.
It is most likely that the ethnic conflict has proven so intractable
for almost half a century that many Guyanese do not see any resolution
and either desire partition or fear that the sentiment is so
strong that given an inch with federalism, secessionist elements
would quickly demand the "mile" of partition so as
to get on with their lives.
Such sentiments cannot be ignored especially the pessimism concerning
a peaceful future. Ironically, the experience of other states
in similar circumstances has shown that if the tensions between
the groups are not addressed the secessionist sentiments are
more likely to emerge. In the case of Guyana, the populations
are too mixed for any contemplated partition to be implemented
without unacceptable levels of violence. Federalist approaches
would deal directly with the Ethnic Security Dilemmas and would
actually give relief in many other contested, valued areas. The
Federalists have also included the entrenched constitutional
stipulation that the states would not have the right to secede.
Federalism and Federation
During the discourse
on federalism in the press, some Guyanese politicians, unfortunately,
harking back to the failed W.I. Federation experiment, equated
"Federation" with "Federalism". This may
not have been surprising also because in the introduction as
a political concept, with Swiss cantons (15th century) and Dutch
provinces (16th century), the federal idea was synonymous with
a "league" or an association of independent states
joining together for some mutual benefit. The formation of United
States of America with the promulgation of a new constitution
in 1787, and more importantly, a series of contemporary articles
later collated as "The Federalist Papers" introduced
the modern meaning of the term.
The confusion in Guyana, however, was not only one arising out
of ignorance of the meaning and distinction between the two terms,
but a deliberate misstating of the premises of federalism by
politicians who were opposed to the introduction of the concept
to Guyana. The PPP especially took pains to misrepresent the
premises of Federalism . This could possibly be due to their
continued adherence to the tenets of Marxism-Leninism, which
promulgates "democratic-centralism" a most centralised
decision-making arrangement, totally opposed by federalism.
Small populations not viable:
It has been pointed out
that that the populations of the proposed states may be too small
to be viable. This criticism ignores the fact that right in Caricom
there are a dozen full-fledged independent states that are doing
much better than Guyana. It also looks at the population of Guyana
as if it would be static; but if Guyana regains stability we
can be sure that the population would rise. The original thirteen
States of the US at the time of the union each had much smaller
populations than today.
Prince Edward Island, a province of Canada has a population of
only 136,000 while Switzerland has twenty-three cantons some
with populations as small as thirty thousands. In 1999, Canada
carved out a new territory - Nunavut - for its Inuits in the
North who only number 25,000. Today, size is not as important
as before in an integrated, globalised world where trade-bloc
access guarantees markets. Improvement in technology creates
efficiencies of production at increasingly smaller scales of
production. Barbados, after all, is only one hundred and sixty-six
square miles and has only 200,000 persons, yet its standard of
living approaches developed country levels.
The State/regional governments would require too large a Bureaucracy:
The argument on the need for extra layers of bureaucrats
that would prove to be a financial burden goes to the need for
bureaucratic efficiency and cost potent arguments. However,
at its inception, the present Local Government structure was
used to generate employment for party supporters of the PNC and
this fat has never been rationalised. The system duplicates many
activities performed at the Federal level and vice versa.
The system presently has more workers than the proposed Federal
system would need because of the streamlining effect of the clearer
demarcation of responsibilities (exclusive competencies) that
would be precipitated by the Federal reforms.
Guyana would be weakened to External threats:
It has been suggested that a Federal Guyana would bee weakened
and become more vulnerable to external threats. This allegation
is related to the accusation that federalism would lead to a
break-up of the Guyanese state. As has been emphasised, Guyana
will remain a sovereign state and the Federal Government having
less to do may perform better at the duties left at that level
such as Defence and External Affairs. The Army would be a federal
institution that would be deployed primarily at our borders from
where our major external threats will come.
Citizens would have to move or be restricted in their movements:
Since Guyana would remain as a single country, all citizens
would be free to move throughout the country in an unhampered
manner. The charge that citizens would have to move or be restricted
in their movement arise from the unfounded assumption that the
federalists are actually pursuing a secessionist agenda that
would demand ethnically pure states. As explained above the latter
strategy is not viable for Guyana. While States/Regions may set
residency requirements for certain benefits, they would not be
able to prohibit any Guyanese citizen from moving into a state
or settling there.
Structural Factors dealing with the Ethnic Security Dilemmas
Addressing the African Ethnic
Security Dilemma
The formal/structural aspects of federalism will immediately
tackle the African Ethnic Security Dilemma. Violence in plural
societies erupts from a confluence of experience or perceptions
by one or more groups that is being denied its legitimate share
or power and the national patrimony. This is the situation with
African Guyanese. We suggest that because of our ethnic pattern
of geographical distribution, federalism can be an effective
mechanism to assist in an equitable sharing of power and patrimony
in Guyana.
The proposed demarcation of the state boundaries would be based
along the historical counties' boundaries inherited from the
Dutch in 1803 Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice. Essequibo
would be further subdivided into the Rupununi which would encompass
the present regions eight and nine and the remainder that would
retain the designation "Essequibo". Under the last
census, Demerara has sixty percent Africans; Berbice has seventy-five
percent Indians; Rupununi ninety nine percent Amerindians and
Essequibo sixty percent Indians. At State elections, an African
led party should be capable of obtaining Executive office in
Demerara and this will effectively abolish "winner takes
all politics", which is inherent in a unitary state structure,
especially in the absence of national coalitions.
Africans will have control of the most developed state in Guyana
with the only international airport, three industrial estates,
most manufacturing, the capital and major city with the headquarters
of all major companies, main campus of the University of Guyana,
Teachers Training College, Cultural Center, major Hotels, - and
the opportunity to experience Governance.
Some have objected to this proposal by pointing out that one
would simply be transferring the political violence to one level
below. This misapprehends the African Security Dilemma. The latter
is triggered when it is calculated that Indians will dominate
everything in Guyana. Control of Demerara, the most developed
State is not an inconsiderable prize, especially since other
innovations will also give them a share of the national pie.
The Indian minority will not resort to violence since their dilemma
has not been one of fear of total domination. Indians, based
on their history, should still be confident of holding their
own economically, even though they are giving up their majoritorian
"advantage" under the present system. .
Addressing the Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma
The Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma stems from the overwhelming
preponderance of Africans, who are their political opponents,
in the Disciplined Forces. The composition of these Forces should
reflect the composition of the population, as is generally accepted
in all modern countries. In a Federal Guyana, since each State
will have its own, independent Police Force, this will make this
policy much easier to implement. Additionally it is proposed
that Georgetown should have its own Metro-police while a Central
Crime Lab, under the direction of the Federal Government should
be accessible to all the State Police bodies. Under such an arrangements
it is highly unlikely that there will be any retrenchments or
diminution of recruits from the African Guyanese community, which
is a real concern in the present. The bottom line for all the
States would be that composition requirements for the Forces
should be stated in terms of goals rather than quotas. While
overall, Africans would be giving up their "advantage "
under the present system, the political space gained should be
seen as redounding to their greater good.
The revival of the GuyanaPeoples' Militia as the Home Guards
in the individual States to act as a reservoir for recruitment
into the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) a Federalist institution
- would also assist in making the GDF a more ethnically representative
Force.
Addressing the Amerindian
Ethnic Security Dilemma
The Amerindian Ethnic
Security Dilemma is that even though they are the first inhabitants
of Guyana, and it is their land that was forcibly expropriated
going back to the "discovery of the New World" by the
Europeans. Under the present political system they are a small
minority of eight percent who will never obtain the opportunity
to be in charge of their own affairs to break the shackles
of paternalism that has stultified their growth over the past
centuries.
For the first time in the history of Guyana, under federalism,
Amerindians will have control of their own affairs in the State
of Rupununi which would actually be comprised of all of the present
Regions 8 and 9. There has been much talk of the future Guyana
having a "continental destiny". This has not taken
hold or been given shape as a strategy for the development of
Guyana because the decision makers are all located in Georgetown
with their eyes cast northwards. With Rupununi having its own
State government, and becoming the home of the federal capital,
it is inevitable that their focus will be southwards. Additionally,
it is not appreciated, especially by the politicians, enough
that our Amerindian citizens all have fellow tribes people on
the Brazilian side of the border and they will form valuable
cross-border linkages. In addition to their governance of their
own state, Amerindians should retain control of lands in other
states granted to them under the Amerindian Act.
In general, federalism reduces disparities between groups by
actually forcing underrepresented groups to participate in government,
education, economic development and all the other activities
of the modern state. This is most appropriate to the Amerindian
predicament since they will have the guarantee at the state level
of receiving the experience, which may catapult them into the
national arena.
Miscellaneous Objections to
Structural factors
Ethnic conflict would simply be pushed one level below, since
each state in Guyana would still be multiethnic:
This criticism misunderstands
the thrust of "Integrative Federalism". The motive
for resolving the ethnic conflict is not to have ethnically homogenous
populations but in fact to have multiethnic states preferably
where in each state, one particular ethnic group constitutes
a large majority. Under such conditions, the members of that
ethnic group, assured that their group will win at the polls
under whatever combination, will more easily form separate political
parties to compete for office. In this increased intra-ethnic
rivalry scenario, there will be every incentive for one or more
groups from the majority section to seek alliances with the minority
section and thus moderate their rhetoric. This scenario would
apply to Berbice where Indians are seventy-five as opposed to
twenty-three percent Africans. In Guyana the overt conflict between
Africans and Indians has only been precipitated in Demerara where
Indians are a minority of forty percent and the Africans would
be the large majority. Africans would not have the feeling of
"losing it all" which is what fuels their onslaught
against the system.
Federalism would lead to uneven
and lagging development for Demerara:
Some have claimed that
federalism would lead to lagging development of Demerara. This
is a racist fear grounded on a false assumption that African
Guyanese would not be able to run an efficient state. Many Guyanese
equate the disastrous record of the PNC regime with the capabilities
of African Guyanese, since most of the key officials, managers
and public servants were Africans. However, there are many other
factors that influence the performance of a government not the
least being ideology, policies driven by that ideology, racism,
world factors etc. Ten years of spectacularly inefficient and
corrupt governance by the PPP, dominated by Indians, should disabuse
all Guyanese that any one race has a monopoly on technical and
managerial know-how, venality, or nepotism.
Procedural/Structural Factors: Benefits
Splitting the Vote and Rejoining the Vote
One of the most recurrent (and plaintive) question from a significant
number of Guyanese, tired of the ethnic censuses that pass for
elections is, "why can't we be Guyanese"? Most of the
time, Guyanese are "Guyanese" who mix and shop and
go to school and work together. The problem arises around general
elections time and comes from the irrefutable rational conclusion
of these same individuals that "their' side may win it all
and precipitating the contradictory question, "why split
the vote"? These individuals who rail at the lack of Guyanese
unity go along because, "what else is the choice"?
This line of reasoning ensures ethnic voting and precipitates
the ethnic dilemmas that provide the context for extreme behaviour.
The only time the individual will split his vote under the present
state of mistrust is if he is convinced his side could not lose
with his "defection". And this is what separating the
Indian vote into the two Indian dominated States of Essequibo
and Berbice will achieve. Indians will know that no matter how
he votes an Indian party will come out ahead. The demonstrator
effect will be the most significant gain: that the sky did not
fall when he "splits" his vote. It will be easier to
transfer this pattern to national elections after some experience
with "splitting the vote" at state elections.
Additionally, since the electorate is now split, rivalry within
ethnic groups [intra-ethnic rivalry], should increase since,
for instance, Indian politicians - dominant in Berbice - will
see themselves as rivals for power at the centre. This intra-ethnic
rivalry should increase since, if particular ethnic groups are
overwhelmingly dominant in separate states, they should not feel
threatened by "out" groups. This also removes the incentives
to calls for "not splitting the votes", and "vote
for your own". Conversely, rivalry between ethnic groups
(inter-ethnic rivalry), should decrease due to the lessened possibility
of a majority seizing all power for all time. Conflict is thus
engineered away from the centre towards local levels, where the
stakes are much lower and can be more easily contained. And also
away from between ethnic groups, where the intensity can reach
the most bestial levels.
Bargaining and the Ethnic
Security Dilemma
Government of National
Reconciliation
The political struggle in Guyana is a life and death one because
the prize is so great an authoritarian centralised with
unlimited powers to decide "who gets what and how".
Each "side" can be persuaded that under the present
rules, with just a little more push, they can "have it all".
Under federalism, the centre will not possess all power and the
struggle to control should not be as intense as in the present.
It should then provide less incentive to lock groups out of the
Executive, and should therefore encourage the possibilities of
national coalitions for the National Executive. The unlikeness
of the politicians giving up power, which is one on the stumbling
blocks to present Consociationalist executive power-sharing proposals,
should be somewhat assuaged.
It is proposed that a Government of National Reconciliation be
constituted for at least one term of five years to demonstrate
to all the various groups that their representatives are involved
at the highest level to bargain on their behalf as power is allocated
for the future through Constitutional entrenchment.
Contextual Coalitions
Federalism will encourage
cooperation and coalitions at the centre, depending on the specific
issue being debated there. These coalitions can cut across ethnic
lines due to the diverse demands that would emanate from the
different states. Berbice might have a common position with Demerara
to push for the development of say, Bauxite, which may be opposed
by Essequibo focusing on Gold. This type of shifting alliance
should introduce a fluidity to Guyanese politics, which has never
been present. As political parties move away from bipolar confrontation,
towards a more multi-polar balance, they should lower the temperature
of their polemics. After all, today's rival may become tomorrow's
ally. It is the negotiation of these issues that the bonds are
forged between politicians who may then proceed to more permanent
relationships.
3. CENTRALISED POWER
Integrative federalism
in Guyana to disperse power
Local Government System Proposals
There is no disagreement among all the political parties
of Guyana that governmental functions and powers are too centralised.
This is not surprising in light of the manifest failures of the
integral state that had been created by 1985. Even the multilateral
International Financial Institutions (IFI's) have had occasion
to criticise this aspect of Guyanese governance. Several of the
international UN agencies, such as PAHO have insisted that their
programs be implemented in a decentralised fashion. In fact PAHO's
areas of demarcation fall exactly as the proponents of federalism
have proposed the new state boundaries.
Following the Constitutional Reform process in 1999 (precipitated
by violent street protests and ethnic violence) the PPP and PNC
instituted a Special Committee on Local Government Reform and
the recommendations are soon to be tabled in the National Assembly.
It is reported that while the village councils will be strengthened
in a move to make governance more responsive to local needs,
the reforms still see local Government in terms of "decentralisation"
where there will remain a "centre". And this is the
contradiction in the proposals of the PPP, PNC and all those
who claim that "power must be returned to the people".
Desmond Hoyte, who had been the architect of the Regional decentralisation
initiative introduced in 1980 began to loosen up the state functions
on his accession to the Presidency in 1985 but like the leaders
of the PPP who succeeded him in office, rejected Federalism even
though all of them have complained about the failure of the present
arrangements. For instance, the PNC, in its submission to the
Constitution Reform Commission in May 1999 had proposed that:
"There can be no real democracy without a strong, vibrant
local government system. This system would provide for the decentralization
of power, the devolution of authority, and the participation
of large numbers of people in the decision-making process in
their communitiesThere should be a clear understanding and acceptance
that the Regional Democratic Councils and the smaller Local Democratic
Organs are part of the Local Government system and not agencies
of the Central Government. To this end, therefore, the RDC's
should now be organized accordingly. They should exercise the
power to raise revenues by taxation and otherwise and be responsible
for a range of activities in their respective Regions as identified
by law "
The PNC was recommending that the powers and "legal framework"
of the RDC's should be constitutionally enshrined. If this is
to be done then the only difference in their proposal on the
question of allocation of competencies would be to add the federalist
stricture that the central government cannot unilaterally alter
the defined powers of the regions. Passing further "lesser"
laws will not convince the centre to keep out of local affairs.
If the PNC and PPP are serious about the Regions having the powers
to execute their programs they should be aware that in the past
the centre always altered the regional powers by diminishing
them. They may have other reasons for rejecting federalism but
not the need to have a less centralised government.
Even in a homogenous society, federalism offers many advantages
over a unitary state structure. Following Montesquieu , James
Madison saw it as a device to vertically split, the powers of
an always potentially tyrannical Government, controlled by a
potentially tyrannical majority. (Much as the separation of Governmental
powers into executive, legislative and judicial branches will
do horizontally. In a federal system, the country is divided
geographically and politically into three layers of governance
a federal entity that encompasses the entire country; several
states, regions or provinces, and a third layer of Government
(local or municipal government) much as the present local government
in Guyana has it.
But unlike the "regional system" created by the PNC,
however, the powers or "competencies" of each province
would be constitutionally defined and changes in the Federal
or States powers would have to be mutually agreed on. The central
government would not be able to unilaterally change the power
relations. Each State, at a minimum would have its own administration
- headed by a Governor, its own Police Force, and the power to
tax and spend. These powers are not to the exclusion of the Federal
Government's, which would adopt an overarching national perspective
and normally have complete control of defence and foreign affairs.
Its national domestic program supplements, and is coordinated
with, the provinces' programs. In Guyana we can envisage at least
four states - Berbice, Demerara, Essequibo, and Rupununi, but
these demarcations can be adjusted depending on the will of the
people.
New Federal Capital
It is proposed that a new federal capital be established
in the Rupunini. This will accomplish several objectives presently
articulated by Guyanese. The "continental destiny"
that has been touted will only become reality when Guyanese began
to turn their eyes into the continent. The new capital will accomplish
this. With the proposed road to Brazil connecting Lethem,
Linden and New Amsterdam, it would be logical to build the new
capital at Lethem. The road and the proposed deep water harbour
at New Amsterdam should help to create new centres of power,
to complement Georgetown, and these would act as dynamos to push
the country's development and rectify the present distorted economic,
social and cultural development.
Second Chamber of Parliament
Many theorists of ethnic
conflict resolution point to the positive gains achieved if there
is a second legislative chamber that can, among other functions,
safeguard ethnic interests especially ethnic minority rights.
A federal structure will facilitate the formation of a second
chamber in the legislature. Because, as we mentioned earlier,
each state would have ethnically different majorities, the representation
drawn from state-constituencies would most likely reflect the
ethnic diversity of Guyana. This fortuitous circumstance gives
Guyanese the opportunity of securing ethnic representation without
resorting to devices such as separate electoral rolls. This second
chamber should have the power to scrutinize all legislation in
general, but specifically enumerated powers in reference to ethnic
issues.
Local Government
The prolonged period
of authoritarian government has unquestionedly destroyed much
of the initiative and competence of the local communities to
manage their own affairs. We agree with the renewed focus
on the revival of the Village Councils, reportedly contained
in the latest local government proposals. After the abolition
of slavery in 1834 the freed African slaves had established several
villages on their own initiative. They created Village Councils
to run the affairs of their communities and these Councils were
the incubators of much of the leadership in the African community
and formed their links to the county and national Governments.
The Councils, through its various committees such as drainage
etc., was able to develop local expertise in managing organisations.
The introduction of the National Democratic Committees (NDC's)
that agglomerated several villages into one entity, while on
paper may have appeared as a logical progression of the Village
Council arrangement, ignored the historical and geographical
realities of the village movement. Residents were still focused
on problems in their particular village and this focus as reinforced
by the geographical fact that the village are strung linearly
along the single main road and are each separated from their
neighbours by canals.
As discussed earlier, the Indians remained on the sugar plantations
for another century after slavery and those who moved off, in
the main, remained rural bound. The new and massive housing schemes
created by the sugar companies from the early fifties, were all
centred on the plantations and the affairs of these communities
were run by a Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund (SILWF) that
perpetuated the paternalistic rule of the "big manager"
of the plantation. The new Indian villages formed outside the
ambit of the sugar plantations, on rented land, did no establish
village councils and so to an extent far greater than the African
community they are deficient in the mechanics of running and
organising their local affairs.
The Amerindians were always the most excluded from the running
of their own affairs. Their traditional village structures were
undermined by the Catholic Church, which, in a de facto
manner, assumed administration over them. Subsequent to the Regionalisation
plan, the both the PNC and PPP Governments have attempted to
resuscitate the indigenous village governance structures. In
early 2004, the PPP initiated a training program to inculcate
the rudiments of village governance in the Tachaus or chiefs
of the various villages. Any revival of the Village Movement
in other parts of Guyana will have to be accompanied by an intensive
program of education in the running of these bodies. The community
will have to receive a new focus for several reasons but primarily
because it has been neglected by policymakers in not realising
its role in the organisation of the activities of the citizenry.
It is only a federalist approach that can guarantee the focus
on local development.
4. ECONOMIC DISTRIBUTION
In Guyana, there have been two
sets of concerns raised, not entirely unconnected, about economic
distribution, and both have raised the issue of distributive
justice. Firstly there have been concerns about the overall economic
policy of the PPP favouring Indians at the expense of Africans.
Charges of "marginalisation" and even "economic
genocide" have been made by the African Guyanese community
during the PPP's regime, echoing the similar cries of the Indians
during the PNC's rule between 1964-1992. Secondly there has been
the historical complaint about the uneven geographically development
specifically, that Demerara in general, and Georgetown
in particular, receives a disproportionate share of the national
developmental thrust. These complaints, which are grounded on
a perception that justice is not being served, have been some
of the main fuels of the ethnic fire.
What we have seen is that in severely divided societies, governmental
policies will not be judged by intentions but by results and
even in that case, results will be judged by very subjective
criteria. Certain policies, which may appear facially neutral,
can have differential ethnic impact. Take for instance the economic
policy we mentioned earlier - agricultural development in Guyana.
From a standpoint of comparative advantage, it makes sense for
Guyana to concentrate on agricultural development in the near
term but since Indians dominate this sector, we can be sure that
African Guyanese will have severe problems, as they have demonstrated
before, with a strategy that focuses on agriculture. It will
be futile to argue that it is the most "economically feasible"
choice. The economic policy of the government is then very important
in securing justice, and ethnic peace in Guyana.
After a period of rapid growth engendered by the Economic Recovery
Program, beginning in 1991, where the economy expanded primarily
in the traditional areas that had collapsed, it ran out of steam.
The growth rate since 1997 has not even reached an average of
one percent far below the eight to ten percent deemed necessary
to make initiate a self sustaining level of prosperity. The evidence
has made it evident by now that the economic regime imposed by
the Washington Consensus is necessary but not sufficient to facilitate
a level of growth sufficient to ensure the requisite growth rate.
To stimulate such a necessary high growth rate the creation of
a Catalytic Entrepreneurial State is proposed. To assure an even
distribution of development between the various ethnic groups,
an 'Ethnic Impact Statement" and an Affirmative Action Program
are proposed.
Strong vs. Weak State: Unitary
vs. Federalist State
-
Guyana, as with many other third world states, had a disastrous
experience with state involvement in development during the 70's
and 80's and this has obviously soured the World Bank's enthusiasm
for dirigeste policies. Out of this experience has arisen a not
unreasonable fear of a "strong" state. The flawed premise
of this fear, however, is to assume that the form of the state
itself has to be constant, as it is used to perform large and
more varied tasks. As we described earlier, the Guyanese state
as it developed since 1621, was a very centralised one and this
condition was an integral part of the problem of retard development,
even before the seventies. Evidence from across the world`, however
has shown that a strong state does not have to be a centralised
one. Federalism can address the fear while delivering the needed
performance. The functions of the state can be distributed into
multiple layers and segments so as to deliver a greater likelihood
of success of development goals.
Even with the unitary state, not all state actions are negative
and in fact there may be the necessity for government interventions
when the free market or community coordinating mechanisms are
stymied for one reason or other - market failure or community
breakdown. This is clearly exemplified by the fact that since
1997, the Guyanese banks have been awash with money and yet cannot
translate that into investments, creating a liquidity problem.
After the Guyanese experience with the failure of the World Bank/IBM
market dominated approach, we propose that the State has to be
transformed into one that is as small as possible but at the
same time we have to insist that it should be as large as necessary
to ensure that we move ourselves out of poverty in as short a
time as possible. This expansion of the role of the state does
not mean that Guyana has to repeat the mistakes of her past.
Guyana's development plans during the 70's and 80's were driven
by State ownership of production (State Capitalism) which destroyed
the market and community forces necessary for competition and
other coordinating activities necessary for sustainable growth.
The socialist dogmas undergirding the then development policies
were inimical to the free market and self reliant communities
and spawned a culture of special interests seeking to benefit
from the state policies (rent seeking). The World Bank is insisting
that Guyana should learn from its experience as to the downside
risks of a large governmental role in industrial policy and act
to minimise those risks. This perspective is nor unreasonable
but they cannot ignore the fact that no country in the modern
era has risen out of poverty on loans from World Bank/IMF and
without directed government intervention.
The PPP Government evidently agrees with the World Bank's position
that providing a stable macro-environment will attract enough
investment high economic growth. Unfortunately, after analysing
the methodology used by other countries were able to create investment
opportunities and how these were realised in a sustainable manner,
the prospects do not look good for Guyana and its ethnic
relations. Apart from the fact that there may be other, non-economic,
factors inhibiting investment such as political instability
- investment and the consequent economic growth is not just a
question of creating institutional environments but rather one
of creating institutional arrangements. Theory must be guided
by successful practice.
The history of Europe and the US and the Far East has shown that
the state played a major role in their development, "by
mobilising savings, providing infrastructure, shaping sectoral
priorities, and in many cases forcing individual agents to engage
in market-oriented activities through taxation." It is rather
ironic that the World Bank/IMF have virtually eschewed any meaningful
role for the state in achieving desired growth rates, in the
face of such evidence. The litmus of proposed activities would
be for the state to implement policies that strengthen market
and community coordination to promote growth and development.
Proposals: Promoting Growth
Catalytic Entrepreneurial State
It is proposed that there be created what can be labelled
a "Catalytic Entrepreneurial State" (CES). Such a state
will firstly have to be a responsible state, with a strong commitment
to development and simultaneously working assiduously to increase
its legitimacy. The latter perspective is vitally necessary for
Guyana, given the ethnic cleavages existent in the society. The
Government's relationship with, and the quality of, the Public
Service is an area of critical concern in the formation of a
CES. In whatever endeavour the State engages, much will depend
on the professionalism of the Civil Servants for the success
of the articulated goals. The Government is presently engaged
in reforming the Civil Service but the Government has not
been clear in what context such reforms will take place. The
Government must first make a clear determination as to the role
of the state before it can decide on the size and competence
of the Civil Service. In the context of Guyana ethnic politics,
a clear articulation of the nature and role of the Civil Service
should ease some of the suspicions between the PPP and African
Guyanese.
The CES will also have to be a "facilitative State' as the
World Bank has been insisting. There are no problems with the
propositions that the Government will play a regulatory role
to restore (and maintain) markets to their proper function (clearing
markets). Similarly Government will have to provide education,
primary healthcare and infrastructure. While public finances
have increased in this area under the PPP, the corruption that
is evident in the awarding of contracts in the capital aspects
of these programs have left a bitter taste in the mouths of many
Guyanese especially Africans. And many are sceptical and
even bitter about any suggestion that the Government should take
a more interventionist role in economic development. The Government
will also have to play a more vibrant role in reconstituting
the communities as the loci of initiative and development. Federalist
principles of governance are necessary for the success of such
a policy.
There is no one shoe that fits all. The World Bank, or anyone
else, cannot simply insist that "free markets" alone
must be used to fuel our development. There is not anything as
pure "free markets" alone running any economy. We have
mentioned above the different roles played by the state, markets
and communities. The task of governments is not to stand on dogmas
but to tailor the right mix of these three institutions to suit
their concrete conditions. The Western countries developed through
a high level of dependence on markets but their governments and
communities also played and continue to play crucial roles. They
took a couple of hundred of years to get where they are. Japan,
on the other hand, because of its unique societal values, depended
much more on the role of the community and trust. Their development
to catch up with the West took one century.
Without question, markets played crucial roles but compared to
the West, the State and communities played much greater roles
in guiding and fostering development. After WWII, Taiwan, South
Korea and Singapore took only a half a century for their development
program to catch up. But again, they did not rely totally on
market mechanisms and determined their unique institutional mix
of markets, state and community to coordinate their economic
activities, based on their own circumstances.
A pragmatic approach to development is necessary because the
cause of our underdevelopment is to some extent strategic rather
than structural. Korea and Singapore were right where we were
fifty years ago, if not behind us, not only statistically but
structurally. Their Governments, as catalysts, set strategic
goals and then did what was necessary too back into them. Take
for instance one reason why the "import substitution strategy"
model of development the last round of Government intervention
practiced by so many countries, including Guyana, failed.
They assisted and protected domestic industries that became inefficient
and non-innovative since the market forces fostering competition
were destroyed.
Promoting Growth
Market orientation vs. market control
Korea and Singapore,
however, followed the Japanese example and explicitly tied assistance
to selected private industries based on their commitment and
ability to export. This strategic decision had two significant
and faithful results that differed from the "import substitution
strategy". Firstly, the assisted firms were subjected to
the market discipline of the competition of international trade.
This was the most intense competition and ensured that efficiencies
and productivities had to be raised to the highest levels. These
firms not only couldn't afford to be fat and lazy like the protected
ones in Guyana, they had to become world class and they've
remained world class. The second benefit, of course, was that
the exports brought in foreign exchange and there was no need
to ban anything to save foreign exchange. They engaged in market
rather than market control.
In summary, "markets may successfully orient individual
agents to allocate resources efficiently but they are not sufficient
to coordinate individual actions over a long period of time and,
most importantly for our purpose, towards desired social goals
such as specified rates of growth. Market orientation is not
sufficient to generate market coordination toward collective
prosperity." This is where the catalytic function of the
State comes in.
Federalist Protection against
Centralised Development
However, if we
are going to give the state a larger role, we cannot be oblivious
to our history on the proclivity of central governments to agglomerate
and misuse its powers, as outlined in so many instances above.
There will exist the danger of any government in charge of economic
policy to misuse their authority. The Federalist arrangement
deals with this contingency. The goals of MITI and the Government
would be set through the annual meetings of the President of
the Republic and the Governors of the States where in addition
they would discuss revenue sharing and other matters of coordination.
Distributive policies
Distributive policies are focused
towards reducing primarily the gross representational disparities
in 'valued' areas, which are found between groups. The name itself
suggests that something has to be distributed and this would
assume at least things firstly that there would have to
be some mechanism to do the distribution and secondly that there
has to be some principle based on "equality" to determine
the criteria for the distribution. Distributive policies are
based on some notion "distributive justice" such as
the utilitarian principle that the distribution must benefit
the greatest number, or the socialist creed "to each according
to their need" or the merit principle. i.e. that the government
of a country should actively intervene to ensure that the citizens
of a country achieve some sort equality in those "valued
areas" which could range from material goods to achieve
a minimum standard of living, cultural goods to live authentically
without feeling "second class", or having equitable
access to the power structure to ensure consultation in the decision
making processes of the state.
Distributive policies could be based on using the individual
as the basis for the distribution such as equal opportunity laws,
which are supposed to ensure that all individuals situated in
similar circumstances are treated equally. In Guyana however,
it is asserted by both the Indian and African communities that
when their party is out of office the "other" discriminated
against them and therefore there is need for rectification when
one's group has recaptured office.
Equal Opportunity and Affirmative
Action
Federal Protection
In a free enterprise
system there can be no guarantee of access to the ends: one may
institute laws to enforce equal opportunity, but there can be
guarantee of outcomes. The favourite example suggests that equal
opportunity laws, on their own, are akin to having an individual
whose legs have been broken, be told that he now has an equal
opportunity to run a race. This perspective raises the question
as to whether affirmative action is needed to rectify any historic
imbalances. Firstly even though the policies of every government
had affirmative action as an implicit premise they have never
been willing a specific need excepting as it affects the Amerindians.
Distributive policies are not defined as such, excepting for
the Amerindians they are the only group that is acknowledged
to have explicit group needs.
It appears that each political party wants to correct real or
perceived historic imbalances but not accept that their group
needs help above the principle of equal treatment or opportunity.
In areas such as business and agriculture, where it is not simply a matter of affirmative hiring practices, long term training programs would have to be established to ensure viability of the programs. The dismal failure of the co-op projects in the 1970's where land and resources were simply given over to primarily African Guyanese, without the necessary preparatory training and support should be an object lesson for policy makers. In addition care has to be taken that 'affirmative action' policies taken do not lead to a dependency syndrome being created in the beneficiaries. Rather than set rigid quotas, participation goals can be targeted within a set time frame. Percentage participation targets be established in key sectors of the economy to ensure the equitable representation of all ethnic groups in the society.
Ethical Perspective
Even John Rawls, a most
influential modern political theorist, who accepted the deontological
ethical premise (that the "right" precedes the "good")
had to agree that in arriving at principles for constituting
a society, one would have to first accept some skeletal ("thin")
idea of the "good". In this sense we are all consequentialists
who are committed towards living together as a society and would
accept at a minimum that it is to everyone's good that a prime
cause of societal instability should be removed. For those more
concerned about questions of justice rather than beneficence,
one consideration that has to be placed at the fore is whether
procedural equality should take precedence over the substantive
equality that affirmative action implies.
From this perspective, the backward looking standard of compensatory
justice is not being invoked. The focus is on the future
the creation of a more stable society - and increased public
welfare for all Guyanese because affirmative action rightly compensates
for the loss of present competitive ability caused by stifled
diversity. Most modern theories of justice could support affirmative
action especially in the restricted area of the composition
of state institutions.
US Experience
In terms of governmental laws or actions that may have a discriminatory
impact, in the West, the U.S. has had the most experience in
dealing with the issue: the US Supreme Court's "rational
basis test" declares that a legislative classification may
be upheld only if it bear a rational relationship to a legitimate
governmental purpose. More to the point before us in Guyana,
however, is that there are certain classifications that our Constitution
itself defines as being afforded specific protection against
discrimination. These are inevitably classifications that particular
societies have in their historical development found to have
been violated in such a sustained, pervasive and invidious fashion
that they are universally held deserving of higher protection
by society. The traditional ones are race, colour or creed, place
of origin, political opinions and these are given a higher level
of scrutiny to justify "legitimate governmental purposes".
In Guyana we recently increased the number of classifications
that should receive higher constitutional protection to include
religion, gender, age, sex etc. Sexual orientation was adjudged
as not befitting of this higher scrutiny. We should note however
that even from within these favoured categories our Constitution
explicitly (unlike the US) singles some groups for special (and
therefore unequal) treatment. For instance, one ethnic group
the Amerindians were selected for specific benefits as
opposed to other ethnic groups. Art. 149G "Indigenous peoples
shall have the right to the protection. Preservation and promulgation
of their languages, cultural heritage and way of life."
And so on.
The point is that even the "protected" classifications
against discriminatory governmental action may be affected on
occasions. In the US, the Supreme Court has determined that such
occasions are "inherently suspect" and the legitimacy
of such occasions should be determined by a higher level of review
- "strict scrutiny". The Court would consider: a) the
purpose of the ethnic-specific (for instance) policy; b) whether
the decision utilizing the classification can reasonably be expected
to promote the purpose intended; c) whether the means are the
least intrusive. In one very famous case, the Court decided that
a University's affirmative action program based on the need to
increase racial diversity in the school was in valid furtherance
of the "societal good". In our case, if we were to
set a goal of , say, a higher percentage of Africans receive
Government contractswithin a specified timetable, this would
be singling out one group for special treatment. We would have
to determine by the strict scrutiny test whether the policy was
constitutional. We believe it would be.
A federalist structure assists in the process of ensuring that
justice is done by providing a second level of judicial access
the Federal Court to have their rights enforced.
Part IV
Conclusion
PRINCIPLE FOR ESTABLISHING SOCIAL
INSTITUTIONS:
Justice as Fairness
The philosopher Immanuel Kant
succinctly posed the dilemma of organising a just state, two
centuries ago, in these terms:
"The problem of organizing a state, however hard it may
seem, can be solved, even for a race of devils, if only they
are intelligent. The problem is, given a multitude of rational
beings requiring universal laws for their preservation, but each
of them is sincerely inclined to exempt himself from them, to
establish a Constitution in such a way, although their private
intentions conflict, they check each other, with the result that
their public conduct is the same as if they had no such intentions."
In Guyana there exist great suspicions
in the people as to the motives of those who propose "solutions"
to our national problems. Throughout our history institutions
have been tinkered with, purportedly for the "good"
of the people, but invariably it was later seen to have benefited
either one person, or one group. Guyanese are understandably
concerned about the "smartman" who jockeys for advantage
on behalf of himself or his group. The initiative, or set of
initiatives, that are offered to address Guyana's political crisis
will have to engender broad acceptance across the political,
ethnic and other divisions in the people and especially amongst
the politicians. This implies that the various groups, as they
define themselves, would have to agree on the proposals for establishing
the institutions to govern them.
Kant proposed that the solution to the inevitable conflicts in
organised human societies, lay in the design of institutions
that should ensure the persons behaving in accordance with its
rules, are behaving justly and morally. Most commentators who
followed him agreed with his stricture that institutions constituting
a state must be organised in accordance with the principle of
justice, but his criterion of the categorical imperative, proved
nettlesome. John Rawls, the most influential of modern liberal
political philosophers, came up with another formulation to guide
the formation of social institutions nearly two centuries later,
in 1971. It had the great virtue of simplicity.
In the opening line of his first section in his magnum opus A
Theory of Justice, Rawls boldly declared that the principle
of "justice" is the standard that would generate the
broad acceptability for the establishment of any institution
necessary to implement any initiative for enduring stability:
"Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as
truth is of systems of thought." Recognizing that Guyana
does not even reach Rawls' definition of a society as "a
cooperative venture for mutual advantage, it is typically marked
by a conflict as well as by an identity of interests." his
definition of "justice" is very pertinent to our effort
to construct a democratic state in Guyana: "a way of assigning
rights and duties in the basic institutions of society and they
define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens
of social cooperation."
More importantly, Rawls introduced a methodology for arriving
at substantive principles for making decisions in divisive situations
such as we have in Guyana, where it is vital that the decisions
are seen as not favouring any one constituency. Procedurally,
Rawls proposed that we make our suggestions about the fundamental
principles that will structure and govern society, from behind
a metaphorical "veil of ignorance" that precludes us
from taking into consideration our personal position, class,
gender, race, religion, even intelligence or interests in the
matter under consideration. This justice as fairness would
provide the requisite objectivity and impartiality in judgment
necessary to engender the requisite trust "since all are
similarly situated and no one is able to design principles to
favour his particular condition, the principles of justice are
the result of a fair agreement or bargain." With such principles,
we would be willing to go along even if our enemies assign us
positions in the society arising out of the contract. With such
principles we would not formulate, for instance, rules that would
put minorities at a disadvantage since we could possibly be members
of a minority group.
In Guyana we have to all appreciate that the existence of the
state itself is for the furtherance of the societal good
the public interest. Ultimately all Guyanese are looking to be
culturally authentic, politically secure and economically sound.
In the furtherance of these "public goods", the people
have to promulgate a constitution through which the government
directs the state through policies and programs in consonance
with the prime directives of the Constitution. In modern democracies,
under the liberal paradigm, equality of treatment and equality
before the law of the citizens stands at the very top of the
imperatives. We have proposed that under a federalist state institutions
will be created to implement the policies of Ethnic Impact Statements,
multiculturalism, federal form of government, Government of National
Reconciliation, Catalytic Economic State, Affirmative Action
etc. in the fulfilment of the national goals.
However, because each individual citizen or group of citizens
are situated differently (according to specific criteria) governmental
policies and programs will inevitably have a different impact
on different citizens. Our tax laws are designed to extract a
greater percentage of the income of the rich than the poor. In
fact we have decided that citizens earning below a certain threshold
do not have to pay any taxes. While the rich may think that the
law is discriminatory they are not being treated equally
- and it is, we accept it because we feel it is morally justified
in furtherance of the societal good. In Guyana, our Constitution
itself, while it promulgates equality and forbids discrimination,
in Art. 149 has just changed from Art 29 the stipulation that
"Women and men have equal rights" to "Women's
participation in the various management and decision-making processes"
We accept these things because they are part of our general moral
assumptions they are right because they further our conception
of the national good.
And this is the ultimate test that is used in both ethical and
legal theories to evaluate state activity affecting citizens
in society especially when it is claimed that a particular
affects some citizens differently. The task of the Government
is to ensure that their differential treatment is not arbitrary
and capricious and irrational and that they further some
societal good. There should be a correlation between the classification
and the purpose of the statute so that citizens can presume the
impartiality of the legislators. Thus even those adversely impacted
may consider it an acceptable cost of achieving a larger societal
goal.
In Guyana a feeling of injustice is pervasive in all groups in
the society as they struggle to live in dignity especially
within the political, economic and cultural spheres. The history
of Guyana has demonstrated the importance of contexts in the
introduction of institutions into society whether these
be in the political, economic or cultural spheres. The institutions
will have to be seen as just. Rules that go against the values
and morals of a people or lead to injustice, will be observed
in the breach or not at all; the institution will at best be
ignored or at worse lead to dysfunctional social behaviour.
In Guyana we would have to derive our substantive principles
of justice for ourselves based on our history and present realities.
Slavery and indentureship have been the two historical forces
that have had the greatest impact on our collective psyche and
our disparate cultures. Out of our experiences where they were
denied, the values of liberty and equality are central to what
we desire for the "good life". These values must be
central to any institution that seeks to address any aspect of
our national life, including the ones proposed in this paper.
Federalism is founded on a conception of human nature that places
these values at its centre and imbues all institutions within
its framework. It is a way of organising society that balances
the inevitable contradictory pulls of unity and diversity immanent
in any agglomeration of humanity but even more so one as diverse
as ours, and yet achieve justice between the groups in the groups
of the society. As we try to achieve our self-defined goals of
securing justice in cultural autonomy, and political and economic
distribution there is no alternative to adopting federalist principles
to guide all proposed institutions.