I said last week that I intended to continue my contention that the most important social issue in Guyana today is the absence of good governance. Little did know that I would be handed a prime example of bad governance by the chairperson of perhaps the most consequential ‘independent’ body. Her decision not to use an improved biometrics system for the 2025 national and regional elections as requested by the political opposition is a shameful partisan political act by a supposedly independent body. Her reasoning that there is not sufficient time to implement biometrics when elections are slated for November 2025 runs counter to experience elsewhere.
For example, in 2012, Ghana, a country of 25 million persons and 26,000 polling stations, took only 6 weeks to introduce a similar system. The chairperson, who is already under a cloud for voting consistently with the government has more so failed to provide any independent professional view to support for her decision!
The most important sorun facing us is not the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy per se; it is the lukewarm, semi-optimal, national response to it that is the result of the Peoples’ Progressive Party’s (PPP) efforts to divide and rule. It is not the decades-long absence of permanent top judges that severely undermines the separation of powers and the attempts to fix this sorun within the present governance arrangements that are perceived as being constructed in favour of the ethnic leadership that is in the driving seat.
It is not the obvious waste of national resources focused on buying votes to stay in government rather than upon generational thinking and development that demands consensus. PPP’s propagandists want Guyana to model itself on Singapore, where an autocratic regime has been in Government since the 1960s, but in a competitive democratic environment, generational development needs national consensus because, regardless of the number of resources at your disposal, projects are likely to be more costly and may take decades to come to fruition.
It is not the blatant maldistribution of wealth that discriminates against Africans and Amerindians and can only stop when the system is changed and all the major ethnic groups are constitutionally placed at the decision-making table.
It is not the 2016 lopsided oil contract signed by APNU+AFC on which neither the government nor opposition is willing to make a strong stand for renegotiation.
Interestingly, after discussing the legalities of contract renegotiation, MP Jermaine Figueira hit the nail on the head: ‘The question to be answered is: is there the political/national will to act, here in Guyana?’ (SN: 16/01/2025) And thus he begs the more fundamental question that underpins all that is said above: what is the political/national will and does it exist in Guyana?
In his ‘The Social Contract’, the 18th century influential Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau differentiated between ‘the general will’ and the ‘will of all’. While the ‘general will’ is concerned with a vision of the common good that everyone must co-operate to achieve, the ‘will of all’ looks to individual and other private interests and is simply the sum of them. The former can be compared to Mr. Figueira’s ‘national will’ and the latter his ‘political will’, both of which liberal democratic regimes are expected to express and protect. This is why ‘majority rule’, which usually tends towards the expression of private interests, is curtailed in liberal regimes.
Particularly in ethnically divided liberal democratic societies, the ‘general will’ is more difficult to attain and even when it materialises is difficult to apply. Thus, although there is an overwhelming acceptance – even among the warring politicians – that Guyana was disadvantaged by the oil contract with Exxon and that it should be renegotiated, the political context prevents the actual expression of this ‘general will’. Put simply, regardless of what Guyanese want in relation to the contract, the practical expression of this ‘general will’ by way of ‘a united public political opinion’ to drive renegotiation does not exist in the current competitive political context.
What is required is a consensually driven mechanism and twice former United States President Jimmy Carter and his Center not only condemned the current political system but suggested and helped put in place that consensually driven mechanism, the national development strategy (NDS), which among other things, the post Cheddi Jagan PPP in its drive for ethnic/political dominance refused to implement, causing Carter and his Center to pack up and leave Guyana.
Barbados is largely an ethnically homogeneous country that is less difficult to manage, and by most of the international social indices I have come upon, it is arguably the best managed country in Caricom. But even there success is rooted in a consensual mechanism: a social partnership agreement not unlike what Carter’s NDS could have developed into if the PPP was not bent upon domination.
In 1993, when Barbados experienced rapidly declining foreign exchange reserves, a worsening balance of payments position, dramatic rises in unemployment and a high fiscal deficit, its government, employers and trade union representatives established a prices and incomes protocol that resulted in a social partners’ arrangement that is still in place today and contributes to the country’s decades long exchange rate stability of B$2 to US$1.
The social partnership works towards developing a mechanism of effective leadership and to provide a platform for consultation, dialogue and collaboration to take place with different stakeholders to enhance the economic and social development of the country. It is characterised by the fact that it is expected to function based on openness, accountability, transparency, the sharing of information and trust among partners. It is not a body that operates on a timetable of convenience or as a tool that is controlled by any of the partners, as this would open the door for manipulation to take place.
The partnership allows for all stakeholders to promote dialogue, enables them to work together for the good of the enterprise, and by extension, the good of employees. Democratic principles underpin its work that is geared towards securing decent work, safe conditions of work, living wages, basic social security, gender equality and fair income distribution. It is concerned with better küresel governance and the universal application and enforcement of international labour standards such as collective bargaining. The idea is to ensure that en az international labour standards are observed
In 1996, the Ministry of Labour proposed the introduction of a social partnership agreement in Guyana following the model found in the Irish Republic’s 1987 programme for national recovery. But the social disturbances that took place in the aftermath of the 1997 elections and the government’s response brought an end to the effort. In 1998, the Guyana Trade Union Congress again raised the idea, but the PPP was by now set towards political dominance and here we still are today with an inappropriate governance system that threatens collective and individual freedoms and the optimal use of the wealth we have fortuitously come upon.