TV Discourse Hosted by Dr. Grantley Waldron
Dr. Grantley Waldron: Within the last two months, we commemorated the birth anniversary of Former President Forbes Burnham; the death anniversary of former President Cheddi Jagan and in these last two weeks we have had opportunity to reflect on the life and times of Mrs. Janet Jagan who passed recently. SPOTLIGHT immediately takes at this first opportunity of hearing to render our sincere condolences to Cheddi (Jr.), Joey better known to us; to Nadira and other members of the Jagan family and of course the PPP/C which they [Cheddi and Janet] formed and guided through the years.
These three persons whose names I just called, their lives are inextricably linked with the state of our current conditions in this country. With no exception theirs were the commitment to remove whatever forms of polarization that seem to have existed in our society, because almost by definition polarization meant disproportionate claims on the equity and the resources of the country.
However, over time we either agreed or disagreed on what that polarization in fact meant. When they were opposing the colonial powers I am certain that they had a clear view of what that polarization meant. Of course, when each of them became president and by definition the other one in opposition, they had a different view as to what that polarization really meant.
What is, however, clear is that over the last sixty years the State of Guyana has under-performed; it has not delivered the state of welfare which we as citizens and I think I could speak equally of the three of us on this set, because we live through those years, that we expected. I suspect that outsiders sometimes tell us of our own conditions. President Jimmy Carter indicating that Guyana has the most unrealized potential of all the countries in which he has had the benefit of visiting.
And more recently the furor almost about the comments made by Ms. McDougal, UN expert on minorities, who indicated among other things that Guyana was a polarized society while inviting all peoples in Guyana to try and effect some reconciliation as a start to realizing its potential
This evening we will try to get an understanding of reconciliation in Guyana. This term has been around with us for the last fifty years and we have here two gentlemen who are no strangers to the context and content of this reconciliation discussion.
We have with us Mr. Vincent Alexander, currently Registrar of the University of Guyana, and who has been a political figure for the better part of his youthful years, acting on behalf of the People's National Congress at various times.
Then we have Mr. Moses Nagamootoo MP, an Attorney-at-Law and who himself has cut his teeth in political struggles, having spent a long career serving in the People's Progressive Party.
Tonight we are also slated to have Professor Calvin Everesley, Head of the Department of Law at the University of Guyana, who unfortunately is not here at this moment, but we trust that he may join us in this discussion.
Gentlemen, welcome to SPOTLIGHT.
This is the first in an eight-part series which is intended to explore in the context of reconciliation and what can help.
Do we, in the first instance, agree that Guyana is a polarized tragically divided country, which divisions and manifestations should become the direct object of public policy?
Who is to start, Moses?
Mr. Moses V. Nagamootoo: I do not want to give a “yes” or “no” to your question, Grantley. First of all, I want to thank you for inviting me here to the beginning of a series of discussions and I think it is a very good time, now with the passing of Ms. Jagan, that we ourselves reflect on the role of our past leaders as she was among the more important political players that emerged with others like Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham. We seem to have now the end of an entire era. So we should now look back at what has been and in looking back, I think, we should try to re-position ourselves and to look at what could be or what ought to be.
So the question of reconciliation has to do with whether or not we accept that we have a fractured society and whether or not we accept that we have had an unfortunate past, that whether the promise that was held out by that past, by all the main players who had some dreams and vision for Guyana - a united free country, a prosperous country - whether we have realized those goals.
Of course, there is periodicities: we had the issue of the fight for independence; then the question of an agenda for national development and with national development, what was the political form which we would assume; what is the core of a democracy that would allow the development of the potentials of our people to the fullest.
But coming back to your question, I believe that this country is plagued by ethnic schisms. However difficult it may be for political activists on either side of the political divide to accept, we have had two major authentic mass-based political parties and even at all the elections, whilst we have seen only marginal cross-over at elections time, we have not seen a major thrust of one race coming over to this side and the other race going over to the other side.
There has been some level of mixture, but by and large we are trapped in a kind of tribal politics and to that extent that our politics is marred by this schism, we need to examine the need for reconciliation and if we say that we want reconciliation as your question on the board shows, we have to say for what? and how? And these are some of the things I hope we can explore.
Dr. Grantley Waldron: Well, I wanted Moses to answer the corollary to that question and that is when Guyanese of African descent should they say that they feel marginalized and that they are not participating in the operations of the State and hence not receiving the benefits they considered due to them as citizens of the State, is that an appropriate description of what they are feeling?
Mr. Moses V. Nagamootoo: Well as a politician, I have to look at the word marginalization in relation to whether or not there is empirical evidence to establish what you call 'marginalization'. But that does not mean that I cannot recognize that out of the political form that we have in Guyana there is political competition by two primary groupings recognized as Vincent has said, as Afro Guyanese and Indo Guyanese groupings, basically in the People's National Congress, and the People's Progressive Party respectively - not denying also the involvement of Amerindians and people of other ethnic groups.
The issue is that there seems to be the political competition that spawns feelings of alienation. When I was in the opposition in those so-called twenty-eight years - the unbroken twenty-eight years in the opposition, I did feel alienated; I did feel that I was not wanted in the political process and I felt I was a victim. I cannot assume for one moment that I can go under the skin of African Guyanese to see how they feel, but as a politician I know that those who would have voted overwhelmingly for a party other than the PPP particularly if you are an Afro Guyanese, you would feel that you have been shut our from the political process. I am a PPP politician; it would be difficult as a leader of the PPP for me to say that this is deliberate, by design. And I may wish to go back to the origin, the focal point of all of this is in fact the way we were manipulated by colonial politics and the divide and conquer policies. That cannot be divorced from what was in fact the inherited political competition, and the inherited political competition brought about insecurity of varying levels.
Initially when I spoke, I did not try to go back to the cultural/ethnic relationship, because largely at the grass root it is imperceptible, if I may say so, that there is any racial animosity or racial hostility in the country. We do accept that we are a plural, multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-party society, but this feeling of alienation will persist if all major parties will continue to contest for power and half of the people who are “in” will be in by perception of the other half that they are “out”.
This feeling has to be addressed, because we are a small country with tremendous resources. We are blessed with tremendous resources and we are a beautiful country; we have hard-working people who have been brought here primarily almost out of the necessity of the colonial system, but almost as a historical accident that our ancestors were cast on these shores.
But we have to now look at the primary definition of ourselves, not in relation where we came from; not in relation to our ethnicity, but the fact that we are Guyanese, the fact that our nationality gives us and invests in us a new personality; it gives us a vested interest that we ought not to be different if we are all Guyanese.
If our rights derive from our nationality then it must be equality rights, equal entitlement; if our duties derive from our nationality, then it must be a duty to the common State we love, the State in which we live, the State and no other State we may or intend to invest our lives and to invest in our children and our future generation.
So that we have to begin to see how we can develop this notion of nationhood and nationality and to see our people - all the races - Amerindians, Afro Guyanese, Chinese Guyanese, Indian Guyanese, we are all Guyanese and to see us developing our country as a nation. And if we start talking that way we will ask ourselves the question: what is wrong that we cannot do it like some other countries are doing it as united people? And that is where I come back that we have to look at the political form. Is our political form an adequate way of fusing this nation?
Dr. Grantley Williams: I will tell you what, Moses in his last contribution went one step further and started talking about the form of organization which should assist us in running counter to these tensions which otherwise exist. When we come back after this break, we will immediately try to start examining some of these forms of organization…
Just before the break Moses indicated that perhaps the structural form of our relationships has to be examined and one good place to start that investigation is our Constitution - our majoritarian Constitution - how it has combined with the imperatives of politics and the political process, the insecurities of race and almost creating for us a dilemma that has kept this country where it has been for such a long time. I wonder if you would like to start tackling that particular issue for me.
Mr. Moses V. Nagamootoo: Well Grantley, we have to see our Constitution in tandem with our political maturity and development. We have had many constitutions; we dealt with the Constitution that brought in universal adult suffrage, et cetera. We have had first-past-the-post as the form (I am dealing with the political form) and it did not seem to work for one side, because when the debate was going on in the 1960s, it was whether or not first-past-the-post was the ideal, whether it had created political alienation of one group as against another; whether it has entrenched one group as against another.
Then we went to PR and here again we thought it was a fair system … that proportional representation would have allowed the kind of majoritarian government, because of the peculiar nature of Guyana, what Vincent has described as a plural society, and I would say an ethnic-based society. But (in 1964) we had seen the pre-eminence of one - I would say not unaided by political machination - the pre-eminence of one ethnic group as against another ethnic group and hence the dilemma, the political problematic and the ethnic problematic that one side feels locked out as against the other.
We tried to re-examine that… I was part of the Constitution Reform Process. In fact I chaired one section of process where we presented the reformed laws to the Parliament, I think there were 164 amendments to the Constitution and even then there was a view that once the PNC was out of office, it wanted a Constitution that would allow it some access through the doors - back door/front door.
So we now have a hybrid system of regional votes and top-up, national votes - so that you have national and geographic as well under PR in the composition of the Parliament. But that is being questioned as well that it is not producing the desired results.
Vincent worked very hard on the constitutional reform for the local government system. When I was the Minister of Local Government I remember he was at the head and was very active in this committee to produce the reforms. There was resistance to various forms of giving autonomy to the grassroot level.
For a start, let me say that the problem does not immediately lie in tinkering with the Constitution as such, on how to evolve from the bottom a kind of participatory grassroot involvement and democracy, that does not show the pre-eminence of the political parties, but the pre-eminence of the people as you come up higher levels.
The regional system has become an appendage to the State. The State allocates the budget for the Regions. One has to now creatively look at the plurality of political contest in relation to the regions and their demographics. It appears that you have one pocket of this ethnic group here, another pocket of ethnic group in another place, a spread in terms of the agro-industrial balance and the occupational diversity of the nation. This is reason to give people more power, devolve the power and autonomy even in the regions so that you could have the system of power sharing at the regional level - at the provincial level - rather than starting immediately to look at the Constitution, how to bring about a national formula.
Now, my feeling is that the inadequacies of the system is what is breeding the insecurities and let me deal with it in a very practical way, because I have had experiences as the Minister of Local Government. Once (one group) take control of a Village Council, what you call the NDC, the people who dominate it, they got some friends, they will give them the contracts - people who clean streets, clean drains and weed the parapets and so on. People see it in this way: boy, we nah get jobs no more; dem boys tek way de thing. People who used to burn bricks and so on see others now get involved in the burning of bricks and they then get their own tractor and trailer (to fetch the bricks).
So people feel that in any tier of the local government system it allows them access to the gravy train; and that is where the insecurity and the conflict arise - in the allocation of scarce resources which is coming by way of contracts, jobs in terms of other economic activities that give livelihood. If you want to have reconciliation that is what you have to address; the reconciliation has to take place at the lower levels and coming all the way up so that you have a more participatory involvement of people and that they all feel that they have an entitlement.
This is where I have said before that if we are Guyanese, we must have equal rights and equal entitlement and I do not want to create a hornet nest here, but I have been characteristically outspoken. I empathize with Afro Guyanese - my African brothers and sisters who, as I said, have said various things - that they do not have anything to do; people have come in and take over activities that they might have been doing.
And so if you have a system that is more responsive to all these people's cries of interference when there should have been none, then I think you will have greater trust among our people and in fact the politician will know that the people are the bosses and once they are content with what they have at the bottom, then they can exercise a greater oversight on what politicians do.
I think now there is a free-for-all in a sense. Everybody wants to get into the action; as I said, they want to jump the gravy train. People are generally very distrustful when they see you get at the top and they do not see anything flowing at the bottom.
So Vincent we are here with an opportunity where you have so much experience. There is a Bill coming up in Parliament to bring a new dispensation in the local government system where you do not need to be in a political party only to contest the local government elections, but you can belong to a civic group, or you can go up as individuals; you can have a slate of citizens so that your emphasis is on quality and not mediocrity. It is not going to be based on your party card and party affiliation. You do not automatically run because of that and take office in the provisional or local government area.
So I think that we need to talk more in terms of the needs of the people in a functional way and not simply reconciliation in a superficial way that paints the picture that we all need to hug and kiss each other, or have artificially a day of national embrace. We do not need that; we do not need a day of national embrace to show that we are together. We need a system that is fair; a system this responds to the needs of the people and a system that recognizes that there are not deliberately so, certain disadvantages in the system that appear to be discriminatory by one group as against another.
Dr. Grantley Williams: Moses has said very much; quite a bit about five or six very important points, but I will let you take it up from here Vincent.
Mr. Vincent Alexander: First of all, I agree that the Constitution by itself is not sufficient. It is evident that the Constitution cannot solve the problem. We had the Independence Constitution, we had the Republic Constitution, we had the 1980 Constitution, we had the 2001 Constitution, so in my lifetime, I have actively been involved in more constitutions than four Constitutions. What is our problem? First of all, is the recognition of what the problem is and trying to go back, I do not think that we have a nation admitting what the problem is. If you cannot recognize and admit what the problem is, then you are never going to have the consciousness to reduce the problem. So we need to be a nation that needs to do some processing in this respect of recognizing what the problem is. I think when we come to accept what the problem is, then we have got to understand that it is the mindset that largely creates the problem and therefore you have to go through a process where we are trying to develop mutual respect for each other, because that is the only way we will co-exist and still maintain our own identity.
I think we have to go right down to the education system and to use the education system as the basis for the re-creation, for the involvement of our society along those thinking - a thinking where there is mutual respect, mutual understanding and national unity and that we can work together. When we have that, then I think one can talk about a plural society that could work for us all.
If I could say that when we talk about shared governance among parties that can work for us if it comes about at a time when we recognize what the problem is and have a resolve to solve the problem, then we could use power sharing as a cool-off period when the parties are not fighting each other. Rather they are together working to resolve the problem. So I do not know they are saying that they see power sharing as the end. I see power sharing as the period of working together on the basis of understanding … [Interruption]
Dr. Grantley Williams: Alright. Vincent, let me just try to grapple with some of the issues which have been raised here before we go to some of the explicit forms of association and relationships to try and deal with this problem. Now to put it in some perspective, the question of the development of the relevant respect for each other and all of those things, I see a timeframe associated with things that have become inherently part of our psyche that is our disrespect, the disbelief, the distrust, et cetera. I think those are not things that will be dispelled at any rate by your legislating it one way or another, it is not going to happen; it is a longer term story. However, I suspect that it is not a timeframe that is consistent with the real problems on the ground to which people want immediate resolution. For instance, it does not answer and/or deal with the question that our Constitutional construct conveys within it the right with a plurality of the votes, the right of capture of the executive. Our society is one in which the executive, the government, the largesse of the government is not to be underestimated in terms of whatever forms of organizations and whatever other constructs you may wish to put in place. One of the reasons, I suspect, why none of the attempts at constitutional engineering have not gone anywhere, because everybody has an interest in preserving the government and the gravy train as Moses actually called it, because it is the government which allows it.
Having said that therefore, even Moses' construct about local government being such an important element allowing people to grow and becoming confident in their positions before talking about ascendancy to the government, is another long term construct, because at the end of the day the decision is being made by those who have captured the government, added to the fact that we have a political process which reinforces and establishes the nature of the government in all of its forms.
Mr. Moses V. Nagamootoo: Grantley: Look, if we begin just to locate the problematic in government and governance, more or less the form, we have to accept that the Constitution can provide a mechanism by which you form a government. Every Constitution provides that. What we have to evolve in Guyana is a tendency not towards conflict in our relationships, but a tendency towards co-operation.
For example, we could go beyond the Constitution: You hear talk about “shared governance”, “inclusiveness”, et cetera. These are terms that are almost new in our political lexicon. We are evolving, but I think we must go beyond that. I think that we need to develop a concept in Guyana where not only should we have a plural society, but also we should have a government of national democracy - a state of national democracy - and we must define that state of national democracy. It is not simply a democracy; it is not simply political democracy; it is not simply a singular-party democracy, but a democracy that is rooted in our evolving political culture that we are mouthing about - multi-class, multi-racial, multi-cultural.
Therefore, the national democracy presupposes a government that is inclusive. Now how do you get that government? You may wish to do the formula by way of constitutional engineering, but you could also have that formula by volunteerism. If the political leaders can co-operate on a national program of national priorities and they can work towards the realization of the national priorities then all the political leaders will be able to satisfy some requirements and needs of their constituents without even actually being in government, but they will have to identify those priorities.
Take for example, in a very practical way: why couldn't we work out a system where the opposition and the government sit down and, say, we have ten big projects, we need ten contracts, that we are going to work it out in such a way not to undermine standards, but we will try to make it broad enough for inclusiveness, so that everyone will have a bite of the pie. This is a national pie; this is where the money is coming; this is where the money is going and therefore you need a modus vivendi that brings in the opposition. This country is too small to have a government and an opposition at this time.
For me, it is an anachronism. In small societies such as Guyana, we are partners and we have to develop bipartisan co-operation; we have to develop partnership models that do not slip in competition. We have to move beyond the pale of animosities and try to evolve a political culture - a culture of behavior where we can sit like Vincent and I; where we could stand on the balcony (Parliament) like the other day when the President and the Leader of the bigger minority party Mr. Robert Corbin, and could address national grief, national concern, and we could even have Mr. Corbin talk about national unity. And I would have expected that when he said that we would all say, “yes, this is what we need, let us forget about yesterday; let us talk about tomorrow; let us talk about today and how to build it.”
Now I want to make one last point. This state of national democracy that I am talking about perhaps you do not need to constitutionalize for it. It could happen in a way that has proportionality, that you must recognize our numbers, as Vincent said, that we must start to recognize the problem. We must recognize that in an election there would always be winners and losers in a political sense, but you must recognize that the party that loses is not necessarily vanquished; it represents real people with real concerns and real feelings and aspirations and the winner has to take that on board in its relationship with this losing party and not to consider it as the opposition, but to consider it as a partner that has not been elected to office, but must play a role in national development. I am sorry, I know we are running out of time, because in the end we have to look at what you have said are the exigencies.
Why do we need national reconciliation; why do we need unity; why do we need functional unity in Guyana? If we look at the world, it is not sympathetic towards us; we have been swept into a maelstrom of economic tensions and economic uncertainties. And as much as we sit on a golden mountain of opportunities and resources in Guyana, we could be poor tomorrow, because of circumstances we do not have control over. If our people are adversely affected then we must and will see greater need to cooperate rather than to fight each other, because we will have to build a firewall of social cohesion to insulate us from the impact of economic crisis that is sweeping the world.
Mr. Grantley Williams: Vincent.
Mr. Vincent Alexander: The critical issue here, I think Moses touched on it, is to bring the change as required and therefore we cannot avoid an approach that is incremental. Yes, there are things that we have to do immediately to create the environment to address the issues that are immediate to the people, but those things are not going to change this nation in the long term. Therefore we have to be able, while we are dealing with the immediate problems, to also have a program with the long-term incremental change and so I reiterate behavioral change as critical. You have to use the institutions in the system that will help us over time to bring about the long-term changes required - behavioral change.
Once you get the behavioral change, then you are going to have the basis in which you can get any constitution you want us to work with; any institution you want us to work for you, it got to come from us changing our political culture, from the level the people are thinking and the people's understanding and inter-relationships.
I do agree, for example, one could use the local government system, where you empower people at various levels, at the neighborhood level, at the regional level; let them start to see that they have power in their own hands, that they can do things for themselves, so that they do not get involved in the blame game.
Given the resources, we need to understand, if we were to give power to local authorities, people are going to have control with some form of self-determination. They have no one to blame. I do not know that the local government people are resource-less. You have to find ways in which you will give them the authority, give them the resources so that they can realize the functions that they have to carry out. So you have two projects:
The project of transformation, where you transform behavior of people. This does not mean that you are going to stop Hindus from being Hindus and Christians from being Christians, because in the transformation process what events you want to target is the public domain, being the type of person to maintain their religion, maintain their cultural attributes and things like that, but the discourse would be about how do we treat public life; how do we treat the nation's patrimony; how do we not let our own values be the only value to determine what happens in the national patrimony; how do we develop national values, consensual values in relation to national patrimony?
So that is the long-term project and it is going to be easier to do that starting with the young ones. Eventually the older ones will go out and the younger ones will see a complete system that comes through with a new culture. But the Parliament will have to decide that; you can put some structures that are in place so as to create an environment that you will allow what happens in the long term to happen with greater ease so you do not have a disruption with that project.
What we can do is to create an environment in which we agree what the problem is; we have a consensus on what the solution should be and we start to work towards the solution and the realization and success of working towards that solution can eventually get us where we want to go.
Dr. Grantley Waldron: Tonight on SPOTLIGHT, we have looked at a definition of the problem. We have just started to come to terms with an understanding with the layer of the land as it were. There are some issues where this discussion is naturally leading us and though my two discussants on this panel have not yet realized that I am going to invite them to return for us to do the follow-up part on some issues that they have raised. For instance, Vincent immediately start talking about shared governance and inclusive governance as mentioned by Moses in different ways, the prerogatives of those forms of associations, what are the limitations and what are the strengths of these respective things; what does trust means; what is the place of trust in this whole question of the creation of a formula for meeting some of the short term projects that Vincent talked about - the short term project which meets the immediate needs of people, because at the end of the day their impoverishment is getting greater and will get greater. There is no question about that. We cannot run an economy with only a part of the whole.
There are other issues such as some of the details that should be worked out in both the short term and the long term projects and I would like therefore to invite you gentlemen to return and let us take a stand at bringing a clear picture as to where your thoughts are leading us so that we could then engage the other panel using yours as a reference when we continue.
Let me thank therefore Mr. Vincent Alexander and Mr. Moses Nagamootoo for initiating this discussion which we have started here on SPOTLIGHT; this discussion on reconciliation.
Gentlemen, thank you for appearing on SPOTLIGHT.
(First aired on HB TV 9 Guyana on Thursday, April 2, 2009)
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