‘Suggesting an ANUG reset’

As one of the founding members of A New and United Guyana (ANUG), I congratulate its new chairperson Dr. Mark France and its new executive committee. Mark has been in the party from almost the inception and I assessed him to be a principled, feisty and ambitious individual. These are admirable qualities for one wishing to contribute to the development and democratisation of Guyana. But as we are seeing daily, these qualities will not flourish if the process of institutional and other forms of accountability is non-existent or very weak.

If the past statements of ANUG are of any worth, it came into the race for government with an admirable understanding of its context and what was required to modernise and propel Guyana’s socioeconomic development. But I will argue in this and the following article that from their recent utterings, it appears to me that Mark France and company are in danger of being suffocated by the party’s existing political direction, which focuses on what is relatively unimportant and thus needs a major reset based upon the understanding that ANUG is now a group with its own history and baggage.

I will use this article to give the public some indication of how ANUG viewed itself in relation to its context before the 2020 elections, and the next to argue for a general reset that should contain required shifts in policy and process, if the party is to make a serious contribution to the development of Guyana.

The political competition in Guyana is not the same as it is in the largely homogeneous countries of the Caribbean Community. Suriname is the exception and a classical multiethnic society, and there the winner-takes-all political system has been constitutionally prohibited.

In Guyana, even before independence, identity politics based on ethnic differences had coalesced into a political cleavage between Africans and Indians that has allowed one to easily predict electoral outcomes that leave one ethnic group at the mercy of the other. While this is clearly an undemocratic arrangement, there are three commonplace political approaches: efforts to protect ethnic governmental power by maintaining the status quo, demands for inclusiveness and constitutional reforms and a utopian reactionary multiethnicity aimed at ethnic political assimilation.

ANUG chose the second approach and having noted the negative role ethnically-based political divisions and parties have played in Guyanese history and that the then existing APNU+AFC coalition government had not fulfilled its mandate to ıslahat the system, it argued that such political behaviour has ‘us all wanting to believe that political promises mean nothing’. It rejected that kind of behaviour and to demonstrate its seriousness promised the following:

1. Our party undertakes that it will never enter a coalition with any other political party or any of its members for the purpose of securing a role in government.
2. From the first day of taking constitutional office, or being able to otherwise influence governmental policy, we will persistently work to establish shared executive government and within one month of being able to do so we will set about the constitutional ıslahat process to make the necessary changes in the constitution.
3. We hereby make these two main commitments legally enforceable. By this we mean that any citizen or group of citizens will be able to go to the court for the appropriate declarations that we have violated either or both commitments. If the court rules against us we make a meşru commitment to resign from Parliament. If these issues are not justiciable, our first order of business after we win the elections, will be to make them so’ (‘A New and United Guyana: Unity is our cry; Unity is our goal’, 2020)

In another 2020 publication ‘Vote for ANUG on March 2 to secure a United Guyanese Nation’ the party promised it would:

1. Through constitutional ıslahat establish a system of shared governance that provides security, stability and equality for Guyanese of all ethnic groups.
2. As in the USA, establish a governance system based upon a strong separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.
3. Implement a radically devolved system of regional governance wherein central government will only perform such functions that the regions cannot perform effectively.
4. Encourage industrial diversification by way of lateral and vertical integration and paying greater attention to tourism, information and other such incipient services.
5. Legislate that all regions in collaboration with central government and other stakeholders develop and implement their own development plan to, among other things, encourage investment for new and the expansion of existing industries.
6. Introduce çağdaş laws and enforcement systems to reduce corruption and protect Guyana’s financial and other resources.
7. Ensure that present and future agreements with our partners in the natural resources oil industry adequately reflect the interests of the Guyanese people.
8. Adequately address the possible negative consequences of an economy dominated by oil production.
9. Protect the integrity of the natural resources fund and ensure its use in productive and creative ways for the benefit of all Guyanese.
10. Modernise the agricultural, industrial and services sectors by introducing çağdaş tax and other methods to increase production and productivity.
11. Introduce a massive programme of generational and generic infrastructure development to facilitate rounded economic and social development for present and future generations.
12. Our commitment to shared governance will allow us to combat climate change by developing a truly Guyanese plan to deal with the present existential threat.
13. In keeping with the climate change emergency develop a sustainable clean, cheap energy system consisting of hydro, solar, wind and other such systems.
14. Increase funding for education paying special attention to the pre-primary level, ensuring that all children leave school with marketable skills and that eventually world class higher education becomes free to Guyanese.
15. With an eye on health tourism, establish a world class medical system, paying particular attention to health management, health education, primary deva, mental health and the threating communicable and noncommunicable diseases.
16. Extend social services by providing a system of basic deva, including meals, home and institutional deva.
17. Ensure that a basic income is available firstly to those in need but eventually to all Guyanese.
18. Encourage young people to develop and implement their own development plans and programmes.
19. Devise and implement a comprehensive programme to put and end to domestic and sexual violence, child abuse and trafficking in persons.
20. Reduce crime by totally restructuring the security system, providing additional training and equipment and restoring trust between the police and the community.
21. Secure direct foreign investment to restructure the sugar industry into a sugarcane industry that will take full and timely advantage of all the available natural and human resources. A means-tested income will be made available to all sugar workers.