guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com

ETHNIC INSECURITIES
by Ravi Dev

Posted June 15th. 2005

(There has been much excitement about the emergent " Third Force". While ROAR is very supportive of this development, it cautions that no political force, new or old, can ignore the primary mover of modern Guyanese politics - the Ethnic Security Dilemmas. We submit an extract from our seminal 1990 paper, For a New Political Culture, which introduced the term, to stimulate discussion - especially as to how much has changed since then.)

East Indians began to enter the 'open' society in the l920's following the end of indentureship. Many indentured Indians had exchanged their return passage to India for small plots of land - often swampy and marginal - that they cultivated to buttress their meagre wages. Others raised cattle. WW1 (1914-1918) gave a big boost to the local rice industry and many Indians were lifted out of their subsistence life. Indians also gravitated into petty retailing - replacing the Portuguese and Chinese who had moved to the city, or went into competition with them. The Indians, without obtaining any preferential credit, survived the competition against the Portuguese, unlike the Coloureds and Africans after Emancipation. From the independent economic base Indians had constructed on rice, cattle and petty retailing, they entered the educational, professional, business and civil service fields in ever increasing numbers in the 1930's. The state sector had been closed to them.

By then, change was being generated in the Indian upper stratum and their nascent elite would now attempt to compete with the African and Colored elite even in their traditional preserve - the Civil Service. The world depression was having an effect in Guyana that manifested itself in heightened labour agitation. The British Guiana East Indian Association (BGEIA), which had been formed in Berbice in 1916 by middle class and mostly Christian Indians, took off when it was transplanted to Georgetown in 1920. While in most respects the BGEIA remained an urban-based, middle-class, English educated organization, they were very much connected organically to the ordinary problems of the Indians in the Plantations. The sugar industry, in which most of the Indians workforce was engaged, tightened its belt and life became even more brutish and short. An official of the BGEIA, Ayube Edun, formed a sugar union, the Man Power Citizen Association (MPCA) in 1937. Indians were beginning to assert themselves.

The Coloured and African elite were also organizing themselves and seeking to protect and increase their gains in the society. The United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) of Marcus Garvey out of the U.S. had formed several branches across Guyana by the thirties. The London-originated League of Coloured People (LCP) however was the organization that became the most established and had the most impact. They were in the forefront to confront what was seen as Indian encroachment on the Coloured/African preserve by the thirties. "Somehow, they (LCP) saw the Afro-Guyanese hanging together and advancing politically on their own. They were already envious of the economic strides the Indo-Guyanese had made and considered them a threat"[Ashton Chase].

The competition for the same valued resources [high status jobs] might then explain conflict between the Indian and Africans elites, but cannot do so for the lower strata. Yet the latter have been most enthusiastic in support of their elites, contrary to their supposedly more rational and rewarding class interests, which would have dictated that they act in opposition to the elites' ambitions. The point however, is that when Indians begun moving into the middle class, the effect was to change the stratification pattern from one where class and ethnicity were coincident, to a cross-reticulated one where some East Indians could have had the opportunity of occupying higher strata. However the unintended consequence was to challenge long held notions of group-worth - especially amongst the Coloureds and Africans.

The Coloureds because of their White forbears, preferential recruitment into the junior bureaucratic positions of the civil service and their greater emulation of 'English culture', had conferred legitimacy upon themselves as the inheritors of the colonial mantle with all its pretensions and privileges. The African community had conceded this presumption, and in fact, buttressed it in seeking elevation of their status by entry into the Coloured section through marriage, education, life style and money, which state jobs provided. The arrival of the Indian middle class in the late thirties, the enlargement of the franchise to include more Indians in 1947, the arrival of the universal franchise in l953, and the political mobilization of the East Indian masses by Dr. Cheddi Jagan in l950, threatened that presumption and deepened the historic suspicion and fears of the African community for Indians.

As late as l965, as documented by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), East Indians were still greatly under represented in most key areas of the state sector in relation to their proportion of the population. Relative to where they were just thirty years before however, they had made tremendous progress and at the expense of the Coloreds and Africans. The relative openness of the class closure between them and the Colored elite had long pacified Africans, as an underclass: even those who could not enter the coloured ranks could still aspire to it. The openness of class position had kept the lower strata in line but all of that was now being challenged - the Indians were leapfrogging them to preempt the field. The greatest fear and resentment was being generated at the bottom.

The discovery that the Indians were mastering the very skills long associated with the upper class and in a manner more completely that themselves - compounded the indignities of the African slave heritage. The final insult was their elites advising them that they had to imitate the very qualities they had derided in the Indians, if they wanted to compete successfully. Their group worth, and consequently the individual's self worth, was threatened.

Compounding this psychological insecurity was the demographic factor and the implications for participating in and eventually controlling the government: by the nineteen-forties, the East Indians had a much greater birth rate than Africans and Coloureds. Combining their newly acquired skills with an imminent majority of voters, in a political arena to be governed by majoritarian rule and universal suffrage, it was quite conceivable very early on to both Indian and African thinkers that the Indians could deny the Africans control of the Government in perpetuity. This control was seen as an article of faith by the African-Coloured sections as their birthright, for all the reasons mentioned before.

This structural condition created what we have labeled "Ethnic Security Dilemmas" in the both the African and Indian sections. For the African section which feels that its is being bypassed by others who it had categorized as "backward" and that they may also be ruled by that group in perpetuity under the rules of the political game, the situation is untenable. Groups in this situation are overwhelmingly initiators of ethnic violence as they project their anxiety and insecurity onto the other groups who are seen as threats to their survival. From this perspective, the response of the African Guyanese is not cultural; the same response has been elicited in culturally dissimilar groups such as the Malays who are in a structurally similar position economically in Malaysian society. Thus, while Burnham and the C.I.A. might have midwifed ethnic conflict in Guyana during the sixties, they certainly did not create it. Any proposed solution to Guyana's problem must address this fundamental fear of the African Guyanese: the fear of being swamped and subordinated by the Indians who form a numerical majority.

The Indians and Amerindians, on the other hand, under the modern international norm of equality will assert their right to participate in the body politic in proportion to their share of the population and their contribution to the country. The Indians in particular, live under a Physical Security dilemma: even though as a majority they can assume executive office under majoritarian rules, they are physically always under threat because Africans control the state institutions, especially the army, the police and the civil service. Any proposed solution to Guyana's problems must also address this integral experience of Indian and Amerindian Guyanese, the experience of being excluded from the corridors of power, especially political power and living under physical fear of extermination.

Justice as Fairness
by Ravi Dev

Posted June 8th. 2005

This week, we continue our discussion of the framework necessary for any group or person to create a just state in Guyana. 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 (rightfully) great suspicions amongst 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. We all want to exempt ourselves from the rules. Any initiative, or set of initiatives, that are offered to address Guyana's political crisis will have to engender the broadest possible 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 condition of the categorical imperative, proved nettlesome in practice. 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.

Agreeing with Kant, 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." If we recognise 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. Ironically, for the thought-experiment to work, the politicians must most clearly be aware of the hopes, aspirations and fears of all the people.

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: 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 seeking cultural authenticity, political security and economic independence. 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

However, because each individual citizen or group of citizens are situated differently (according to specific criteria -class, ethnicity, gender etc.) governmental policies and programs will inevitably have a different impact on different citizens. For example, our tax laws are designed to extract a greater percentage of the income of the rich than the poor. 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. 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.

While Rawls (and other theorists such as Marx) have proffered substantive principles of justice, for Guyana we must choose our own - based on our history and present realities - as our Marxist detour shoul have convinced us. Slavery and indentureship in colonialism have been the two historical forces that have had the greatest impact on our collective psyches and our disparate cultures, our economic poverty and our political impotence. 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, we in ROAR believe, must be central to any institution that seeks to address any aspect of our national life.

FOR A JUST AND STABLE GUYANA
by Ravi Dev

Posted May 30th. 2005

Today, thirty-nine years after "Independence", few of us would say that our political leaders have fulfilled their promise of making our people, enslaved and indentured for all our history, really independent. ROAR has proposed that while we've had our share of "bad" men, our predicament has been exacerbated by our all-intrusive Ethnic Security Dilemmas. This week, we revisit a topic which needs to be relentlessly in front of us at all times -and especially in season of emergent political forces: exactly how do we build devise rules (institutions) to guide our political behaviour that address our security dilemmas, while ensuring that we remain free?

We have insisted that any political system we try to construct, ought to be built on a foundation of justice and held together with the cement of truth. We therefore turn to our realities in Guyana, where we are hoping by now that most would concede that we should aim for a multicultural (and thus multiethnic/multinational by our usage) society and polity striving to improve our welfare through the free enterprise system within a democratic state. While the particular stage of development of our macro-institutions will inevitably influence our efforts, there is no need to repeat the detours (and mistakes) of either Western or Eastern Europe. Just as in economic theory and practice we accept that we can utilise existing technologies to leapfrog development, why should we not do the same in political theory and practice? After all, are not "technologies" simply methodologies of doing things?

We should agree right up front that we Guyanese have to achieve some commonality of purpose, which would obviously assist to pull us through the inevitable bad patches. Many have misunderstood ROAR's stress on accommodation of differences as implying that we think that there is no need for unity. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is just that we had to swing the pendulum away from a foisted assimilationist vision of society that has left most of us futilely pursuing of an always-receding "white-determined" holy grail. We propose that a feeling of "we the people" - of "Guyaneseness" - can be engendered in the process of our conscious construction of a democratic state. We call this "Project Democracy" - the creation of conditions where we are all treated as one - equally - by the state. We propose democracy as our goal since the autonomous end of politics - the authoritative allocation of power - is the fundamental problematic of our polity. Our ethnic security dilemmas are a consequence of our fear of powerlessness under the present political system. Equality of opportunity; due process; justice and fair play and rule of law may seem dry compared to the warmth of the blood ties of "nation", but it can engender the unity of public purpose and the recognition of individual worth through common citizenship.

And what would provide the incentive for creating such a state? - the same incentives that spurred the development of every other democracy - crises and social conflicts. Once again, with the kidnapping of two innocent sugar-workers, the spectre of violence on the East Coast has reared its ugly head. Our present crisis has already precipitated a wide-ranging discourse as to what state structures may distribute power more equitably in Guyana. The broad interest expressed in a new political movement is indicative of our peoples' yearning for new approaches to our crisis. 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.

Even as we agonize 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 deepening democracy in Guyana. Even in Britain, that gave us the concept of "undivided sovereignty", the state has been altered to give greater autonomy to the Scots, Irish and the Welsh. In multiethnic/multinational states the major precipitant to ethnic hostilities, whether in the developed or underdeveloped world, has been the real or perceived alienation of various ethnic groups from the power relations of the state. "Marginalisation!" is the cry all over the world. The question, we feel, which has to be answered is what state structure can provide the most incentives for politicians to equitably distribute power amongst the various groups in the polity? That is, we have to create the context for democracy to take root. Integrative federalist principles have informed most of the innovations across the world in multinational/ethnic states, which have been able to alleviate hostilities and further the democratic ideal. Executive power sharing has also been utilised in some divided polities but it appears that this is a transitory accommodation, and ROAR proposes this should be used for one or two terms as we build the trust to create more permanent arrangements.

Our cultural/national sphere would be demarcated as a private one, with minimal state intervention. Multiculturalism would be the order of the day. Amongst modern states, Canada seems to have hit a good note for us to emulate, with its stress on citizenship and multiculturalism and rejection of jingoism. We have an opportunity to close the gap between the "one-nation" model, which can lead to chauvinism, and hatred of the "other", and the "individualised" ideal, which spawns anomic, atomised, angst-filled souls. In our multicultural/multinational state, the acceptance that humans need to belong to a coherent "way of life" can be accommodated and balanced by the simultaneous necessity to learn about other cultures and possibilities. This provides the democratic imperative of choice in that it privileges no individual or group (such as Whites) as a "superior" standard for emulation.

In terms of institutions coordinating the activities of our citizens we will have to strike the balance amongst the roles of the state (coercion), market (competition) and community (cooperation). With our necessity to accommodate diversities, we see federalist, devolutionary principles informing our governmental structures - with a key role for the villages. A market oriented free enterprise system would allow us to plug directly into the global marketplace and be disciplined and toughened by international competition. Internally, of course, it would provide a locus of countervailing power to the always potentially predatory state.

In the weeks and months ahead we hope that there will the most widespread discussion amongst politicians as well as the citizenry on the rules of the game that will govern we, the people.

Rodney: On Organising
by Ravi Dev

Posted May 24th. 2005

From the beginning of its work in Guyanese society in 1988, the Jaguar Committee for Democracy -JCD and its successor ROAR located themselves in the Indian community and insisted that they speak as Indian Guyanese. This position has earned the ire of most political commentators even though we have, on umpteen occasions, explained the rationales for our stand. We want to revisit the issue, as another "first principle" because we believe that the socio-political conditions that demanded our approach still exist.

Back in 1998, during an exchange of letters in the press, we cited a 1970 quote from Dr. Walter Rodney that gave a remarkably similar rationale to our own for organising in specific ethnic communities. Elder Eusi Kwayana said at the time he was unaware of the quote. We were very pleased, therefore, that in the last week, both the SN and the KN published (as ads) a portion of the said quotation. In this critical moment just before the twenty-fifth commemoration of the assassination of one of the brightest light Guyana has ever produced, (and the launch of a much heralded "Third Force") we believe it would be very instructive for all of us to hear some more of what Dr. Rodney thought of how best to organise for change in a racially divided Guyana.

Dr. Rodney said, "Let us take the fact that, over the last decade, Indians and Africans, in Guyana, have been at one another's throats, for a variety of reasons, internal and external, and that there is a tremendous amount of ill-will and suspicion, on both sides; let us take that fact. Now some people deny this and talk about racial harmony, but it is not so. It may be submerged, but it is there; it has to be there: the system ensures that. But what can we do about it? I feel that there are at least two levels at which one must try to organise against the prevailing condition of racial antagonism.

One must organise within the African community, within the Indian community, too, to build different forms of consciousness, different types of social bases, which will ultimately be the form of a new State, and simultaneously, one must begin to find effective revolutionary integrative mechanisms, both organisational and ideological, in terms of people, purely and simply, people, you know, as contributors to the new concept of group consciousness, group power, as for example, like putting six persons. Three Africans, three Indians, not just in form of a symbolic show (they have, of course, to be ideologically consistent and so on), but putting them in a meaningful, nationally-powerful position of leadership, and as a unit.

Now, you have at the second level, to begin to indicate what you would like the society to be like, what that unit should be about, because, if you organise separately, this may well be construed by each group as something exclusive ands hostile. So, you have, at the same time, while doing that bringing together, which is historically necessary, to produce the integrative mechanisms, and act in the kind of fashion, and use the kind of language which makes it clear to the other group (let's say the African and the Indian are the main groups) what the national aims are, what the country's Socialism wants to achieve, in spite of race. We have a number of other people, including the Amerindians, the original inhabitants of the country, who are the most neglected. Our integrative mechanisms must be organised to include that group….(A)s we move towards Socialism, we'll also be, in the process, contributing to the total eradication of racism, in its most violent forms, a racism which has arisen through the slave trade, slavery, indenture, class and colonial oppression.

What we must try to understand (and this is a point I'm always trying to make very clearly) is that there is no contradiction between saying that, at this particular point in time, a man needs to assert his given identity, so that, at another point in time, he won't need to assert it. It would be taken for granted, the whole business of identity, because people will respect that fact, in the changed society, where race will have no marks of identification, whatsoever, on which anybody can lead for support, or for whatever. But it is a respect which no group has, at the moment, at the moment, in the present system, in Guyana.

And I think that within our community of Guyana, different ethnic groups need to assert their identity, need to put themselves together, to pull themselves together, and when they have and when they can operate on the basis of mutual respect, which they are not now doing, now, then I think the way will be clear for building a new society, a society of a mixed unit through Socialism. But, first, the various groups must be built up, made conscious of their own potential, their own dignity, their own power, as Guyanese." How much has since changed, from 1970, 1988 or 1998??

Of course the metanarrative of Marxism (and all one-shoe-fits-all approaches) have since been abandoned by most intellectuals (excepting the core of the PPP) and the question of the hegemonic constructions of identities have come to the fore. On the question of identity, we agreed with Dr. Rodney, who, unlike the vulgar Marxists did not reflexively dismiss race as "false consciousness". We disagreed with him, however, that Marxism was anymore free of racism than Liberalism. As products of the Enlightenment they were both complicit with the production of race and racism of the modern era -the racism arising with African slavery. These racist structures are deeply inscribed in most the ideas and practices of the world view that surrounds us - and while they affect most non-white peoples negatively - they are most extreme to African peoples. The descendants of African slaves especially, and Africans generally - should be very wary about those who would still blithely treat "race" as just another stratification or segregation. We continue to be amazed by African leaders who, in their rush to be under the "one-love-banner" imposed by the dominant paradigm, refuse to accept that the African condition is qualitatively different from that of other groups in the society and demands different programs.

Even more than any other group, Africans should refuse to accept that anyone who has not experienced what it is to be an African should speak for them. It is from that standpoint that ROAR at this time is honestly saying that it cannot speak for those whose experiences they have not lived. We have announced, however, from the moment we arrived in Guyana, that we are willing to work with anyone who could also state that they also work authentically within other communities. We are still so willing. We hope that there will be some dialogue on this most important issue - the approach to organising in present-day Guyana - as per the proposals put forward by Dr. Rodney and supported by ROAR.

Revisiting First Principles
by Ravi Dev

Posted May 20th. 2005

Several individuals, Peeping Tom included, have recently speculated or asserted that ROAR's support for a Centre Force/Third Force at this time indicates that we have given up on fundamental ideas that we have offered to address Guyana's ethnic security dilemmas - notably Integrative Federalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. The suspicions, however reveal a prime characteristic of politics in Guyana: politicians are expected to adopt an "all or nothing" posture in terms of their programs and ideas; do whatever it takes to obtain power, then impose their "vision" on the populace. ROAR's approach is different.

We believe than in a severely divided society like Guyana such an approach is bound to fail…as it has for the past half a century. In societies such as ours the prime prerequisite for new approaches to succeed is missing - no party has a broad enough support base to obtain the legitimacy necessary for the necessary radical programs to succeed. This would be true for almost any issue before the people - much less a whole new system of governance (not to mention a whole new political orientation) such as Integrative Federalism. So how does one proceed? Cautiously, we believe, by trying to build consensus rather than conflict.

In 1990 we outlined our approach in a paper called, "For a new political culture". The bottom line. we asserted, was that the old politics of "we" against "them" had to go. But how could we get to the politics of "us". First and foremost we declared, by not pretending that we were "us" at the present time; we have to work at it. To accept that we had inherited a state but not a nation. Has anything changed since then? Not much fundamentally, but at least the PPP has been given the opportunity to demonstrate whether their way could deliver an "us" with their ideas. I do not thing that anyone would doubt that we are very far from that happy state. Secondly, we said we had to conduct a dialogue in which we would place our fears and hopes on the table and work on building institutions that could address the identified fears and deliver the stated hopes. It would not move us forward if rather than "discussion and deliberation" we engaged in "polemics". I wrote:

The French post-modernist Michael Focault drew what he considered to be the "essential" distinction between entering discussion and engaging in polemic, which is very apropos to all of us at our historical moment. In "discussion" participants implicitly understand commitments entailed by "the acceptance of dialogue" and avail themselves only of rights that "are in some sense immanent" in the "dialogic situation" itself. In "polemic," by contrast, the intent is not merely "to wage war" but to regard "that struggle as a just undertaking." The polemicist proceeds unconstrained by mutual rights and commitments, and treats each interlocutor not as "a partner in search for truth, but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong."

It appears that Guyanese still expect us to engage in polemics. We have no wish to waste time at this time and go down that road.

In our paper we noted that political competitors would have to engage each other in dialogue on a sustained basis and we encouraged (and adumbrated several) structures that would sustain such dialogue. It was for this reason that we supported Dr. Jagan's call (from 1977) for a National Front Government and included the proposal in our paper. We felt than a NFG, for at least one or two terms would deliver the necessary conditions to engender and sustain deeper structural innovations such as Integrative Federalism, which was the main new structural mechanism we proposed. We supported the PPP at the 1992 elections because up to then Dr. Jagan was still espousing a NFG. We believe that the PPP squandered away a golden opportunity with its contrived "Civic" component that fooled no one then and still fools no one. We have since then consistently called for an NFG or Executive Power Sharing (even though we thought the latter title was ill advised) to generate a more accommodative environment for political activity in Guyana, into which new ideas such as integrative federalism would be given a fairer hearing.

Our espousal for a Centre Force after over a decade of PPP's rule arises with our recognition that the PPP's abandonment of Shared Governance in 1992 will not be reversed while it can terrorise and maintain its Indian support base with the PNC as a bogeyman/jumbie. So how do we convince the PPP and the PNC - who now both support radical decentralisation - to work together and so move to the next step of Integrative Federalism? In our estimation ROAR believes that the PPP and the PNC will not become obsolete with any wave of the wand - whether by a fairy Godfather or a Centre/Third Force. We am not sure they need to be obsolete…what is needed is a recognition that they have to work together. Whatever the PNC's motives, the PPP cannot ignore the former's call for Shared Governance, reissued just this morning, while our country cannot even attract investment to generate a one-percent economic growth rate. A sustained rate of at least ten percent is necessary for us to make any significant impact in reducing poverty in our lifetime. What's the rationale for the rejection? How can Shared Governance not help Guyana at this time?

In working to build a Centre/Third force it gets the opportunity to expose its ideas to these formations. This is how consensus is built - slowly, but slowly. A Centre Force, we expect, by denying both the PPP and the PNC a majority in Parliament can persuade both of them to work together on a national program since the constitution of our country demands a majority vote to even spend a penny. The "persuasion" would come out of their own self interest…and the Centre Force's role would be to insist that the deliberations are characterised as "dialogues" rather than "polemics" as is the norm in Parliament. And so take the dialogue beyond the day to day exigencies to necessary fundamental structural changes in governance structures to deliver justice for all.

Many have scoffed at the seeming idealism of this approach - questioning whether prospective members of the Centre will not be seduced into office - and securing either the PPP or the PNC into power. With the history of politics in our country - stretching from Mr. Burnham achieving a PNC majority in Parliament by inveigling crossings of the floor from both the PPP and UF in the sixties to the present PPP and the UF - this is not an idle speculation. Ultimately we will have to depend on the integrity of the individuals - or having them sign blank resignation letters ahead of time! Tom, at the opposite end of the spectrum, sees it as a naked grab for power.

Tom would know, as the above-mentioned Foucault has taught us, that all relationships - and for sure political relationships - are ultimately power relationships. The question of course is what is the participants' conception of the use of power. The Centre Force, in the view of ROAR is to use its power to insist that all the representatives of the people in the Parliament, in the words of our National Pledge, "dedicate (their) energies towards the happiness and prosperity of Guyana." While we believe that Integrative Federalism, as a philosophy and a form of governance, will best deliver those goals…we have to use all opportunities to build a consensus on it or it will never become a liberating construct. We cannot separate means and ends.

Arrival/A rival
by Ravi Dev

Posted May 8th. 2005

As I write this article, the sky is quite overcast…after some heavy downpours during the night. My children are praying rather fervently (unprompted even!) that the weather will hold up for the rest of the day. It's not that they're unmoved by the sight of new flooding on the East Coast (via CNS) but at nine and five, they are more moved by their desire to dress up and enjoy themselves. They so want to get to the GIHA "Knockout" Mela, which had been cancelled from the original Indian Arrival Day of May 5th. To echo my daughter, I too hope that there will be no more "blessings" from on high today. There are so many people who I am sure worked very hard - with no pay - to be once again frustrated…not to mention the money invested.

Spared any rain, the IAC's Arrival Mela - both in Georgetown and in Berbice were very successful. The PPP must be pleased. The IAC, we all know, was formed by the PPP to counter the GIHA event, which had been pulling huge crowds of Indians ever since they started some six years ago. The PPP could never accept a group outside its control working in the Indian community. Especially if the group in question had ideas of its own. And GIHA certainly had ideas - along with a dynamic woman leader in Rhyaan Shah, to boot. The IAC, we've seen by now, is sadly bereft of new ideas and Evan Persaud, even with the shawl he chose to wear this year, is no match for Ms. Shah. Amiable fellow that he is, he would readily concede this.

This PPP's drive to seek total control over the Indians of Guyana is nothing new…in fact it goes back to the formative years of the party. The PPP has from that time sought to control its Indian base so as to further its own, "Marxist" definition of what was needed for them and the country. In the 1953 elections, Dr. Jagan had deliberately set out to destroy Dr. Jang Bahadur Singh who was a leader of the British Guiana East Indian Association (BGEIA) and the Maha Sabha. When the Jagans had returned to Guyana, Dr. Singh had welcomed them into the BGEIA and published their articles in their organ, the Indian Opinion.

After Mr. Burnham split from the PPP in 1955, Dr. Jagan made a candid assessment of his position and what he intended to do about it. According to Dr. Jagan "the split took place along racial and ideological lines, predominantly along the former [race]. Generally the mass of Indians came over to us, the majority of Africans, with the exception of the class conscious and politically aware, went over to Burnham." Since the PPP, by Dr. Jagan's analysis, was now left with primarily Indians as its mass-base, it was crucial, he proposed, to redefine the Party's relationship with "Indian capitalists" who had shown that they were willing to sacrifice their class interests in favour of their ethnic solidarity. Dr. Jagan could not have been too unhappy with the fact that the two top Indian leaders in the PPP - Jainarine Singh and Dr. JB Latchmansingh (who were senior to him in the struggle) left with Mr. Burnham. He was now the undisputed Indian leader. Indians were now supposed to have arrived and Dr. Jagan would brook no rivals. However, that from that point on, the PPP has been stuck into what has become its historic quandary - a leftist-led party with an ethnic Indian mass-support, who were at odds with the ideology of the leadership.

It resolved any ambiguities in demanding than in any venture, the leftist goals of the party were to take priority…while the Indians were to be kept in line with the threat of the big, bad African PNC, which Mr. Burnham sadly didn't do much to dispel. Any group whether Indian or otherwise were forbidden to work in the Indian community. Those who persisted were even greater enemies than the PNC…they were defined as betrayers and they and their organizations were to be dealt with condignly. The GAWU replaced Dr. JP Latchmansingh's GIWU…and today the GAWU puts the interest of the PPP in government ahead of the sugar workers. When ROAR assisted in the formation of the GSWU in 2000, the PPP used its administrative power to stymie the challenge even though the GSWU had collected 5600 signatures of sugar workers. A rival was forbidden.

Ironically, this week's Mirror has a history article praising Balram Singh Rai's efforts in Parliament to end dual control (Christian Church and government) of schools and so stem the forced conversions of Indians to become teachers. After Mr. Rai was expelled from the party because Mrs. Jagan concluded that he was a threat to Dr. Jagan, he became a defined enemy for whom the party would not even intervene (upon Mr. Rai's entreaty) to secure a parliamentary pension to acknowledge his role in parliament. Mr. Brindley Benn, however, who left thePPP, formed his own party, ridiculed Dr. Jagan, was rewarded in 1992 with a diplomatic posting to Canada. A rival who is Indian is beyond the pale.

The Rice Producer's Association (RPA) is another PPP front organisation that puts the interests of its primarily Indian membership behind the PPP's. When farmers in Essequibo dared to challenge the RPA and formed the Essequibo Paddy Producer's Association (EPPA) the PPP threw all the leaders out of the PPP and hauled them to Freedom House where they were told by Mrs. Jagan that they were "ungrateful dogs". These rice farmers who had stood behind and supported the PPP through all the dark years were the ungrateful ones!!! A rival is a dog. President Jagdeo's indecent attacks on the integrity of Swami Aksharananda, of course, is to help buttress its Hindu stalking horse, the Dharmic Sabha of Pandit Reepu Daman Persaud. A rival Swami cannot be a real Swami.

ROAR, of course, has come in for its own share of denunciation from the PPP…we were daring to challenge them openly in "their" seemingly mortgaged property - the Indians. At a press conference in 2001, we detailed nineteen specific acts by the PPP against ROAR and its members. Not to mention, of course, the infamous 2000 "cuss down" that President Jagdeo, ex-president Janet Jagan. General Secretary Donald Ramotar and other leading executives of the PPP conducted in front of my home, while I was out of the country. A rival party of Indians were "worms" (President Jagdeo) and "neemakharams" (Ramotar) who must be crushed.

The irony is, from an Indian perspective, there is nothing wrong in rivalry. Since no one person or organisation can possess the totality of truths, different perspectives are to be encouraged to present the widest perspective to the people who ultimately will be responsible for their actions. But then the PPP has never claimed to have an Indian perspective, has it? As a Leninist party it does see itself as having a monopoly of "truth". They therefore, see a rival as a threat to its existence. Consequently, with its reflexive actions to crush new voices in the Indian community they have kept that community in a grave state of underdevelopment - politically, socially, economically and culturally. Rather than seeing the community as a banyan tree that allows each branch to have independent roots, the PPP acts as a parasitic vine that seeks to entwine the entire community in its coils. Such a community will stultify and eventually perish. Unless Indians demand their own voices, there will not be a rival to that arrival.

Death Squads 2
by Ravi Dev

Posted April 25th. 2005

Well, the other foot has dropped. The "Death Squad Commission" has made its inevitable exoneration on the narrowly drawn issue of Mr Gajraj's involvement in the said squads. The entire Cabinet (not just the President, who actually has the responsibility) has responded reinstating him as Minister of Home Affairs. To offer a background on ROAR's position that Mr. Gajraj ought not to be reinstated, we republish my article from January last year, before the Commission was set up.

"The allegations by George Bacchus that the Minister of Home Affairs Ronald Gajraj is implicated in the operations of a "Death Squad" has brought us in Guyana to another critical juncture in the development (or death) of our State. The need for us to have a state that serves the interests of all Guyanese, to be beholden to no partisan interest, to be staffed by Guyanese who see themselves as a "Universal Class" is a point that ROAR has been pushing from our inception. It's a point that doesn't seem to be appreciated by the PPP and the PNC - and to be frank - apparently by most Guyanese. Guyanese have stood by and seen those who control the state use the organs of the state and extra-state organisations to pursue narrow partisan interests for so long that apparently they feel this is the way things ought to be. "It's our turn to do what we want to do," seems to be the dominant (and nihilistic) sentiment, in each of the two major ethnic groups.

'60's Death Squad

This is a fatal mistake. If we cannot wake up to the absolute necessity for a neutral state, then we'd better pack up our bags and all leave. The Guyanese state was launched at Independence after massive ethnic violence wrought by Death Squads formed by both the PNC and PPP between 1962-64. The PNC received massive covert support from elements of the Police and Volunteer Forces in that pre-independence struggle and it set a precedent for using those forces for partisan interests. We didn't seem to have learnt our lesson. Between 1964 and 1992 it has been well documented by numerous credible sources (notably by Professor Ken Danns in his book, "Power and Domination in Guyana") that the Security Forces more or less became arms of the PNC. There were also outside forces such as the House of Israel and the Kick-down-the-door bandits that were used by the PNC to keep opposition forces cowed. Let us not forget that Dr. Walter Rodney, by all accounts, was assassinated by a member of the Guyana Defence Force. We still didn't learn our lesson.

So today we have the PPP accused of creating its own Death Squad to go after individuals fingered as "criminals". The reports contend that many of these "criminals" were tortured before being killed. ROAR's position, expressed over a week ago, was that the Minister of Home Affairs should recuse himself while an independent Inquiry is conducted into the allegations. We have the word of the Minister that he had conversations with several individuals now charged with the murder of Bacchus' brother. The question arises as to why would the Minister, in charge of the Security Forces of the country, resort to dealing with individuals, each of whom had brushes with the law?

Ethnic Insecurities

One explanation, in fact, harks back to the fundamental reason for the political impasse in Guyana - ethnic insecurities. The PPP is a party with deep historical memories. The role of the Disciplined Forces personnel on behalf on the PNC, before and after Independence, could not be brushed aside. The PPP did not have faith on the Disciplined forces to act professionally, from the moment they took office in 1992. However, rather than doing the right thing and work to install that professionalism at all cost into those Forces, the PPP pretended that everything was hunky dory and that there were no changes necessary. The irony was that those Forces themselves expected that changes were necessary to return their professionalism after the excesses of the PNC's regime.

The main reason that the PPP did not act was that they did not have the courage to accept that the fundamental factor underlying Guyana's politics was race. The Forces' lack of professionalism was underscored by the fact that the PNC had exacerbated the British divide and rule policy by not only increasing the dominance of its African support base within the Forces but also exponentially increasing their numbers. In an article in 1993, The Anatomy of Power in Guyana, I pointed out the need to reform the Forces among other institutions. Later that same year I predicted that there would be anti-Indian violence. At the time, my old buddy Freddy criticised me for making this prediction.

On January 12th 1998, when anti-Indian violence did break out - the PPP was caught with their pants down in terms of providing protection for their supporters. Shown that the Emperor PPP had no clothes, it was not surprising that the violence against Indians intensified. During 1998, dozens of Indians, primarily businessmen, were murdered. In fact ROAR was launched on Jan 17th 1999 at a rally against crime where it issued a detailed proposal for the reform and professionalisation of the Forces. I pointed out then that Africans who were silent about the lack of effort of the Force to apprehend the murderers were "creating a Frankestein that would come back to haunt them." The PPP lambasted ROAR, deeming us "racists" and reiterated their support for the Forces.

It is apparent now that the PPP, after refusing to professionalise the state institution that was legally responsible for dealing with security - the Police Force - turned to elements of the Black Clothes to take on those who were preying on Indians. We argued at the time that this approach would backfire. Lo and behold, we witnessed the inevitable excesses of the squad and their dismemberment by their opponents - especially after the infamous 2002 Mash jailbreak. By now the political-criminal enterprise had become enmeshed with drug elements and we witnessed two responses - both outside the official State avenue - on which everyone seemed to have given up. These were the "Phantom Squad", apparently sponsored by businessmen who had faced the brunt of the attacks, and a "Death Squad" that had an official, if illegal, imprimature.

It is this latter group that appears to have been fingered and for which Minister Gajraj is being blamed. ROAR's contention is that while the depredations against the innocent, especially as we witnessed last year against Indians on the East Coast, had to be dealt with, it serves none of us, even Indians, for that exigency to be handled outside the official State apparatus. This will inevitably come back to haunt all of us.

The way only forward is to conduct an official Inquiry into the allegations before us and simultaneously professionalise our Disciplined Forces as ROAR has been demanding since its formation. We propose a panel of three ex-Chancellors, who are fortunately still around, for the former task. We fortunately have a Disciplined Forces Commission already functioning, to help us with the latter."

Between the (Third force) Lines
by Ravi Dev

Posted April 17th. 2005

In his riposte to my latest ruminations on the Centre/Third Force, Peeping Tom advised that I "read between the lines" in Freddy Kisoon's espousal of the said Force. (The King Maker, Uncle Ravi and the third force). Tom believes that "Freddy does not want ethnic rights activists in his Third force…There will be no place for Uncle Ravi in Uncle Freddy's Third Force." I think Tom has a point. And it's not only Freddy who feels that way: so do many (if not most) of the erstwhile leaders who I have been mentioning as possible participants in the Centre Force. So why do I proceed (Tom may say "quixotically") along the Centre /Third Force path? It is precisely because Freddy and so many of the opinion-shapers of Guyana feel the way they do about "ethnic" representatives.

The truth is that most of these folks - there'll always be a few hard-line recalcitrants - are not seeking to exclude people like myself because of malice or hatred. They sincerely believe that the politics that I espouse are at a minimum, "just not right" for Guyana. To these good folks, the "right politics" means that leaders must each, in their own person, represent all persons - all "Guyanese". This is "real multi-ethnic" politics. I was referring to this perspective when I discussed the "representation of ideas" - individuals acting as agents for the interests of a group, and who therefore can come from outside the group, as apposed to "representation by presence", which proposes that for groups that were excluded from the authoritative power relations of the society, they need to be physically there - to represent their truths.

Politics

The problem with the former approach, I have been pointing out, are myriad - not least being that very few have chosen the enlightened platonic guardian-representatives when it came to voting for them at elections in Guyana. And if we are engaged in politics, as Tom has been belabouring recently, this is the litmus test. We cannot ask to be judged by good intentions but by performance. Freddy himself had challenged my "representation-by-presence" views prior to the 1992 elections, when we predicted that the WPA, with its "representation by ideas" vision of multi-racial politics, would be crushed. We found no satisfaction when our prediction was proven correct but hoped that out of the reality check of October 5th, grounded individuals would look at other models for ensuring "multi-racial" justice in Guyana.

Freddy recently claimed that, "At present, "(Dev's) thesis of the ethnic security dilemma is fair argument for both sides - the Indians and Africans. This is what I mean by the softening of his original self." (Guyanese Indian extremists preparing. KN 2-20-05) But Freddy would know that I have always publicly advocated this position and at least since 1990 in the Stabroek News when he also had a column there. There remains a refusal to accept that an "ethnic" representative could have a "national" perspective. To repeat my premise: there needs to be an acknowledgement that the overwhelming acceptance by the people of ethnic mobilisation may reveal real, valid and rational interests. People are not all sheep who are in a miasma of "false consciousness".

Black Power

My proposal that we openly start from where we are- ethnically self-defined - to create together a "we" and a Guyana for all, sounds crass to the proponents of representation by ideas for another reason apart from its empirical rejection here - ideology. These citizens are, after all, products of the Enlightenment. Modern Guyanese politics was defined by three strands of ideologies: anti-colonialism, Marxism and finally Black Power. The first two demanded an "all-a-we is one" position in which any one could represent all. (Mr. Eusi Kwayana was expelled from the PNC in 1962, let us recall, for daring to doubt that African interests would best be served with an independent Guyana under Dr. Cheddi Jagan.) With Black Power, some, like Rodney in Grounding with my Brothers sought to stretch it on the Procrustean bed of Marxism, to fit our multi-racial reality. I was a High School student who witnessed that only Eusi Kwayana remained at the visiting Stokely Carmichael's side when he (Carmichael) dare suggest in 1970, that Africans had some unique problems to resolve because of their history, and that maybe Black Power may be for only them.

The wide acceptance of the premises of Black Power in Guyana and the Caribbean, however, meant that from the seventies activists were not uncomfortable to acknowledge what they defined as the "cultural question' for Africans. Never having benefit of an Indian perspective on the cultural question (Jagan subverted and destroyed the Indian cultural leadership in Guyana; Bhadase took a different tack in Trinidad) there is a premise still inheres in these good folks that to say you are an "Indian" is to be ipso facto communal, backward and "extremist". To be "African", while not encouraged, does not raise the same level of disapproval. Apart from Dr. Rodney's integrity, the ideological familiarity with Black Power played a role in this.

As an outsider to the WPA, and being abroad to boot, I must say that I took the "multi-culturalists" refusal to deal with Indian cultural issues as hypocrisy on the part of the WPA leadership since they defined the party (as Freddy still did as recently as 4-4-05 "Today is Eusi Kwayana's birthday) as the merging of Eusi Kwayana's "Africanist organisation ASCRIA, with an Indian group, IPRA (Indian Political Revolutionary Association) led by Moses Bhagwan. It wasn't until the after the riots of 1998, after my stance on the riots gave me a certain notoriety, that I found out from Moses Bhagwan that the name of his grouping was deliberate: he believed that Indians were oppressed politically not culturally, unlike Africans who were doubly oppressed.

I understood then that what I had defined as the African "dominant tendency" of the WPA was not necessarily a conspiracy of the African leadership but as much as the refusal of its Indian leadership to acknowledge that the Indians in Guyana may also have been culturally hegemonised, albeit differently from the African but no less effectively. My understanding came out of a committed engagement with the leaders of the WPA in several fora. It is this self-truth that impels me to keep up, and even widen, the engagement with others like Freddy, who may not concede the legitimacy of Indian representing themselves by their presence in Guyana today. I do believe that Freddy and friends have the interests of all Guyana at heart (even though they may display some smugness of moral superiority on occasions) and it is only through working together, they may see that to be Indian is not to be anti- African . Or vice-versa.

Empathy

For what it is worth I would like to share an anecdote with Tom and Freddy. During the discussions between the Parliamentary Opposition parties to arrive at a joint position on the Death Squad issue so as to communicate with the UN Secretary General, it was Dr. Clive Thomas (who has been criticised for taking an "African" position recently) who first proposed that the East Coast violence with its epi-centre at Buxton be part of the Terms of Reference of any proposed Commission of Inquiry. We also must acknowledge, that the PNC fully agreed with the wider TOR. (As an aside, today, even as the PPP has reinstated Mr. Gajraj and Indians have forgotten Pres. Jagdeo's promise to Inquire into the wider violence "later", are they are sleeping easier? Or are they waiting for the fire next time?)

So Tom, I read between the lines, as you advised, but will still lend my shoulder to efforts to make the Centre Force a reality. After all, it may be my last chance to persuade Freddy and friends that "Indian" doesn't automatically equal "extremist". And that Indians too, must have a place in the Guyanese mosaic -by their physical presence. .

Tom and Freddy (and Third Force)
by Ravi Dev

Posted April 13th. 2005

I have said it before and I'll say it again: Peeping Tom has his fingers on the pulse of the people…especially Indian people. So whenever Tom talks about what the people may or may not do, I listen up good. A week or so ago, Tom accused Freddy of "trying to revive the dead…(in trying to)…promote a Third Force in Guyana." (The Third Force -3-31-05). I found the rationale that Tom gave for his assertion interesting: Citing Newton's third law of motion (action and reaction are equal and opposite) Tom asserted: "Thus, for all of those who are trying to deny the PPP a majority through a TF (Third Force) or CF (Centre Force) there will be an equal and opposite backlash, whereby the electorate will decide that they do not wish to have this in country a ruling party with a minority in parliament."

One of my problems with Tom's formulation is that by equating ("Thus") a phenomena from the inanimate world of physics with one from the animate field of psychology seem he gives the latter an inevitability that misses the role of human agency. People are qualitatively different from marbles. Tom, of course, is in rarefied company with this fallacy: the great man Marx himself committed this faux pas. In throwing out the baby with the bathwater, Marx missed Hegel's insight that natural phenomena ("events) are different from human phenomena ("actions") because of the intervention of consciousness in the latter phenomena. Humans are not little balls through which "forces" act to keep them in motion or not. Human consciousness introduces the possibility of change from what may be the "norm" as humans reflect, are influenced or are coerced etc. The dialectic is driven only by consciousness.

In the context of which we are speaking - the possibility of the Third Force - there are two separate but related issues which both depend on the variable of human consciousness: one, whether a credible such force can be brought together and two, whether it can be effective in garnering votes. There is no inevitability about either. Tom was pronouncing on the second issue. Now Tom may be quite right in his conclusions that the electorate will reject the Third Force but it will not be due to any mysterious "forces" but rather primarily on the first issue: Will there be a credible Third or Centre Force? This depends on human will. Tom himself accepts that the Centre/Third Force simply needs to deny both the PPP and PNC a majority. Does Tom really believe that a Confederation of GAP, WPA, ROAR, Ramjattan/Trotman grouping, Joey Jagan's Unity Party, Sharma's JFAP together with other leaders the grouping would not be able to accomplish the task? All we're talking about is another three or four percent above the present configuration?

I therefore do not believe that, as Tom puts it, "the next election is going to be about one man…Bharrat Jagdeo." It's going to be whether the principals in the abovementioned groupings can rise to the need of the moment and work on a common program for Guyana. The issue would then be not whether the PPP or PNC forms the Government but that either of them would have to negotiate with the Third/Centre Force on the basis of what's good for all of Guyana.

I disagree with Tom when he says in the negative that the people would not want a "minority" government. I believe that the people - all the Guyanese people - after twenty-eight years of the PNC and twelve years of the PPP that the people want effective government. True, as Tom says, we have the "ethnic combustible" but the Third/Centre Force addresses precisely that more effectively than any other arrangement. All the representatives of all the groupings in Guyana will have the opportunity to influence decision-making.

And this brings me to Tom's contention that "Ravi Dev's Third Force …is in total contradiction to his formula…to deal with the effects of the ethnic security dilemmas." I don't think so. I agree with the old saw that politics is the art of the possible…especially in the short term. Federalism will come. Everyone has accepted the principle of "decentralisation…we have to work concretely with others to show them that in its Federal implementation there is no nefarious Indian agenda to partition Guyana. But rather it will further the interests of all Guyanese. This trust can only come as we work closer with other groups. In the meantime, we would note that the Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma has already been addressed by the recommendations of the Disciplined Forces Commission. Which Commission, we should remember, was occasioned by the demands of the PNC not the PPP - even though the stipulation on addressing the imbalance in the Disciplined Forces was inserted into the Constitution since 2000. The PPP has since displayed a noted reluctance to implement the recommendations. That brings us to the African Ethnic Security Dilemma.

I know that Tom cannot believe that this dilemma will be addressed by the presence of Dr.Jeffrey and Mr. Lumumba (no matter how many footballs the latter gives away and I have been reliably informed that the good Mr. Samuel Hinds will be accepting a foreign posting in the tradition of Sirs John Carter and Lionel Luckhoo.) After the 1998 riots, I wrote in An Aetiology of an Ethnic Riot : "By the early 1960's Burnham, as the leader of a "dominated" group, had three strategies he could have used, either singly or in combination, to obtain or share power. Firstly, he could have used coercion (riots and revolt), utilitarian trade (bargaining votes for favours etc,) or normative devices (persuading the P.P.P. to observe its own rules so as not to exclude African Guyanese). Burnham chose riots and revolt."

The point is, Tom , we cannot simply focus on who will succeed Jagdeo in 2001 within the PPP, as you advise - it is not in the interest of any Guyanese, much less Indians. (Why didn't you mention my favourite Moses Nagamootoo? Or do you accept Freddy's thesis that he will be totally emasculated by then? And by Lambada - of all the mediocrities?) Since we have seen that the PPP is totally unwilling to bargain with the PNC (Jagdeo repeated this only last week.) and the PPP has proven that it is only interested in ethnic tokenism (a la Burnham) don't we strengthen the hands of those inside the African community who will see no other option but riots and revolt?

The Politics of Presence
by Ravi Dev

Posted March 27th. 2005

Earlier this month I attended a meeting , organised by Red Thread, of women who came together -as women - to share their experiences of the flood. Now, some may say that the flood affected everyone in the communities from where the women came, so why the need for a "women's" view? But no one who attended that gathering would not have ventured that question. After listening to those voices it was obvious that no male could have related what those women experienced. The women - as women- brought a distinctive and unique perspective to an event that yes, did affect all. I am sure that men also felt responsible for their children - but not to the same overwhelming depth as these women. I am sure that men felt responsible for feeding their families - but not with the particular desperation and intensity of these women. I could go on and on, but the point I am making is that it needed the presence of these women to share their experiences and so, increase our own appreciation and understanding of what the floods meant to our people. This is what the politics of presence is all about.

All around us we see the demand for representation by presence. Women across the world have led this struggle in the modern era. In our own Guyana, it is now the law of the land that thirty percent of the members of parliament must be women. This is an open acknowledgement that women must represent their views by their presence. The recent questioning of the composition of the Executive of the Ethnic Relations Commission and the judges on the Caribbean Court of Justice are only the most recent expression of this phenomenon. The irony that our rejection of the British Privy Council is in itself an affirmation of representation by presence has evidently been completely lost on the naysayers. The most contentious area in Guyana, of course, is that ethnic perspectives and interests must also be represented by the "presence" of the said ethnic members.

My own efforts in this area - to suggest that we openly talk about and deal with ethnic interests in ways that include the politics of presence - have received quite a hostile reception, to say the least. Some say that such talk is "divisive". Never mind that even without "such talk", an even more virulent and divisive "talk" goes on under the bottom-houses - especially by the very complaining forces. But those who complain of the open articulation and representation of ethnic interests are being disingenuous. They do not mention that, to our credit, we recognise the interests of one such ethnic group - our Amerindian brothers and sisters - and enshrine them in our Constitution. The sky hasn't fallen down because of that recognition. They do not complain because they paternalistically view the Amerindians as wards, and not as full citizens, who they can manipulate. They are not so sanguine about Africans and Indians

One more trenchant criticism is that while acknowledging that there may be ethnic perspectives and interests, some hold that these don't have be represented by the actual presence of the particular ethnics. This position - the representation of ideas - that once the interests of a group are enumerated anyone can then represent them. The representative "acts" for the group as their agent. This of course was what the Europeans said of the various natives they encountered during their noble venture to spread their civilisation. They could represent slaves, for instance, since they (the Europeans) knew what was in the best interests of the slaves. Many men still don't see why all the fuss for women to represent their interests by their own presence. Male eyes - from both sides of our House of Assembly - roll with an intriguing synchronicity when one or the other female member - from either side of the House - happen to interject a "female" perspective into the august deliberations. Such as the unreasonable demand that our Constitution be made gender neutral.

Marxists are in the forefront in their rejection of the politics of presence. After all, how else could they justify having a bunch of "intellectuals" who never worked a day, representing the "working" class. They had to insist that once "the interests" of the workers were stated, anyone could represent them. But the Marxists' own experience in that form of representation showed the weaknesses of that position - not the least being that the working class who were supposed to rule never themselves got a shot at holding the sceptre. They had to continue with the heroic task of working. When a group has been systematically excluded from representing themselves - the very act of representation served at the very minimum, to lift up that group by demonstrating to them that their voices and concerns have value. Their presence also serves to inhibit the others from continuing with acts or speech that put them down and were part and parcel of their oppression. It had to have inhibited the planters somewhat in denigrating Africans and Coloureds when these groups began to enter the Combined Court back in the nineteenth century.

The bottom line is that even if the representatives of a group are quite serious about representing that group, but are not members of that group, it not only signals the exclusion of that group, but certifies that something vital is lost. That "something" is the lived experience of the group - the hopes, aspirations, fears - in a word, their perspective. This is not to say that there is no value in the representation of "ideas" for a group. Some representation is better than nothing. In like vein, it is not to say that the presence of members of a group guarantees their proper representation. We Guyanese are only too familiar with tokenism - be it ethnic or gender. We have to combine the "ideas" of the group with the presence of the group. Especially when there had been systematically exclusion.

The proliferation of the "politics of presence" is a manifestation of the growing acceptance of diversities within societies. Some therefore oppose such politics by invoking a "slippery slope". They complain, "Where will it all end?" Again in this we hear the echoes of our colonial past: Are we going to give up rule of the Empire to savage Mau Maus and naked fakirs? And today: are we going to be ruled by women? The horror! The rejection of the representation by presence always betrays the fear that like infants, imbeciles and cattle, the group is not quite competent to represent themselves. And we return to the Marxist and other such like minded theories that individuals may not be competent to even see their own interests - they suffer from false consciousness and other such maladies - and must therefore be represented by their betters.

We have allowed others to speak for us during our entire history. Isn't it time we speak for ourselves? To each other? About what kind of Guyana we want? That's the forum ROAR hopes a Center Force can provide.

Govt's role in growth
by Ravi Dev

Posted March 14th. 2005

"After my budget presentation below, it is ironic that the IMF yesterday criticised the govt for not "boosting"growth while cautioning that the govt must stay the IMF course."

Growth Examples

We have to look at how others were able to create investment opportunities starting with even greater constraints than us, and how these were realised in a sustainable manner. Let theory be guided by successful practice. The history of the world after World War II has demonstrated that the countries that were able to pull themselves out of the poverty trap - Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and then later Malaysia etc. all followed the example of Japan in that the State was integrally involved in formulating and executing explicit industrial policies. Stanley Ming spoke about the success of Singapore. The central linchpin of Singapore's success lay in Lee Kuan Yew's articulation of a clear strategy for development in which his Government played the key role. He enumerated the constraints, identified the opportunities and methodically set about removing the constraints achieve the identified opportunities one after the other. The people of Singapore were willing to accept near-term deprivations because they could see the vision slowly becoming reality.

On the other hand, no one in Guyana has any faith in this Government's grandiose plans…because every year, all we hear are "buzzwords". Don't we all remember the hullabaloo over "I.T." two or three years ago? Now its raw materials such as bauxite to fee the Chinese behemoth: well, China has been growing for two decades…where was the focused strategy to supply raw materials. Only last year we were writing off the bauxite industry. What about being the "gateway to South America" when the PM claims that we can't have a deep-water harbour until we have massive exports? Even my Nanie knew when to build a latrine! We note that strategic infrastructural structures for generating growth are frowned upon by the IFI's, and the PPP meekly acquiesces - excepting when it comes to bread-and-circus items like the cricket stadium.

I know that we in Guyana, have had a disastrous experience with state involvement in development but let us not throw out the baby with the bath water. (And let's not forget that the IFI's were just as complicit in the fiasco because they had to launder OPEC oil money. Not all state actions are negative and in fact there may be the necessity for government interventions when the free market is stymied for one reason or other (market failure). And if we don't have market failure here, we certainly have market constipation. We need only to look at our banks being awash with money and yet have no investments (the liquidity problem I discussed, and our PM bemoaned, earlier).

After our experience, we agree 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. Our development plans were driven by State ownership of production (State Capitalism) which destroyed the market forces necessary for competition and other disciplines necessary for sustainable growth. The socialist dogmas undergirding the then development policies were inimical to the free market and spawned a culture of special interests seeking to benefit from the state policies (rent seeking). Yes, we should learn from our experience as to the downside risks of a large governmental role in industrial policy and act to minimise those risks, but we must not ignore the fact that no country in the modern era has risen out of poverty on loans from World Bank/IMF and without strong Government intervention.

Awash in money

The Prime Minister at least elaborated on the Finance minister's bald statement of our "liquidity" problem. Alluding to the fact that even after the Government has sterilised some $50 billion dollars (and paying some $2 billion annually for the privilege) the banking sector was still awash in cash, the PM complained that "we're saving but not investing". Yet he saw the Government's role to stimulate investment as only building infrastructure. What has the Government done to make the "local investors" he called upon to invest, want to suddenly jump in. What have they done to force the Banks to lend investors at reasonable rates? They actually made the safe-haven of T-Bills even more attractive to banks by raising the interest rate during 2004.

Catalytic State

ROAR has called for the creation of what has been labelled a "Catalytic Entrepreneurial State" (CES). Such a state will firstly have to be a responsible state, with a strong demonstrated commitment to private sector development . The Government has to be willing to let Guyanese become wealthy. The Government will obtain the money for any perceived or real inequities from taxes. The rising tide will raise all ships. The Government's relationship with the Public Service is another area of grave concern in the formation of a CES. In whatever endeavour the State engages, much depends on the professionalism of the Civil Servants for the success of that endeavour. We have recently heard much about reform of the Civil Service - but the Government has not been clear in what context such reforms will take place. If, for instance, we envisage a CES, then we may not have to downsize our Civil Service but rather raise the salary scales and train the employees to perform their new developmental tasks. In Singapore, the Government insisted that Civil Servants' salaries be on par with their counterparts in the private sector. In Guyana, we will definitely need to insist on new and higher standards for employment in the Civil Service and this may necessitate redeploying much of the present staff.

The CES will also have to be a "facilitative State' as the IMF/World Bank has been insisting. We have no problem with the propositions that the Government will play a regulatory role to restore (and maintain) markets to their proper function (clearing markets). This is a vital role as the 1997 crisis in the Far East demonstrated…but we cannot insist on making the environment perfect before we attract the real investments. Similarly, we accept that Government will have to provide education, primary healthcare and infrastructure. We acknowledge that public finances have increased in this area under the PPP. However, 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 Guyanese. And many are rightfully sceptical and even bitter about any suggestion that the Government should take a more interventionist role in economic development.

Budget 2005: Stagnation
by Ravi Dev

Posted March 7th. 2005

In his Budget speech, the Hon. Minister of Minister spelt out the PPP's "vision" for Guyana: "To create a modern, democratic society with abundant opportunities and a high standard of living." Now, we know that if a vision is not grounded in some reality it becomes tantamount to building castles in the air. More germanely then, the theme of the Budget summarised the strategy: Confronting Challenges - Sustaining Growth and Development. Well, going by the figures the Minister himself supplied us with for growth of the economy over the past five years, it averaged a paltry .6%…and this from widely conceded, heavily massaged figures. Is this the growth the government is going to "sustain"? Is this what Minister Collymore meant when he declared that the "budget showed where we came from and where we are going?" However we know that while we know that there may be growth without development…no one would argue that we could have development without growth. A less than one percent growth rate is statistically insignificant, making it impossible for achieving the PPP's own Millennium Goals and dooming us to stagnation. Last year the PM said that at the very minimum we needed to have a growth rate of at least 7% to have any significant results.

Growth

To understand why the strategy cannot deliver, we can examine the Minister's own elaboration of the PPP's strategy for "sustaining growth and development". He revealed that the "strategic interventions in 2005 will centre on maintaining macroeconomic stability, expanding the economy through enhanced performance of traditional industries; diversification and the development of new activities; rapidly expanding job opportunities .." But looking at the elaboration of the plan one sees nothing strategically different from the plan that delivered us the miserable growth rate over the past five years. It is obviousthat the Government has washed its hands of any focused role in economic development, in favour of merely providing a stable macro-environment.

Once again, the PPP boasted about the inflation and exchange rates holding steady. The Minister was unapologetic about these criteria being set by the World Bank and the IMF. (They don't mention the deficit…which is expected to balloon to 14.2%….far exceeding the 3% cap set by the IFI's. Aren't they concerned about the inflationary potential of deficit spending as preached by the Washington Consensus' orthodoxy?) The PPP has missed the whole point about "macro-economic" fundamentals. Stable inflation and exchange rates are supposed to deliver investment that will result in growth. The "fundamentals" are not ends unto themselves but means to the end of growth. If there is no growth - and the PPP's figures verify this - we have to have take another look at the "fundamentals".

Capitalism is all about making an economy grow under ownership of production in private hands. The bottom line is getting private people to invest. The PPP has been singularly unsuccessful in this area. In terms of generating real growth, the private investment has literally been chickenfeed. The recent announcements by Barama and Omai are from firms attracted from the PNC era. The biggest investor in Guyana, one again is the Government of Guyana - but apart from GuySuCo, the investment is in infrastructure. This is again within the World Bank/IMF orthodoxy: that private investment needs infrastructure. Well it does; but what if the investment doesn't show up? Are infrastructure and "macro-economic" fundamentals sufficient to deliver us to the promised land of phenomenal capitalist growth rates? Our history has conclusively proven that they do not. But what can you expect from a government that has an economic development program labelled "Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper"? Part of the problem of the Government lack of originality is caused by the reality that economic strategy is dictated completely by one man (whose name, I am told we cannot mention in this house?) A clue on the identity of the myopic strategist can be gleaned by the fact that the President has insisted on conducting all the negotiations with the IFI's rather than the Finance Minister, within whose remit they fall, and the PRSP program is run out of the Office of the President.

This, of course, is in line with the IMF's "one shoe fits all" dogma that such an environment will guarantee investment. In our estimation this is tantamount to guaranteeing that Guyana never becomes developed. This is not merely my opinion but the position of even an insider like Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank (not to mention being Bill Clinton's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors).

When Stiglitz and other insiders can boldly inform us that the Agenda of the IMF and other IFI's are driven by a US Treasury agenda, we have to then take its prescriptions very guardedly. We have to protect our own national interests - as the US Treasury is doing wit the US'. 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. But even in its wailing about the constraining environmental factors such as crime and security, has the Government moved effectively to curb these? One is still waiting to see funds in the budget to create a SWAT Unit voted on by this House two years ago, to confront the new high-intensity crime modus operandi.

Growth Examples

We have to look at how others were able to create investment opportunities starting with even greater constraints than us, and how these were realised in a sustainable manner. Let theory be guided by successful practice. The history of the world after World War II has demonstrated that the countries that were able to pull themselves out of the poverty trap - Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and then later Malaysia etc. all followed the example of Japan in that the State was integrally involved in formulating and executing explicit industrial policies. Stanley Ming spoke about the success of Singapore. The central linchpin of Singapore's success lay in Lee Kuan Yew's articulation of a clear strategy for development in which his Government played the key role. He enumerated the constraints, identified the opportunities and methodically set about removing the constraints achieve the identified opportunities one after the other. The people of Singapore were willing to accept near-term deprivations because they could see the vision slowly becoming reality.

On the other hand, no one in Guyana has any faith in this Government's grandiose plans…because every year, all we hear are "buzzwords". Don't we all remember the hullabaloo over "I.T." two or three years ago? Now its raw materials such as bauxite to fee the Chinese behemoth: well, China has been growing for two decades…where was the focused strategy to supply raw materials. Only last year we were writing off the bauxite industry. What about being the "gateway to South America" when the PM claims that we can't have a deep-water harbour until we have massive exports? Even my Nanie knew when to build a latrine! We note that strategic infrastructural structures for generating growth are frowned upon by the IFI's, and the PPP meekly acquiesces - excepting when it comes to bread-and-circus items like the cricket stadium.

I know that we in Guyana, have had a disastrous experience with state involvement in development but let us not throw out the baby with the bath water. (And let's not forget that the IFI's were just as complicit in the fiasco because they had to launder OPEC oil money. Not all state actions are negative and in fact there may be the necessity for government interventions when the free market is stymied for one reason or other (market failure). And if we don't have market failure here, we certainly have market constipation. We need only to look at our banks being awash with money and yet have no investments (the liquidity problem I discussed, and our PM bemoaned, earlier).

After our experience, we agree 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. Our development plans were driven by State ownership of production (State Capitalism) which destroyed the market forces necessary for competition and other disciplines necessary for sustainable growth. The socialist dogmas undergirding the then development policies were inimical to the free market and spawned a culture of special interests seeking to benefit from the state policies (rent seeking). Yes, we should learn from our experience as to the downside risks of a large governmental role in industrial policy and act to minimise those risks, but we must not ignore the fact that no country in the modern era has risen out of poverty on loans from World Bank/IMF and without strong Government intervention.

Awash in money

The Prime Minister at least elaborated on the Finance minister's bald statement of our "liquidity" problem. Alluding to the fact that even after the Government has sterilised some $50 billion dollars (and paying some $2 billion annually for the privilege) the banking sector was still awash in cash, the PM complained that "we're saving but not investing". Yet he saw the Government's role to stimulate investment as only building infrastructure. What has the Government done to make the "local investors" he called upon to invest, want to suddenly jump in. What have they done to force the Banks to lend investors at reasonable rates? They actually made the safe-haven of T-Bills even more attractive to banks by raising the interest rate during 2004.

Catalytic State

ROAR has called for the creation of what has been labelled a "Catalytic Entrepreneurial State" (CES). Such a state will firstly have to be a responsible state, with a strong demonstrated commitment to private sector development . The Government has to be willing to let Guyanese become wealthy. The Government will obtain the money for any perceived or real inequities from taxes. The rising tide will raise all ships. The Government's relationship with the Public Service is another area of grave concern in the formation of a CES. In whatever endeavour the State engages, much depends on the professionalism of the Civil Servants for the success of that endeavour. We have recently heard much about reform of the Civil Service - but the Government has not been clear in what context such reforms will take place. If, for instance, we envisage a CES, then we may not have to downsize our Civil Service but rather raise the salary scales and train the employees to perform their new developmental tasks. In Singapore, the Government insisted that Civil Servants' salaries be on par with their counterparts in the private sector. In Guyana, we will definitely need to insist on new and higher standards for employment in the Civil Service and this may necessitate redeploying much of the present staff.

The CES will also have to be a "facilitative State' as the IMF/World Bank has been insisting. We have no problem with the propositions that the Government will play a regulatory role to restore (and maintain) markets to their proper function (clearing markets). This is a vital role as the 1997 crisis in the Far East demonstrated…but we cannot insist on making the environment perfect before we attract the real investments. Similarly, we accept that Government will have to provide education, primary healthcare and infrastructure. We acknowledge that public finances have increased in this area under the PPP. However, 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 Guyanese. And many are rightfully sceptical and even bitter about any suggestion that the Government should take a more interventionist role in economic development.

PPP vs. IMF

But this is what the moves to increase "transparency" in governance all about. We need a freedom of information act. We commend the World Bank/ IMF to push the Government in this direction. But, like I said, we can't cut our nose to spoil our face. We know that with our circumstances, investors are not going to flock spontaneously to our shores and pump money into our economy in quantities sufficient to put us back on the path of high growth. We return to our discussion on how we may possibly get out of the economic backwaters the PPP Government has consigned us to languish in, apparently forever. They will have to sit down with the IFI's and insist that they play a more - interventionist - role in an industrial policy. The Government ironically demonstrated that a small country can in fact argue against a IMF canonical position and have it changed. Witness the case of GUYSUCO. As late as 1995, as per IMF conditionalities, GUYSUCO was being prepared for privatisation. Dr. Cheddi Jagan argued otherwise and the IMF had to hold off its prescriptions. Sadly, in retrospect, it appears that the PPP was motivated in its stance against IMF dictat as much as by politics as by economics. We all know that the sugar workers represent a vote bank for the PPP - obviously more strategic than the World Bank.

. We repeat our fundamental point of difference with the World Bank's conditionalities under which Guyana's economy is being mannered, er, managed. To wit, we cannot focus only on macroeconomic equilibrium at the expense of economic development - this is the peace of the dead. The World Bank's "Washington Consensus" is necessary but not sufficient to do the job, for us.

Markets

And that's the point right there - "for us". There is no one shoe that fits all. The World Bank, or anyone else, can't just say that the "free markets" alone must be used to fuel our development. There aren't anything as pure "free markets" alone running any economy. The "invisible hand" doesn't mean that there is "no hand". In every country, production and productivity are functions of the right mix of three institutions - the market, the state and the community. They each have to be tailored to produce the societally-decided goals…depending on their historical development. Markets were historically more developed in the West than in Japan where the community relations supplied more of the necessary social capital. In Guyana, our business community simply has not produced a developed and deep market culture.

Catalysts

ROAR's pragmatic approach to development is an indication that the cause of our underdevelopment is to some extent strategic rather than structural. As mentioned, Korea and Singapore were right where we were fifty years ago, if not behind us, not only statistically but structurally. Look where they are today. Their Governments, as catalysts, set strategic goals and then did what was necessary too back into them. Take for instance one reason why the PNC's "import substitution strategy" model of development - the last round of our Government intervention - practiced by so many countries, failed. The Governments assisted and protected domestic industries that became inefficient and non-innovative since the market forces fostering competition were destroyed. We had companies with a captive market that had no reason to improve. The consumer suffered because they had to buy inferior products at inflated prices. The only persons who benefited were the owners of the protected businesses and the Government bureaucrats who had to be bribed to keep the credits and licences coming.

Korea and Singapore, however, followed the Japanese example and explicitly tied credit-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 international trade. This was, and is, 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 had the foreign currency to buy whatever they wanted.

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. After all, collective prosperity, is why we have the state to begin with, isn't it?

Platform

The government, in its budget, conceded the precarious nature of sugar in Guyana in light of the changes in the preferential EU markets. However even in face of its inability to bring down the cost of production in the Demerara Plantations, seven years into its Strategic Plan, the Government steadfastly refuses to initiate alternative uses for the Demerara acreage. Obviously, it is fixated by its short-term electoral concerns for 2006. But what then, after 2008? We believe that the Government can turn the problems of the Demerara Plantations into opportunities by initiating an industrial policy - with the use of those Plantations at the centre - to move Guyana heavily into Agro-processing. It can do this by identifying new products for those lands, selling the land to the workers through sweat-equity and setting up factories to buy the products either alone, or preferably, through joint-partnerships with an international marketing firm. At last we will be reaping the benefits of externalities of sugar production. Thailand and Belize did this recently with pineapples and papaws respectively.

Government of National Reconciliation

In any strategy where the Government will play a strongly interventionary role in fostering an industrial policy, it is important for there to be widespread support and confidence in the Government or there will be debilitating cries of discrimination - even if the society was not as divided as ours. Even without such a "dirigeste" role, the PPP has been beset by cries of marginalisation throughout its twelve-year regime. Simultaneously with an interventionary role, therefore, the PPP will have to work assiduously to increase its legitimacy. The latter perspective is vitally necessary for Guyana, given the ethnic cleavages existent in our society. ROAR has proposed that an "Ethnic Impact Statement" be issued with the promulgation of every Government policy and program - and in the economic sector this will be even more crucial, since much of the political dissatisfaction arises out of perceived ethnic discrimination in this area. The Government will need national support also in its dealings with the IFI's, from whose path it will be veering.

Many of the Far-eastern success stories quoted earlier were authoritarian regimes that coerced the necessary widespread "national" support. Such a route cannot be chosen by Guyana - our history and politics preclude that path. We therefore have to do whatever it takes to install a responsible, legitimate and broad-based government in place and then let that government take the stronger role in development. The only course to secure the massive development of Guyana is for the PPP to accept the calls from the opposition forces to constitute a Government of National Reconciliation. They can even accept it conditionally until we achieve the necessary high growth rates - approaching 10% - that all commentators, in and out of Government deem necessary to create the foundation for real, improved standards of living in our country.

The people of Guyana should expect no less from any government of Guyana.

A Subaltern History
by Ravi Dev

Posted March 5th. 2005

History, the saying goes, is written by conquerors. Looking at the texts handed down to us, one may add that it is actually written by the elite of the conquerors. I still well remember my earliest history book, An Outline of English History, that only considered events directly associated with the Kings and Queens of England, as worthy of mention. Ordinary folks who struggled and died in their millions were mere fodder and footnotes. Later, even Marxist historians who rejected this perspective, ignored Hegel's distinction between "events" and "actions" and lumped the makers of history as anonymous classes that responded to historical "forces". Of recent, there has been an attempted rectification of this jaundiced historiography by some historians who take a "subaltern" perspective. That is, to look at the contributions of the ordinary folks, in effectuating change - independently of the men on horseback and other elites. They remember too, that there can only be dialectics in consciousness.

I was reminded of these opposing views of "history makers" on the recent death of my father. As a subaltern, he will almost certainly not make it in the history books - but just as certainly I know that he played his part in shaping history. My father's history actually begun on the East Coast, where his widowed Aja (paternal grandfather) was expelled from Plantation Mon Repos for some infraction. This was not an uncommon subaltern experience. The old man brought his son to Uitvlugt on the West Coast to start a new life. My father was born in the logees of field "Letter A" during the mid 1920's just after the end of indentureship in 1921. By the time he was twelve the worldwide Great Depression of the 30's had plunged sugar and the Caribbean into despair and rebellion. He was forced to leave school at the fourth standard and begin working at Plantain Uitvlugt, where a year later four striking workers were gunned down in neighbouring Leonora. The sacrifices such young "subaltern" men across the sugar industry would lead to grudging reforms. History was inexorably changed by them.

The greatest change that was effectuated by my father's generation, and still unacknowledged - much less examined by the official historians - is the remarkable reforms they made in the social institutions brought by their forbears from India. The recent controversy generated by claims made by Dr. Kean Gibson on the role of the Hindu caste system in Guyanese politics is a perfect illustration of this elitist perspective. It is uncontroverted that after 800 years of foreign rule, the social structures - including the caste system - had acquired many deformities in India, by the 19th century. By the mid-century the Arya Samaj (Noble Society) was one of several Hindu responses to reform itself. Several missionaries had visited Guyana from early the 20th century but the arrival of Professor Bhashkaranand in 1937 was crucial in spreading its rejection of "caste" by birth, acceptance of education of women (including becoming priests) and the inculcation of a broad social conscience.

Clem Seecharan has claimed that while the Ramayan was a central text in the lives of the Hindu immigrants, he said they did not conduct exegeses of such texts. I beg to differ. In ever logee settlement, by the 1930's, there was a Ramayan "gol" (circle) with an individual who gave the "arth" or exegesis. My grandfather was one such individual in Uitvlugt and he left a life-long insistence for intellectual pursuit and rigour - and the Hindu demand for its application in one's life. My father was proudest of the fact that his father travelled to Georgetown to search out Prof. Bhaskaranand, invite him to the logees of Uitvlugt and have him conduct a seven-evening lectures against the wishes of some orthodox Pandits and the Pln. Management. My father and quite a few of his peers became "Arya-samajists". His "arya-samajness" was more an attitude than anything else: an attitude of questioning, a commitment to reason and an obsession with argumentation. I am sure that there will be so many readers who will recognise instantly, the "hard-mouth" old-line "Samaajists of whom I speak. I've come across them all over Guyana. While Samajists never became more than ten percent of the Hindu population in Guyana, their arguments, as much as anything else, contributed to the demise of the caste system. Dr. Gibson should research this subaltern history on caste.

My father's post-WW2 generation was the first to make the mass-movement out of the Plantations onto the new housing schemes sponsored by the Jock Campbell of Bookers in the early 1950's. With their new social consciousness, not many of the men allowed their wives to work in the backdams and most swore to do their utmost that their children would never sink to that. My father was quite justly proud that in the end, he kept his word. What made this achievement more remarkable was the fact that in the new schemes, with the improvement in sanitation, water supply, and health facilities, the children did not die like flies as in the previous generation and the families were extraordinarily large. The ten children in my family was a typical number. In the aggregate, their generation created the bulge in the Indian population that was to forever alter the demographics of Guyana and create a new political equation.

My father remembered Dr. Cheddie Jagan standing outside Plantation Uitvlugt, pointing to the Overseers quarters and announcing dramatically, "When we kick those White bastards out, you will live in those houses." It was a standing indictment against my father by my Nana (maternal grandfather - who raised me from the age of six) that he (my father) voted for Dr. Jagan against Dr. Jang Bahadur Singh - the old Indian leader. It was not a coincidence that there were so many Arya samajists among Dr. Jagan's early following: their fire for social change had already been lit. During his retirement in New York, (when he pointed out that he achieved more in ten years amongst the hated White men of his youth) my father became quite cynical about Dr. Jagan and the PPP. He spent much of his last years arguing politics with any Guyanese he could strike up a conversation with along Jamaica Avenue. He was my respected advisor.

At our family reunions, he would look forward to giving his annual "charge", which everyone in the more than 70-odd gathering took most seriously. As I reflect on his own life and of the arenas of life in which those individuals are engaged, and will be engaged, I can only proclaim once again, that this subaltern, my father, has indeed made history.

Post-flood schema
by Ravi Dev

Posted February 14th. 2005

The rains seem to have no intention of letting up: as I write this piece, it is coming down in torrents, as it has been doing since early this morning. It may seem therefore, a bit premature to look ahead at the post-flood implications. Especially as we are learning ominous new words occasioned by the stagnant floodwaters such as "leptospirosis" . But look ahead we must, even as each of us put our shoulder to the (because of the Government's refusal to bring all aboard -sadly not national) wheel to alleviate the present miseries. We have to begin to look at the economic implications of the flood because the greatest impact will felt by the very same folks undergoing the most severe misery today- the people engaged in agriculture, who feed us all by working in the mud. This does not mean that other business interests - such as manufacturers etc, have not been badly hit. It is a fact, however, that the agricultural folks are a more numerous.

Most Guyanese do not appreciate the precarious state of most who engage in agriculture. More than all of us, they are cognisant of the decades of neglect to our drainage and irrigation systems. Flooding and lack of all the civilised amenities have almost become endemic to many of these folks. Speak to the residents of Black Bush Polder. The miserable physical circumstances in Black Bush are not unrelated to the fact that it is the suicide capital of Guyana. One hopes that the miserable conditions, which are now duplicated in Demerara, do not spark the same response. It is essential, therefore, that we put mechanisms in place to give the farming community of Demerara some hope. These are all people who have invested in Guyana, not only with their hard-earned money, but with their lives.

Flood Insurance

ROAR has been agitating since its formation for the introduction of Flood Insurance by the Government for farmers. It is incredible that in a country with agriculture as its largest sector, and with agri- production centred on a coastland four feet under sea-level, farmers do not have general flood insurance. Farmers have had to carry their annual depredations and losses on their backs. There is no way our farming sector can ever become independent and sustainable if flood insurance is not introduced. This must be one of the priorities in the post-flood era.

Rice

Thousands of acres of paddy will be lost on the East and West Coast - mostly by farmers who are dirt poor to begin with and who have been carrying losses since 1997. The Government will have to ensure that part of the funds coming in for "flood-relief" will be directed to put rice farmers back on their feet. Fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides can be sourced and distributed for the next two crops. The Government itself can help out: they can eliminate completely the consumption taxes on diesel fuel. The Government wouldn't want to profit on the farmers' miseries, would they?

Sugar

The sugar "second-crop" is going to be delayed for at least a month on the Demerara plantations because of the rains and flood of this January - which seems determined to last into February. The cane-cutters and their families are getting worried. Even in the best of times the off-crop is a worrisome time for sugar workers. They would have pinched their purses hoping that the meagre savings they had scraped together during the previous crop would keep body (their souls are another matter) together. Each week that the crop is delayed means that they will have to go further into debt.

However, even the dark clouds of indebtededness (as dark as the present rain clouds) have not blunted their native powers of observation and analysis. Having seen the volume of water that GUYSUCO had retained in their canals and in the conservancies during the December rainfalls, many had predicted that any January rains would have precipitated floods. They pointed out to me that GUYSUCO historically always had the decisive say in how much water the conservancies would retain. This power has been retained in the post independence era. Notwithstanding GUYSUCO being owned by "the people". Given a choice between flooding their fields and letting out water to flood homes and farms in the front-lands when they miscalculated and retained too much water, GUYSUCO invariably followed the latter course. What's good for GUYSUCO obviously was supposed to be good for the rest of Guyana. While my cane-cutter friends concede that the January rains were exceptional, they felt that GUYSUCO's perennial gambling to ensure irrigation water for its fields should be reviewed. The burden should be more equitably shared.

I showed them reports that stated GUYSUCO has now retained water in its fields to assist in alleviating the front-lands, much as rice-farmers in Mahaica now have been asked to do by the government. The sugar workers feel that it is high time that GUYSUCO bear because a cost that they, poor slobs, have had to bear totally in the past. Especially as most of them have had to move into now-regularised squatting areas after the first generation GUYSUCO-housed workers retired. The workers however feel that they are in a catch-22 situation. They are predicting that right after the 2006 elections, the Government will announce that the flood-alleviation costs to GUYSUCO have tilted finances beyond viability and sustainability in Demerara.

There will have to be a post-flood plan in place to offer relief to sugar workers for now and in the future.

Cattle and cash-crops farmers.

One of the most heart-wrenching scenes that came across the TV screens (reinforced by the smells when one personally visited the East Coast) were the sick, dying and dead animals on the roadsides, in the water - wading or floating. Apart from the suffering of these poor beasts can anyone calculate the loss to their owners? Do we simply tell all these citizens "they're on their own"?

As mentioned, there are numerous aspects of the economy that have been disrupted, if not devastated. We repeat the caution we made in the very first article we penned when the flood broke. Guyana became a viable commercial interest to the colonial powers only after the coastlands were made secure with a vast network of canals, seawalls, sea-dams, kokers, to drain and irrigate the land. We are still dependent on those structures for our survival. The only difference is that the buck now stops with us: there is no colonial power to absorb the shocks. The colonial powers had insurance for their interests. We have to provide at least that cushion to our own people. This is the job for the Government.

To expect us to survive without that protection is to be spitting into the wind. And by now I hope that we know that we can't fool with Mother Nature.

Centre Force
by Ravi Dev

Posted January 10th. 2005

I guess that now that the year-end revelries are behind us, it has sunk in to most folks that they have to return to the business of getting on with their lives. And that means returning to work (if you have a job)…paying bills (whether you have a job or not -and paying water bills whether you get water or not) and worrying about what tomorrow will bring ("worrying" is now as Guyanese as being generous used to be). After "tsunami" ceased just being a word that our common-entrance kids had to cram, many have thanked God (well, maybe not our Marxist comrades) that we don't have such catastrophes in Guyana. Should we worry a bit less now?

Well chew over this fact: compared to the number of lives that were snuffed out in the political and drug wars (aren't they the same?) of the last few years in our dear Guyana, the tsunami killed proportionately less people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka or India. Which Guyanese doesn't know someone who was affected by the post-jailbreak violence? For us, in its effect, two hundred is more than two hundred thousand. Cry for us too, Guyana. In the Indian Ocean, the nations affected by the tragedy of the tsunami are taking concrete steps to deal with the possibility of another tragedy. They are not sitting still. In Guyana, our tragedies historically have been associated with elections. We have an election scheduled less than two years away. What are we doing to avert another "tsunami" of violence?

If we take time to listen, we will hear the war drums already being beaten. Already deep in their election campaign, the PPP says that the only outstanding electoral issue in Guyana is "geographical representation". The PNC has countered that there are far wider concerns that must be addressed - including the matter of a credible electoral database - before "free and fair" elections can be held.

ROAR entered the political realm to place on the national agenda, two home truths: that our present politics are dominated by ethnic insecurities and that we have to create a political system that would accommodate all the chosen representatives of the various groups in Guyana to deal with those insecurities. The first truth is now generally accepted by all and sundry - including most of the political representatives. The second is also generally accepted…so what's the problem? The problem is one of power. The PPP believes that it can address ethnic insecurities by its co-option of ethnic individuals - Sam Hinds, Henry Jeffrey, Carolyn Rodrigues, et al. never mind the "Civic" label. We all know this has not resolved anything. The PNC appears to have acknowledged that its "Reform" imitation of the "Civic" did not fit the bill - hence its new coalition-centred "Big Tent" proposal.

ROAR believes that the latter proposal also falls short - even if enough water had flowed under the bridge for the PNC to attract credible coalition partners, which it has not - since the PPP would still be out of the tent. It is unlikely to expect that Guyana will have social peace if either of the two major parties are out of the picture. It is also improbable to expect that any other party will displace either of them at the next election. So how do we avert our tsunami?

ROAR believes it is time for a "Centre Force" to be created and nurtured. What is this Centre Force? For one, it's not a "Third Force" that feels it can wish away the PPP and PNC. It's a Force that should seek to occupy the political, social, and cultural ground between the PPP and PNC - hence "Centre". Today in Guyana, there are a number of political parties outside the ambit of the PPP and the PNC - ROAR, GAP, WPA, JFAP, etc. that can begin the process of creating this Centre Force. These could be joined the parties now in formation by other committed Guyanese. What would be some of the incentives for these parties to work together? Firstly, the ineffectuality of the opposition (including the PNC) to influence the formation of policy should be an object lesson to those who believe that "Westminster" politics can work in Guyana. Secondly, the experience of The United Force both with the PNC (1964-1968) and PPP (2001-present) demonstrates the inadvisability of the smaller parties seeking a coalition arrangement with either the PPP or the PNC. There's the matter of "the disequilibrium of size" when it comes to coalitions between parties of vastly different strengths. It matters not the good intentions of the parties to the coalitions. If a mosquito joins forces with an elephant it should not be surprised when it is taken for granted or even ignored during crucial decisions. There's the iron law of oligarchy - in all organizations power will accrete in the hands of a few - and we can be sure the few won't come from the ranks of the mosquitoes.

What would be the ground rules for a Centre Force? Firstly, they should not get together simply to deny the PPP or the PNC the government. This would result in an arrangement of convenience that would quickly and acrimoniously fall asunder. They will have to be committed to a common programme. This does not mean they agree on each and every point. That they are different parties mean that they do not. There's nothing wrong with this…and in fact there's everything right with it. No one party has all the answers for Guyana - the PPP and the PNC have proven that. The way forward is a confederation of parties, where they keep their identities as they work together to craft a common and truly national program (because of their diversity) for Guyana. In the crafting of such a programme it is possible (and in our estimation quite likely) that much common ground can be found. But it will also demonstrate that there would be compromises that all of us will have to make.

This Centre Force (the surveys of ROAR project) can deny both the PPP and the PNC a majority in Parliament. By the rules of our Constitution, whichever party wins the election would need the support of the Centre Force in Parliament to even sneeze. The Centre Force, in a most principled way can then force both behemoths to work for the good of Guyana, not just their narrow partisan interest, based on the programme of the Force.

ROAR is prepared to work in such a Centre Force to prevent a tsunami of ethnic violence in 2006.

It's a (democratic) shame
by Ravi Dev

Posted December 20th. 2004

The PPP boasts that it has crafted "the most advanced democratic constitution in the Caribbean". Maybe. But that's a far cry from actually having the most advanced (or even basic) functioning democratic system - even here in good old Guyana. There's many a slip between the cup and the lip. And that assumes that the PPP has democratic intentions. That the PPP is bereft of the latter became very clear in Parliament last Thursday.

The linchpin for the PPP's claim of an expanded "democracy" in Guyana has been the creation of several standing Parliamentary Committees and the four Sectoral Committees. The promise was that the Government and Opposition would sit together to work for the national interest, away from the hotbed of Parliament with its ritualised convention of attack and counterattack - and the inevitability of ethnic numbers-dictated outcomes. There was hope that the Opposition would have a greater opportunity to influence the initiation and implementation of policy, which up to now has been the sole provenance of the Government. The Government, it was expected would move beyond mere genuflecting to the reality that in a severely divided society, the procedure of Parliamentary decision-making was too skewed.

So we come to the Parliamentary Standing Committee in Constitutional Reform ("the Committee"). This Committee was a direct descendant if the Special Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC) arising out of the Herdmanston and St. Lucia Agreements. Its Terms of Reference (TOR) is very broad: ranging from ensuring that any recommendation already approved by Parliament would be implemented, to examining the entire Constitution for improving the performance of our political system. So far so good. Very advanced democratic innovation - the pudding looked good. The problem was in the eating.

Firstly, the Committee wasn't constituted and the Chair elected, until June 2003, over two years into the term of the PPP. Then it took another year for the first meeting to be held - May 2004. I am still at a loss to figure out the purpose of that meeting. The PNC was boycotting Parliament. Various members proffered what they thought were the pressing matters that ought to be addressed. The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs wanted the stipulation on expelling wayward Parliamentarians clarified - obviously in the face of the temerity of PPP Parliamentary representative Ramjattan to declare that the Emperor had no clothes. The Chair - the AG - pointed a lacuna in the clause for appointing the Chancellor and Chief Justice that needed to be filled. I suggested that the incomplete recommendations of the CRC, as it related to the electoral system, should be dealt with as a priority - in light of the fact that elections , due within two years, had of recent proven to be contentious. I was told that the absence of the PNC made a substantive agenda impractical. Then why the need for meetings??

There were no further meetings until September 2004 when the PNC had returned. The committee plunged immediately into defining a work program. It was agreed unanimously that the unimplemented recommendations of the CRC should be the top priority. These were then culled from a matrix jointly produced by Ministers Ramsammy and Reepu Persaud. From that matrix-extract, it was agreed (again unanimously) that the specific stipulation on "geographical representativeness" should be addressed first. At no time did the Government representatives ever suggest, or even imply, that the item was not properly within the mandate of the Committee. PNC member Debra backer had explicitly quoted the TOR of the Committee to show that its work was not confined to simply 'constitutional changes".

It was with considerable surprise then, that I observed PPP's General Secretary Donald Ramoutar introduce a motion on "geographical representativeness" to the Parliament, requesting a Special Committee be established to propose necessary changes for implementation within two months. What could be the rationale for the introduction of such a motion, which served to bypass a Standing Committee that was already working on the issue with the highest priority. Mr. Ramotaur claimed during the debate last Thursday that he was unaware that the Committee was working on the matter. This strains the credulity of one who has observed that a PPP representative on any Committee does not agree to even changing the type of muffins served to members without checking with Freedom House. He later contradicted himself when he pointed out that the PNC had been boycotting meetings when I had originally brought up the matter back in May. He had knowledge of the circumstance but not the content of the item on "geographical representativeness"? He emphasised the element of time in view of elections for 2006. But the PPP had fiddled for so long. And in any case they could have stipulated the same two-month time frame to the Committee, as was proposed in an amendment (rejected) by Vincent Alexander.

What it a question of the competency of the PPP members on the Committee? One PPP member suggested that a familiarity with "numbers" was required. The AG himself pointed out that Committee members were routinely allowed expert advice on technical matters. He was too modest to point out the qualifications of himself, former AG Dos Santos and Attorney-at-law Rajkumar.

I can only conclude, especially after the "debate" in Parliament on Thursday that it is one of two reasons or a combination of both. And both make a mockery of increased democracy. Firstly, the PPP wants to limit the proposals on "geographical representativeness" to only the numbers question. Vital matters such the exact boundaries or the principle of allocation of representatives or requirements that representatives must actually reside in their districts etc. can be sidestepped. In the Committee these matters would have been properly raised as they fall within its mandate. In my estimation, the PPP does not have faith in the Chairman to play the rabidly partisan role that would be required in such an exercise. The AG has shown himself to be an exemplary Chairman in ensuring fairness in the establishment of an agenda and in ensuring that the views of all the members of the Committee are given expression and due consideration. And that brings me to the second reason.

Min. Rohee, without any shame or embarrassment, declared openly in Parliament that after voting against the bill, the Opposition would not be able to face their own supporters. One sees the motive - the PPP's willingness to play politics on such a fundamental issue as the integrity of our institutions that are supposed to foster democracy. The message that will be broadcast across the land by the PPP is that the Opposition voted against the bill. Not that they merely wanted, as proposed in the defeated amendment, that the matter be dealt with in Constitutional Reform Committee, so that it would not be emasculated.

For myself, the greatest regret is that the PPP seems almost wilful in courting confrontation. The greatest virtue of the Committee system is, as I said in Parliament, is that it seeks to replace the polemics of sterile Parliamentary debate into deliberations, which take place in a more personal atmosphere. It better allows for the articulation of real fears, hopes and aspirations. And so hold out greater promise of compromise and joint agreements.

After the polemical fireworks, posturings and histrionics on Thursday, I believe that democracy has taken a backward step in Guyana. It's a (democratic) shame.

Guyanese
by Ravi Dev

Posted December 15th. 2004

Last month, a friend and I appeared on a TV discussion program. This friend is a very sharp fellow - quite well read, involved in politics and a top-drawer lawyer to boot. It was with some concern therefore, that I observed him mystifying the term "Guyanese" - which refers to one's citizenship, with "African" and "Indian", which refers to the cultural roots or ethnicity of the citizen. I figured if a bright politician could be confused on the issue of identity, which impacts so much on politics, then what can we expect from the average Joe?

In politics, the issue presents itself, as it did on the program, with the plaintive, "Why can't we all be just Guyanese?" Well we can be - and as a matter of fact, we are! We're all citizens of Guyana - entitled to all the benefits that citizenship confers and also the burdens and obligations that it entails. I'm a Guyanese, you're a Guyanese…we're all Guyanese. We can work in Guyana (if we can find jobs) without having to obtain work permits and must serve our country etc. At the same time, we are "Amerindians", "Africans" or "Indians" because of some cultural particularities.

The lamentation issues from the implicit (and often explicit) complaint that the hyphenations "African-", "Indian-" or "Amerindian- Guyanese" are incompatible with being "Guyanese" and in fact are the source of our present travails in Guyana. Some argue (thankfully, not many) that we do have a "Guyanese" culture as well so that all of us in Guyana are simultaneously "Guyanese" by citizenship and culture. Get rid of the hyphenations and we get rid of our problems. This reminds me so much of the cry heard across the land when I was a boy: "Get rid of the white man and we will all live happily ever after." I would have hoped that by now we would have realized that life is a bit more complex and solutions offered would have to be a tad more nuanced. Then there are those who still insist that we ought to fuse citizenship and ethnic identities, while studiously ignoring that the European promulgators of the nation-state fusion have jettisoned it. Witness Scotland.

My friend asserted that on one hand, we are all "Guyanese", but pressed on the question of identity fell back on the old saw that we're all "human beings". Of course we are all humans, but what does that mean? In labeling us "Guyanese" my friend was distinguishing us from other humans - on the basis of us being members of a "State". So what makes this a privileged distinction? What is wrong with cultural distinctions? This is a more fundamental human condition. The State, after all, has only been around for a few centuries. On the other hand, we are each born into a family that is embedded within a community that practices a particular culture. Unlike animals we cannot rely solely on instincts - information for our survival is transmitted socially. We, in fact, become human, through the imbibing of culture. As cultures as different - there is no universal "human culture" - we are inevitably constituted into communities with recognizable typologies. This is certainly not to say we are turned out as from cookie cutters.

We all have a multiplicity of identities - father, mother, politician, Guyanese, and yes, the objected-to African or Indian- but they are not mutually exclusive. Depending on the context, different identities rise to the top. The context in which ethnicity most overtly manifests itself is in the realm of politics - individuals generally vote for parties (exercising their right as Guyanese citizens) based on their ethnic identification. One would have thought that at least commentators would examine the political/societal variables to determine why ethnicity is so consistently precipitated. Could it be that citizens believe that they are not being treated equally by the state (their right as citizens are being denied) based on their ethnic origin and so feel it necessary to mobilize along that marker? The Ethnic Security Dilemmas of the African (exclusion from executive) Indian (physical security and the Amerindian (peripheralization) are real - and distinct. People will resist oppression along whichever line it falls. We cannot just rail when our citizens to vote ethnically as if they are crazy.

Additionally, have we ever considered the fact that maybe we have interests that are in themselves ethnic in origin? And if this is so, why is this automatically reprehensible? Why are, say, class interests more worthy to struggle over than the interests shaped by my culture? In fact isn't the latter imperative a tautology? What determines my conception of say, the "general good"? Why should it be strange that, say, the economic values of Indians - descended from immigrants seeking economic advancement - may differ from Africans, descended from ex-slaves, who were socialized to evaluate accumulation and consumption differently?

So our political interests are agglomerated within ethnic blocs. What do we do besides wishing we were all one mélange? We have to think outside the box. The fault, dear friend, may not completely lie in us - but also in the system. All societies have social conflicts - and in fact it is this inevitability that demands the existence of governments, which should deal with their specific source of conflict. The political system will have to start from where we are, not from where we want to be. To attempt the latter, as we have been doing, is to guarantee failure.

We have to accept openly that at this time our interests and fears are ethnically defined. Leaders have to openly; honestly and unabashedly represent those interests. We return to the debate between "representation by interests" and "representation by presence". After 1955 post-PPP split, we've dealt with "representation by presence" by co-opting token figures in "multi-ethnic" parties - al la Mr. Sam Hinds. It hasn't worked. We now accept "representation by presence" for women: note our thirty percent female party-list requirement. Why can't ethnic interests be allowed the same regard? At a minimum, the major parties should allow open "ethnic caucuses" within their executives - as do the major parties in the US.

Those who reject this proposal should do some serious soul searching to discover the roots of their prejudice against ethnic identity.

Democracy 2
by Ravi Dev

Posted November 18th. 2004

(We continue this week with the historical outline of the democratic idea. We stress, once again, the fact that "democracy" has been a very dynamic concept and that its content has always depended on its context.)

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 (a la Hobbes) 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 in his version of the social contract that men should 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 Governments had a duty to fulfil their side of the bargain or the citizenry could rebel - since the governments would have broken their contracts.

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. We emphasise the distinction made at the onset of the previous article the distinction between "democracy" and "liberal democracy". J.S. Mill (1806-1873) an employee of the East India Company that was running India 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 individuals who are ultimately the best judge of their own interests. 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. Much of what we call "Westminster" constitutionalism is derived from this phase of English history.

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 (through their "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. One influential theorist, Joseph Schumpeter, proposed as late as 1942 that "The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote." 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 Lloyd Best 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.

Those who have ears, let them hear.

Federalism vs Decentralisation
by Ravi Dev

Posted October 28th. 2004

There is no disagreement among all the political parties of Guyana -and several influential commentators such as Clarence Ellis et al - 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 World Bank in 2003 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. While they are still haggling over some specifics, 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, such as Mr. Ellis, 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 and his own party successors, 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 communities…There 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 were 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 and othersare 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 -and we should clearly state these -but not the need to have a less centralised government.

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.

Local Government

The prolonged period of authoritarian government has unquestionably 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, which 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 Touchaus 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.

A State for Development
by Ravi Dev

Posted October 12th. 2004

Over the last decade, there have been two sets of concerns, not entirely unconnected, raised about economic distribution in Guyana - and both have highlighted 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 elements in 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 to 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 a key plank in the economic strategy pushed by the multilaterals - 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 demonstrated in the '60's, with a strategy that makes agriculture its central focus. 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 IMF/World Bank dictated Economic Recovery Program, beginning in 1991under the PNC, 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 (CES) has been proposed by ROAR. To assure an even distribution of development between the various ethnic groups, an 'Ethnic Impact Statement" and an Affirmative Action Program were also proposed. Today we begin to look at the nature of a CES state, and will return to a discussion of the specific policies later.

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. The Guyanese state as it developed since 1621, was a much centralised one and this condition was an integral part of the problem of retarded 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. After our demonstrated experience with the failure of the World Bank/IMF market dominated approach since 1997, 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 not 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. Even theory supports this position. The efficacy of markets depends on the presence of markets for all contingencies, i.e. that markets are complete. The important point is that when some markets are missing, they will not clear (We see this in the fact that we are drowning in liquidity, yet interest rates are astronomic.) and the resulting allocation can be improved on. This can be the role of the State.

The litmus of proposed activities would be for the state to implement policies that strengthen market and community coordination to promote growth and development. In restricting the state's interventionary role in economic development to GUYSUCO, the PPP has thrown out the baby but kept the (dirty) bathwater.

Roots of Competition
by Ravi Dev

Posted October 6th. 2004

Even as we lurch from one politically-infused outbreak of violence to another, the average citizen still remains absorbed in the question of economic survival. Because of this unfortunate history, however, even the most laid back Guyanese has come to appreciate the connection between politics and economics - which Marxists have long stressed. They even have a term for its study - political economy. Over the past few months, we have been focusing on the political question and today we will turn to the economic dimension. We again utilise an approach stressed by Marxists - the historical. (In passing, I'm trying to illustrate the point that I have nothing against Marxism - as a tool.)

Underdevelopment

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. There is a large school of thought that has developed the thesis that through this exploitative relationship the colonies were underdeveloped - a structural condition - rather than undeveloped which suggests, at worst, a benign neglect.

The movement for the abolition of slavery and the agitation (in Guyana and 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 Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow in Guyana as far back as 1919, long before political parties appeared on the scene. Most of our 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, than the African/Mulatto Middle class that had sought improvement of their lot through education for jobs in government services and the professions.

Specialisation

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 internal migration, continuing to the present, soon created a large African urban underclass that 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 then locationally 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-to-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. This rural African migration precipitated severe contradictions in Georgetown as the newer arrivals depressed wages - producing an African underclass that grew sharply as economic 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 adjudged to be granted special privileges and to be unfairly moving ahead, by the Africans.

Competition

On the sugar plantations, the interminable flood of new immigrants depressed plantation wages. Contrary to what some ideologues in the present are preaching, there was no significant economic competition between Indians and Africans in the 19th century. It was the beginning of the movement of Indians into the elite, 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. These were pointed out by the Mulatto/African middle class. 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. In fact, as mentioned before, the majority of Africans had decamped the sugar plantations by 1848, after the failure of their 1846-47 strike for higher wages at a time when there were more Portuguese, West Indian Africans and Africans from Africa as indentures, than Indians. We have also written before of the cost-constraints on the Guyanese sugar planters.

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 that even if they were to occupy only their proportionate share of the valued economic platforms, Africans would be overwhelmed. This fear increased as the Indians slowly began to follow the path earlier trod by the rural African to the urban centres. Unlike as with the earlier African migrants, because of their distinctiveness, the Indians stood out for continued comparison. The fear was mixed with the scorn of cultural superiority: the African resentment against the Portuguese was turned on to the Indian.

This resentment in the African/Coloured population was very entrenched by the beginning of modern political mobilisation in 1950.

Hegemony and Control
by Ravi Dev

Posted September 18th. 2004

We had written that the totalitarian state takes "control" to its logical conclusion as it seeks to impose its rule over every member of the population. Towards this goal, the leaders attempt to impose a new hegemony through a near monopoly-control over mass communications, education, and other means of imparting information. George Orwell has written most famously on this aspect of totalitarianism and most Guyanese well remember "big brother" looking over their shoulders during the Burnhamite totalitarian regime 1968-1985. This week we look at the PPP's regime for any structural continuity or augmentation of the institutions of hegemony established then.

Communist methodology

The first point we have to reiterate is that most of the innovations that Burnham made were consonant with communist methodology and were never opposed by the PPP on substantive grounds. After all, Marx had famously decreed that the ruling ideas of any epoch were the ideas of the ruling class, and if perchance the representatives of the working-class were to secure power, did they not have the right, nay duty, to impose their "ruling ideas"? The PPP's only gripe then was that they were being miniaturized by the PNC. If the PNC has Kuru Kuru Co-op College for teaching ideology, the PPP long before had its Accrebe College. The scholarships to the USSR and the Eastern Bloc also helped to mould the faithful. President Jagdeo, an acolyte since thirteen - he assures us - is the beneficiary of this fount of ideological conformity. The PPP still continue ideological training for their cadres. They had no real problems with the "Workers' Education Units" established by the PNC at most places of employment - intended to impart ideological training to state employees. They only wish they had the nerve to re-introduce them now!

The PPP had pushed for the nationalization of schools because they objected to the colonial values imparted. The idea of course was to replace those values with "scientific materialism" of the communists. The PPP is as much to blame for the abysmal educational standards we are now bemoaning. A Confederacy of Dunces! The PPP has done nothing to change the orientation of President's College, named after President Burnham and intended to replace Queens as the premier high school in Guyana - the place to create the new leaders of Guyana. The budget for President's College is more than that of all the other secondary schools in Guyana combined.

Indian Bind

A foreign communist acquaintance once pointed out to me the absence of a cultural unit within the PPP to push its ideology through plays, movies, street theatre, poetry, novels, and other cultural art forms, as apparently is standard practice with communists the world over. With this method of imparting its hegemony, however, the PPP, in order to maintain its multi-racial façade was in a bind. The cultural vehicles necessary to "enlighten" most of its Indian supporters would have quickly exposed the Emperor's nakedness. The PPP, nonetheless, was allowed to have its cake and eat it too.

Through its control of the Hindu Dharmic Sabha and influence over the CIOG, the PPP could get the word out to the faithful - for voting orthodoxy. The newly created IAC is supposed to fill this role at the "cultural" level. That this technique hardened racial exclusiveness was rationalized in terms of realpolitik - it fitted in nicely with the racial fears invoked under the bottomhouses, if the "vote were ever to be split". The RPA and GAWU spread the word at the workers level. The newly-formed policing groups, overwhelmingly staffed by the PPP's strongmen and sycophants, are geared primarily towards prodding the faithful in line. It is fellow Indians - not Africans who should fear the mushrooming of these bodies. How many bandits have these guys taken out?

Media

Desmond Hoyte had loosened Mr. Burnham's rigid media controls when he allowed the Stabroek News to be launched in 1986 (that it received aid from the NDI indicated there was some quid pro quo operating) and TV. However, he kept very tight control of those media nationalized by his predecessor - especially the Chronicle and GBC (radio). The PPP followed Mr. Hoyte on newspapers and TV stations but has kept an even tighter control over the press and radio. Even though shortly after taking office, Dr. Jagan had promised opposition access to the state-owned media - this has never materialized.

Mr. Burnham had rationalized his control of the media under a theory espoused by Kit Nascimento - 'development-support communication theory' - which postulated that only information supportive of the Government's development program should be transmitted to the populace. The Chronicle, which had been derided by the PPP as a PNC rag not fit to be used as toilet paper, has now, under the PPP, taken sycophancy and brown-nosing to new depths. Not only does it publish the pettiest undertaking of the government but gushes lavish paeans of praise for those undertakings, concocted by a bevy of hired scribblers. NCN -the newly merged state TV and Radio entity - continues most resolutely, the PPP's policy of opposition exclusion.

Vacuum of Information

This policy of exclusion of alternative opinions by the government is not mere contrariness. It goes to the heart of the "control" project of all totalitarians and in the instance of the PPP, reveals much about their mobilization strategy. The absence of factual information to the populace creates a "vacuum of information", which serves to prevent the official line from being challenged or a competing ideology from being formed. This is the bottom line.

The PPP understands that its base lies in the Indian community - its strategy has always been geared towards the consolidation of that base as a first priority and only secondly, to attempt to wean away individuals from other communities. During its first term of office, followed by its long period in the wilderness and now during its second go in office, it has focused, not only in demonizing and outrageously caricaturing challenges from Indian leaders, but as assiduously has worked to close out their voices. As we have pointed out ad nauseum (to no avail) ROAR has been banished from all government media even when it pronounces in national fora, such as Parliament. ROAR ,an Indian voice, should not exist to the PPP's rank and file.

When it took office in 1992, the PPP ostentatiously disbanded the GPSA headed by Nascimento but ironically has created GINA, which has even more power to shape opinions in the media. GINA now actually decides which media houses receive advertising from the government or not. Stabroek News and KN have both at various times complained about not receiving their fair share. The Mirror, organ of the PPP, which has seen its readership dwindle precipitously, has not complained. If you pick up a copy and scan the Government advertising, you will understand why.

Conclusion

The constant bombardment of the population with the "big lie", coupled with the "vacuum of information", create even in the minds of doubters a sense of omnipotence regarding the Government - and impotence concerning the opposition. Eventually, even if everyone does not accept the Government's line, the disbelievers reject all alternatives: "ayuh cyan do betta". This secular agnosticism can contribute to the disintegration of any effective opposition. And recourse to extra-legal alternatives. Those who have ears, let them hear.

Ideology, Economy and Control
by Ravi Dev

Posted September 11th. 2004

Looking to possible systemic continuities from the PNC dictatorship into the PPP's regime since 1992, we look this week to the persistence of an "official guiding ideology" - the Marxist ideology of Burnham's - along with its corollary of "central control and direction" of the economy. The PPP is an overtly Communist party, having declared itself as such in 1969. When it came to communism - the purest version of Marxism if you would believe the PPP, Dr. Jagan was not your ordinary garden-type variety - he was a true believer. Yet it is universally conceded that the overwhelmingly Indian supporters of the PPP were never communists.

Ideology as myth

Right after the split of the PPP by Burnham, Jagan rationalised his Indian-dominated rump (and its adoption of Indian-oriented issues) as necessary for the survival of the left - and its agenda. The ends justified the means - and Jagan was to be trusted on the ends. That trust quickly eroded amongst Africans - partially by the mobilisation tactics of the PPP to retain its Indian mass-base - even as it spouted the "unity of the working class". The communist ideology soon degenerated into "myth" amongst the people but retained by the PPP leadership to retain control through an appropriate vocabulary and methodology.

We Indians are fond of blaming Burnham for our twenty-eight years of wandering in the desert of racism and discrimination. But he can only take his share. We conveniently forget that it was our dear Comrade Cheddi who assured our banishment into that wilderness through his inflexible insistence on flaunting his Moscow-brand communism. During his own meandering along the Marxist path, Burnham, among other excesses, got away with nationalising 80% of the economy by simply pointing to the PPP and not even having to say - "if not me, who them?" Indians should remember that when the PPP mildly raised the issue of "racial discrimination" in their 1977 coalition talks with the PNC, they were reduced to silence when Burnham inquired with a smirk, "And what is the socialist content of race, dear Comrades?" They are still in silence.

All this should give us a clue as to why, after the rest of their Eastern Bloc brethren have thrown in the towel, the PPP has not only reaffirmed its commitment to Marxism at every party Congress but has refused to even have changes debated. Ask Ramjattan. The simple truth is that the present crop of PPP leaders have been weaned on Ma's communist milk for their whole lives and really can appreciate no other nourishment. The problem with their sequestration is that ideologies not only provide frames of analysis for their adherents, but also literally shape how they "see" reality. To use the fancy terminology of the Marxists themselves, they conflate epistemology with ontology. Their analytical tool becomes their reality. For the PPP, as an example, since Marxism declares "ethnicity" to be "false consciousness", then ethnicity could not possibly be the source of the political conflict in Guyana. This has to lie in the economic relations - because Marxism says so. I am told that when the crisis in the Asian markets erupted in 1997, Ma announced at an emergency meeting at Freedom House that the end of capitalism was nigh upon us.

Economic Control

Now this brings us the PPP's take on "control over the economy". How has the PPP dealt with the dictates of World Bank/IMF's neo-liberal "Washington Consensus" agenda that mandates, stabilisation, liberalisation and privatisation,- all anathema to the canons of Marxism-Leninism? Very cagily, that's how. The PPP believe that they are being very pragmatic on this go-around not to flaunt their Marxist ideology too blatantly in the economic arena. The World Bank/IMF loans, after all ensure that the Government remains the largest source of capital funding in Guyana. The PPP has gone along with the stabilisation centred approach of the program because as we pointed out before, they are comfortable with keeping the economy in a coma. They have stymied the liberalisation policies by subverting the legislative, organisational and monitoring mechanisms intended to deliver the institutional environment for Guyana to survive in a globalised world.

The PPP had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the privatisation table and contrary to their frequently mouthed complaint that they are helpless against the big, bad World Bank/IMF conditionalities, they not only rejected demands to privatise GuySuCo but actually embarked on a US$100+ expansion of that still nationalised firm. GuySuCo is a good indicator as to how the PPP envisages development - the state still has a massive direct role in the production process - in line with orthodox communist thinking. The PPP declares that the private sector is the "engine of growth" but has yet to put its money where its mouth is. As the economy rebounded to its production frontier after reforms introduced by Desmond Hoyte from 1989, healthy growth rates were achieved up to 1997. Since then it has been all downhill. The dismal performance cannot all be blamed on the political turmoil - we have long asserted that Guyana's economic problems are as much strategically as structurally driven. The PPP's ideological compulsion towards maximum control stifles any strategy for the private sector to become any "engine of growth".

For a small underdeveloped country like Guyana with so many natural resources, it is accepted by all that there needs to be investment to develop those resources. The success of the Eastern Tigers has demonstrated that the state can foster development by identifying strategic areas and providing funds (or access to funds) to private entrepreneurs to develop those sectors. Market discipline is enforced by mandating specified export performance. Now we have seen that the PPP is not opposed to securing financing for development…look at its support of GuySuCo. But this choice, in itself, gives us an insight into the PPP's ideological tunnel-vision. Firstly, it's OK to secure funding for GuySuCo because it is State-owned but not for other strategic industries. Secondly, the best that they can conceive in their strategic vision for Guyana, is to expand production of a commodity, sugar, driven not by the profit motive (there will be none) but to provide foreign currency to the country. This is economics as taught at Patrice Lumumba University Moscow, alma mater of President Jagdeo,

All who have the interest of Guyana at heart should understand that it does not lie in the PPP to push development of the private sector, even though funds are sitting right here in the sterilised funds of the Bank of Guyana. They know it would lead to their disappearance. They've been saying that they'll get behind the NDS for a decade now but nothing has come out of it. It's like a fellow who's gay but marries a girl to hide it because of societal pressures. Sadly, nothing will come out of the charade. President Carter had better accept this.

Many felt that Mr. Jagdeo, because of his youth, might have been able to change the orientation of the PPP. They forget that Jagdeo was chosen for the Presidency not only because he was seen as controllable, but because he was trained in the USSR. He is not only a true believer like Ma, but he drank directly from the fountain. It is just that because of the political realities he cannot show his true colours. Control will remain the order of the day.

Terror and Control
by Ravi Dev

Posted September 8th. 2004

Weeks ago, it was stated that we would be considering the question "terror and lawlessness" as a systemic condition of political activity and control that may have survived the Burnham dictatorship into the PPP's twelve year-old regime. It appears that events may have overtaken our analysis since here we are witnessing the brains of a child are blown to smithereens and a mass exodus of Indians from their homes on the East Coast, after what can be only described as demonstrations of raw terror. The attacks that were launched a week ago cannot possibly have robbery as their motive…most of the victims didn't appear to have the proverbial two cents to rub. The murder of Christine Sukhra is very reminiscent of the murder of another child Mervyn Barran, whose brains were blown away in early 2001 and was the precursor of widespread terror on the East Coast such as had never been seen in Guyana - either in quantity and quality. Terror is very much alive and well in Guyana.

Armed Forces

In a bifurcated state, where the exclusionary one-party state has decided to maintain its rule by subjugating the excluded group, violence against this group is inevitable, and from the perspective of the rulers, salutary. The message is inculcated into the dominated group: the wages of rebellion is extermination. If the PPP were inclined to go that route, however it would have had to make some fundamental structural changes.

The PPP inherited a state where one of the key elements of instilling terror - the Armed Forces - was certainly not in their corner. During the Burnhamite regime these Forces were a key pillar of control. Always wary of competing power-centres, however, Burnham had exercised control over them through a doctrine of "non-Neutralism" - (allegiance to PNC and not to any other government), appointments (personal loyalists in command), P.N.C. Army links (officers attending PNC Congresses) and ideological training - (actions based on PNC ideology).

Since the sixties, the PPP had recognised that the PNC's dominance of the coercive arms of the state, intended to "maintain public order", gave the latter's civilian supporters great confidence that they could utilise intimidatory actions (to say the least) against their political opponents. The PPP's very initiation into office in 1992 was achieved amidst riots by the supporters of the PNC. One would have thought that for its own peace of mind, if not for the long term stability of the country, the PPP would have moved with some alacrity to professionalize the Forces.

The B.O. Adams one-man commission, appointed to inquire into the 1992 riots recommended several changes to ensure that future elections would not be marred by violence. Among other things it proposed that the Disciplined forces ought to be balanced to reflect the population mix. The PPP had been calling for this reform since the sixties. PPP supporters should know that in the end nothing was done.

Terror

The terror in Burnham's totalitarian state had been generated essentially from two sources. First, there was the physical violence meted out by organised bands of P.N.C. thugs, murders and rapes of the 'kick down the door' bandits, and the police arrests in the night. Secondly there was the psychic violence emanating from the breakdown in the legal order; the destruction of the societal values, and the pervasive lawlessness, which the regime extended into every facet of the lives of the citizens. WE have to return to the last phenomenon at some other time.

In the PPP's regime, with no systemic changes in the coercive apparatus, anti-Indian violence returned, not unsurprisingly, in the wake of the December 1997 elections which the PNC protested as being rigged.. This violence was to continue with deepening intensity, with sporadic lulls, to this day. The well-springs of this violence have been a source of considerable dispute. One response to the violence has been the source for the allegations that the Minister of Home Affairs has been involved in the running of death squads Whatever the answers to the conundrum, one cannot assume that the formal and informal arrangements put into place by the PNC, during its regime had not played a role. Similarly, that the civilian-based coercive apparatus of the PPP developed since the 50's had evaporated. The widespread violence, however, forced the PPP to initiate constitutional changes designed to increase the input of the opposition into the Parliamentary affairs.

Matters took a nihilistic turn when on Feb. 23 2002 five prisoners escaped from the Camp Street Jail, were ensconced in Buxton, announced that they were "African Freedom Fighters", and launched an unprecedented wave of kidnappings, car-jackings, robberies, and murders primarily against Indians. Within one year, there were 161 murders and $261 millions stolen. This wave of violence against Indians took a new turn, apart from its open declaration that Indians were the enemy because of their support of the PPP. This declared them to be political terrorists. The bandits declared war on the paramilitary "Black Clothes" element of the police, who they concluded, had been bought out by the PPP and was targeting African youths and executing them "extra-judicially". Criminals from all over Guyana congregated in Buxton and dared the authorities to remove them. The bandits eventually took out the "Black Clothes" unit, which led in the estimation of many, to the formation of Business/Government approved "Phantom Gangs" and Death Squads that has been targeting suspected bandits. The vast majority of those killed by the bandits in robberies etc were Indians; but just as vast a majority of those killed overall are Africans.

Many are arguing that the present wave of terror may be the work of the PPP to neutralize the moves of the PNC to break with its past equivocation and chart new strategies for engendering political change. In its just-concluded Congress, the PNC offered its most unambiguous condemnation of terror in general and anti-Indian violence in particular: "For a start, all citizens must do everything possible to stop the cancerous growth of racial violence. The targeting of innocent human beings, particularly our Indo-Guyanese brothers and sisters, for despicable acts of rape and violence is destroying the very fabric of our individual and collective humanity. These obscenities must be brought to an end. All citizens must renew their beliefs that, for a safe and secure future, we must all again become our brothers' keepers."

Hew Resistance Fighters?

However, it is just as likely that the youths trained by the now deceased Resistance Fighters (the ideologues however are very much alive and kicking) may see the PNC initiatives as going too far and may want to derail them also. In this vein that what ROAR finds very disappointing about the present imbroglio is that after all the deaths and pain and suffering of 2002-2003, the PPP has steadfastly refused to investigate the broader circumstances and personalities that created the East Coast mayhem. It is nauseating therefore to witness high PPP officials bemoaning the similarities of the present violence with that which preceded it.

Just as disappointing has been the response of the PPP to the initiatives of the PNC. The recommendations of the Disciplined Forces Commission address the security concerns of Indians - it efficacy is left to the political will of the PPP. The supporters of the PPP should know more than anyone that continued terror, whether by the bandits or the state, leads only to pain and suffering. They have to appreciate that the activities of the death squads may be leading to the same pervasive state of terror they experienced during the infamous "28 years". They must put pressure the leadership of the PPP, at a minimum, to test the sincerity of the PNC in its call for an end to terror as a political device in Guyana. They have to accept that the security concerns - in governance and now physical security - of African Guyanese must now be addressed.

Controlling Society
by Ravi Dev

Posted August 28th. 2004

We argued that the defining characteristic of the totalitarian regime is the "totality" of control exerted by the regime over the society. Towards this end the totalitarian leader attempts to establish a near monopoly over all civil organizations. We have been looking at the Burnhamite dictatorship and the successor regimes to discern the inevitable systemic continuities, in addition to any aspects that may have been actively maintained and even nurtured by the PPP, after they replaced the PNC in 1992. Civil Society

"Civil Society" is seen as that part of society outside the state. The PPP, as a Marxist party, does not see the state as autonomous from society but in fact as the creature of the ruling (bourgeois) class of society. Their solution is to seize the state and establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat". In Guyana, the contradictions of a state uber alles were obvious to everyone who experienced the Burnhamite imitation of Lenin and Stalin as the economy was nationalised and, along with Trade Unions, religious organizations, schools, cultural organizations, and social bodies, were subverted and controlled. But apparently not the Marxist PPP, which has striven mightily to maintain control over civil society, even as they operate under a new ideological dispensation. Religious organisations.

Religious organisations threaten totalitarian regimes for two reasons. Firstly, they invariably present a different "ideology" or world view to the populace and secondly they conceive of a sphere of activity with which the state is not supposed to interfere. The PPP's major support base is the Hindu Dharmic Sabha, which was founded by PPP Executive and Parliamentary member, Mr. Reepu Daman Persaud. The Burnhamite regime had sought to control the Hindu leadership (and thus the general membership) through legislative regulation of pandits as marriage officers - which is an integral role the village priest must perform. The PPP and its leaders, including Mr. Persaud, had protested the ploy vehemently during Burnham's tenure. Today, the same law is used just as callously by the PPP. Among Muslims, while the relationship has not reached the intimacy as with the Anjuman during the sixties, there is a significant connection between the dominant CIOG and the PPP. The PPP lucked-in on the principled opposition of the established Christian Churches to the PNC dictatorship -and their inevitable estrangement. The PPP has been working very strenuously to attract sycophants in the evangelical churches through the bait of patronage. They appear to have caught only one (albeit hefty) fish and must be praying that he will multiply. Trade Unions

Both the PPP and the PNC use trade unions as vehicles to mobilise workers for electoral support: they see workers as means not ends. Burnham used the subterfuge of creating "paper unions" to neutralise those opposed to its policies; the PPP is quite prepared to go that route even though it was at the receiving end of the tactic for so many years. The GPSU has been a thorn in the side of the PPP, as one of the pillars on which the PNC had built its edifice. The GPSU has shown that it will still march to its own drummer. In addition to various administrative subterfuges, the PPP has responded by cobbling a "paper union" - the PSSSA. The PPP used the machinery of state to deny due process to a new union the Guyana Sugar Worker Union that challenged their house union, GAWU. Cultural and Social Organisations

In a society where the political cleavages follow the cultural boundaries, there is an omnipresent tension between the political parties and cultural organisations. The parties would rather have these organisations focus on "song and dance", instead of the welfare of their groups. Burnham always had an uneasy relationship with ASCRIA, since the latter organisation was concerned with the welfare of Africans. The PPP consistently defined Indian organisations during the Burnhamite regime as "racist" and even collaborated with Burnham to put pressure on their leadership. The PPP will only work with such organisations when they are totally subservient to the PPP line as in their attempt to counter the independent posture of GIHA by launching and supporting the activities of the IAC. The PPP has not had much success with African Cultural Organisations and have had to make do with co-opting individuals in tokenistic gestures. Economic Organisations

. The business class is seen by Marxists as the "ruling class" of modern society and the leadership of the PPP have been well trained to brand them as "exploiters". While operating under the neo-Liberal dispensation of the World Bank/IMF, in which nationalisation is frowned upon, the PPP has focused on control of the business sector. Business is permitted but only if it is compliant.

The PPP stubbornly dragged their feet over the privatisation component of the Washington Consensus and drew the line at GuysuCo, which up to 1995 was being prepared for sale. As the private sector has slowly tried to rebuild itself, the PPP has consistently acted to neutralise and control it. They do not understand that independence in business thinking is a pre-condition for long-term success in this area.

Traditionally, business in Guyana was controlled through what were essentially exclusive clubs - the Georgetown and Berbice Chambers of Commerce. The Government quickly moved to co-opt the leaders of these organisations, to make them what they are today - mendicants at the trough of Government-spending - controlled by friends and hangers-on to the President. Businesses are kept on a tight leash through control of who gets concessions through discretionary powers on waivers of duties etc. Only recently have there been legislation to curb the discretionary powers of the Executive but there are many ways to skin a cat.

Fortuitously however, under the remarkable vision of an official hired by USAID - Mr. Gordon Studebaker, Regional Chambers of Commerce were formed all over Guyana. Local businessmen were introduced to executive training, project planning, business opportunities in neighbouring countries, and most important of all - to develop the capability to identify and articulate their interests. It was the last achievement that earned the ire of the Government and Mr. Studebaker's contract was not renewed on the Government's displeasure. The Government has begun to subvert the umbrella body of these Chambers by creating its own paper Chamber in Canje under the control of their sycophants.

Since I wrote my paper in 1988, the term "civil society" has gained great currency in the struggle for democracy and with good reason. The fall of the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe was accomplished by groups and organisations in civil society rising up to throw off the yoke of control by their states. Solidarity of Poland was a pioneer in this regard. Previously, the only avenue seen as viable was armed struggle.

President Jimmy Carter, who brokered the end of the PNC regime, has great hopes on civil society stimulating much needed changes in governance in Guyana. We have previously written that we did not hold out much hope because of the vindictiveness of the PPP. In his official report on his recent visit to Guyana, Mr. Carter revealed speaking to: "Civil society leaders, whom we asked to help form a public forum with whom we could relate, bypassing the stalemated political party structure. We learned later some of them might fear losing government contracts, licenses, etc."

It appears that no solidarity in civil society, much less "Solidarity" lies on Guyana's immediate horizon.

Multi-party Democracy?
by Ravi Dev

Posted August 22nd. 2004

We looked at the totalitarian regime constructed by LFS Burnham between 1968-1985 and the changes to that regime between 1985-1992, initiated by his successor H.D. Hoyte, which resulted in it being more "authoritarian" than totalitarian by the end. One of the major features of their regimes, especially Burnham's, was "a single mass party, led by a dictator". Today, we begin to look at the regime established by the PPP, from this perspective, since they replaced the PNC in Government.

Dictator

We asserted that Burnham was a dictator within a "one-party exclusionary" system, where other parties were permitted to exist but they had no influence on political decision-making, much less actually ever assuming office. The PNC routinely rigged elections to maintain office so it did not matter what support the other political party had amongst the populace. The other parties merely served to legitimise the PNC's monopoly of power in the eyes of the international community.

How much has this situation been changed? The second part of the criterion is easier to address: Hoyte, while not the classic democrat was also no dictator and in the PPP Dr. Jagan was not so disposed; Janet Jagan was not given the opportunity due to PNC pressure in the streets and Bharat Jagdeo, even though he shows the desire, does not have the personal apparatus.

One-Party State

On the exclusionary one-party system, however, fundamentally nothing has changed -with the important difference that the PPP has maintained it under the rules of the game. In the PNC-bequeathed constitution, which has been maintained by the PPP even though Dr. Jagan had deemed it "illegal", the party obtaining a plurality of the votes is conferred office. With its majority Indian ethnic support, the PPP is assured of being shooed into office at every election. The PNC, as Burnham had concluded, has no chance of securing a majority and replace the PPP - contra to what Mr. Hoyte and some mandarins in the present PNC believe. The PPP therefore, has no fear that the PNC - much less any other opposition party - can replace it in government and so has no incentive to reign in its exclusionary behaviour. It can be as exclusionary as it wants - legally.

The essential principle of parliamentary democracy, however, auditaur et altera pars - the other side must be heard - is violated with impunity. Informally, it is possible that the PPP, out of the goodness of its heart could take in the views of the PNC and other parliamentary parties in their decision-making. But we have to remember that at every Congress since 1992, the PPP has reiterated that it is a Marxist-Leninist party, which by definition believes in a "dictatorship of the proletariat" - directed through "democratic centralism". In its just concluded Berbice County conference, the leadership reiterated that the supporters must continue to place their fate in, and not question, the decisions of their leaders. Such a world view does not lend itself to including the opposition in decision making. After all the PPP party leaders already know best!

Exclusion

This attitude was exposed after its 1992 victory, when the PPP cut out all its erstwhile partners in the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD) as it constituted its team for "democratic" governance. The exclusion of the WPA was particularly revealing. This party had carried the brunt of the struggle against the Burnhamite dictatorship and had suffered fatally. There has been talk that the PPP offered a position to one official of the WPA - Dr. Clive Thomas - but that this was done on an individual basis and was refused

The PPP, however, had rejected its present narrow and legalistic interpretation of democracy as it related to other social forces since 1977. They had argued consistently for a "National Front Government" that would go beyond majoritarianism and address "race and class" divisions in the society. It is ironic that it was the PPP that had argued against the WPA for the inclusion of the PNC in such a government. However by 1992, when it had become apparent that the elections were going to be "fair", the PPP jettisoned any talk for inclusion of the established opposition. One could be forgiven if one concluded that it were just that all those years - all talk.

The PPP invited private citizens from various social groupings and dubbed them the "Civic" component of the party. They were to give "class and race" unity to the PPP. How different was this from the tactic of Burnham and Hoyte to recruit citizens other than from its core constituency to declare that the PNC was "multiracial" and thus not guilty of ethnic exclusion? The PNC has complained bitterly that the PPP is equating its fifty-two percent into one hundred percent i.e. the PPP is not including the PNC in governance. But this is precisely where the PNC has not been consistent to effectively argue such a case: like the PPP, they accept the plurality rule for obtaining office. How then can they convincingly explain why the PPP should include them in governance. The PPP can, with a straight face, as it does, declare that the PNC can wait its turn as it musters the requisite numbers. It can paraphrase Burnham's riposte to them when accused of "racial discrimination" in the 70's: what is the democratic content of race?

PNC's Mystification

The PNC can only claim, against the evidence and all the reputable observers, that the PPP rigs the elections. This has not been a successful tactic. On the other hand, the PNC also plays the game to assert that it is "multiracial" and so inclusive enough of Guyana's ethnic diversity to legitimately govern on its own. Only this week, Mr. Aubrey Norton , on behalf of the PNC , reiterated that at their upcoming Congress this month-end, they will deepen their "multiracial" credentials. On what basis can it then assert with any credibility that its exclusion from governance by the PPP is unjust?

Starting from the December 1997 elections, the PNC has coupled its accusations of "rigged elections" with street protests that have degenerated into anti-Indian violence. The violence forced the PPP to concede widespread increase in the Parliamentary scrutiny of Executive action (at the cost of solidifying the PPP's Indian support). Because the PNC sits on the Parliamentary Committees this arrangement is supposed to satiate their cries for inclusion. In realpolitik terms this will not work for two reasons. Firstly, the composition of the Committees reflects the numbers in the Assembly - so the PPP's majority can always carry the day. Secondly, even if the PPP were not to stonewall in the Committees, it is quite unlikely that the African-dominated constituency of the PNC see their representatives rummaging through the minutiae of the PPP's policy debris, as real inclusion.

The legal (under rules accepted by the PNC) exclusionary one-party system of the PPP will encourage radicals in the African community to resort to violence. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

The P.N.C. in the Post-Burnham Era
by Ravi Dev

Posted August 18th. 2004

Last week we spoke about the political legacy of Burnham and posited that he had created a totalitarian state in Guyana by the time of his death in 1985. We would like to examine the present PPP regime using the criteria utilised for Burnham's. We have to remember however, that between 1985 and 1992 we had the regime of Hugh Desmond Hoyte, which initiated important changes in several areas. We have to examine these changes before we can consider the PPP's inheritance and reality.

This destruction of the economy by 1985, in tandem with the ambiguities and incongruities of the PNC's mobilization process, precluded the formation and retention of any large core of committed Marxist- Leninists within the institutions of Burnham's power base. Upon the Burnham's death, the elite that retained control of these institutions were obsessed more with economic rationality than with ideological purity.

The problem of succession is one of the most severe that confronts one-party dictatorships since the tyrant's usual paranoia of palace revolutions usually makes him wary of designating successors. Burnham's lieutenants, while locked in a power struggle for ultimate control, confined their battle within the party. Desmond Hoyte, Burnham's chosen successor on account of his obsequiousness, 'apparatchiki' skills, and unswerving loyalty, was the favourite of the bureaucratic Creole elite who considered him "pragmatic" but more importantly, "one of their own". Hamilton Green, commanding vast support in the party's rank and file as well as the army, bided his time, expecting the party to turn to him when Hoyte inevitably foundered in the morass of his "economic dynamism". Both had a vested interest in the perpetuation of the regime and neither was impetuous in his effort to capture power. Each focused on consolidating the forces immediately available to him; here Hoyte obviously had the advantage of incumbency and was not tardy in seizing the initiative.

Hoyte understood and accepted the forces that maintained the P.N.C. in power. Externally, the concerns of the U.S. were addressed: Hoyte early on signalled his abandonment of Burnham's Marxist-Leninist innovations. Hoyte's developmental strategy had the enthusiastic support of the bureaucracy. As a group, they had the most to gain from the managerial and administrative efficiency, technical rationality and stringent labour discipline demanded. Hoyte made real positive changes in this area. The World Bank-IMF "Washington Consensus" policies of privatisation, liberalisation and market forces, was accepted. By 1992 Hoyte had swallowed the bitterest economic medicine and the economy was rebounding most robustly.

Burnham's exclusionary one-party State was sought to be preserved with some important modifications. Paralleling Gorbachev, Hoyte was going to introduce "perestroika" - centred on reforms in the social and economic arenas - without "glastnost" or political reforms. Political power was retained in the hands of Hoyte, and the Creole elite of the bureaucracy, party and army. The survival of the Marxist P.P.P. was to be guaranteed to permit Hoyte, as it did Burnham, "flexibility" in his domestic politics.

But in addition to the Marxist-Leninist ideology being jettisoned, the increased participation of the remnant of the Indian elite in the economic and social sphere was assiduously pursued, to ensure economic development. Changes in the sugar and rice regimes helped the Indian lower classes. Hoyte allowed the reintroduction of the private media and the re-importation of banned consumer goods. One notable consequence of the latter policy was the further political demobilization of the lower class African section to join the already peripheralzed Indian section. This alienated the normally pro-PNC trade unions and created unforeseen consequences for Hoyte.

Within the P.N.C., Hoyte identified the Burnhamite Marxist faction as the weakest and severely decimated its ranks through "deployments", demotions and dismissals. The remnants such as Viola Burnham (widow of Burnham and head of the WRSM) and Ranji Chandisingh (ex-PPP Marxist ideologue) were symbolic and served to maintain the continuity and legitimacy of P.N.C. to the Burnhamite rank and file. Chandisingh's occupancy of the General Secretary and Deputy Leader positions in the P.N.C. pre-empted the utility of these positions as incipient power bases. Chandisingh, as an Indian and ex-P.P.P.'ite, was incapable of mustering wide support - as was Murray later. Under the guise of "democratizing" the party, Hoyte facilitated the increase of "moderates", supportive of his policies, and diluted Green's support base in the process. The PNC, however became more elitist-centered.

Hoyte's first official act as President was to promote the two top ranking officers of the Disciplined Forces. Greater certitude of loyalty was then actively pursued through the policy of the "professionalisation" of the Disciplined Forces'. The ex-policemen head of the Combined Forces, personally loyal to Burnham, was retired within two years and an Indian, Joe Singh was his replacement. In addition to being a "professional", it was unlikely that Singh would have been capable of mobilizing an ninety percent African army against Hoyte. To consolidate his control further, Hoyte as Chairman of the Defence Board promoted officers loyal to him, and sidelined others.

While there were elements of political and economic rationality in Hoyte's actions, some were reminiscent of a Burnhamite drive for absolute personal power. By his actions since he acceded to power, Hoyte demonstrated that he would brook no challenge to the supremacy of the P.N.C. as the pre-eminent force in Guyana. Like Burnham, Hoyte felt he knew what was best for Guyana and needed the power to achieve this. The dynamics of power lead inevitably to its concentration unless external forces impinge upon and counteract it. Hoyte inherited a party that was severely decimated by Burnham; a bureaucracy that was debilitated by a crumbled economy and state; an army that was purged a mere six years before, and a nation demoralized and terrorized.

The rigging of the 1985 general elections; harassment of church, opposition, and trade union leaders; persecution of the press through libel suits; enacting ex-post facto laws; and circumventing judicial review through use of its legal parliamentary plurality to amend the Constitution, were only a few samples of his fundamentally elitist, and ultimately, anti-democratic nature. His prosecution of Rabbi Washington of the House of Israel and his reintroduction of hanging had as much to do with his rivalry with Green as the need to burnish his image on the terroristic outrages.

Other forces were in no position to frontally attack Hoyte who possessed the full panoply of powers accumulated by Burnham and who fully understood their use having been a major architect of the constitutional dictatorship. They had to await the fortuity of the Soviet collapse. Hoyte, of course could not have foreseen this. The opposition used this opening in tandem with the openings offered by Hoyte's own economic and social reforms to lobby and gradually undermine the PNC's external support, while some social forces mobilised internally to lobby for "free and fair" elections, in addition to their own particular interests.

Hoyte's acceptance of the results of the 1992 elections, violently opposed by Hamilton Green, was a surprise to many including myself. He must be credited with offering Guyana the opportunity to return to the path of democracy - not only with his economic and social reforms but with his ultimate democratic gamble. We will next turn to what the PPP has done with its legacy.

Letter from Ravi Dev on Regent Street Protest
by Ravi Dev

Posted June 29th. 2004

Dear Editor,

The closure of Regent Street by a band of protesters on Friday should be a cause for serious concern for all Guyanese and all those in the international community who have any concerns for Guyana's future and stability.

As we understand it, the protesters were part of a contingent from a "Rule of Law Committee" picketing exercise that had targeted the Ministry of Home Affairs in protest over the alleged linkage of the Minister to the operations of Death Squads. The group of mainly women broke away from the main body of picketers and marched over to Regent Street where they demanded that store owners immediately close their businesses. According to the Kaieteur News report, they shouted, "You can't shed blood and expect business as usual." It is evident that the women were making a connection between the Regent Street shop owners, the PPP, the operations of the Death Squads and the assassination of George Bacchus.

I had feared this move to raise the ante for some time now, in the African Guyanese community, once there was no movement by the PPP government to establish a credible, impartial and independent Commission into the operations of the Death Squads. Look how Jagdeo has allowed his own Committee to hang in the wind - it stiil has not been sworn in! The African Guyanese community sees Regent Street as a metaphor for Indian reflexive support for the policies of the PPP - no matter how wrong-headed they may be. The purported linkages of the State into the Death Squads that snuffed out the lives of dozens of primarily African men, earned the ire of African Guyanese but the implicit approval of Indians because the latter saw the squads as "solving" the East Coast mayhem.

However, once the Opposition had broadened its demand that any Commission of Inquiry should also include the violence on the East Coast (including Buxton) ROAR had hoped that Indians would have understood the need for going to the root of communal violence in Guyana (implicit under the wider scope of inquiry) and supported such a call since Death Squads are simply placebos. Sadly, Indians, by and large have not budged and it is in recognition of this, I believe, that the women decided to close down Regent Street. African women have always been the Praetorian Guards of urban street protests in Guyana.

But as I pointed out when I spoke at the Rule of Law Rally, the Opposition and the Committee itself had committed itself to acting under the "Rule of Law". Capital Letters. To deviate from this position is to fall under the same trap that those in the State, who may have dabbled with Death Squads, did. They figured that the ends justified the means. It doesn't work like that. No matter how provoked we are, we have to follow the law. As we've been emphasising, our society is too small; too fractured. The nature of our cleavages, based on ethnicity - is too volatile and combustible. In the instant case, it also plays into the hands of the PPP, which will gloatingly inform its Indian constituency - "We told you so!" Guyana cannot go forward divided.

This does not mean that those opposed to the PPP policies must roll over and play dead. Civil Disobedience is one option. If the protestors believe that those in power are not getting their message, they must apply for police permission for routes that they feel are more effective. If the Police are denying such routes, then that possible denial of their civil rights in itself becomes a cause for action and for galvanising the Guyanese populace. Democracy and the Rule of Law sets their own parameters for right action.

In the meantime, the activities of the women who hectored the Regent Street business community into closing their shops must be condemned, no matter how understanding anyone may be of their grievances. There are many out there who are only waiting for an excuse to use violence as an option to settle political differences. Acceptance of intimidation in the present context sends precisely the wrong signal to these elements. The Government also has to act in accordance to further the cause of justice, and stop playing politics. Those who have ears, let them hear.

Sincerely,

Ravi Dev, MP. Leader of ROAR

FEDERALISM for GUYANA
by Ravi Dev

Posted June 21st. 2004

(The following is the first excerpt on ROAR's on Federalism)

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 diversities…and 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.(to be continued)

To share or not to share
by Ravi Dev

Posted June 18th. 2004

There is a very interesting debate going on in the pages of our national newspapers about whether or not the PPP and PNC were, or are, committed "shared governance" in Guyana. We've had various and sundry political heavyweights weighing in on various aspects of this issue but it seems to me that a crucial variable is being overlooked. On what basis and on whose behalf were these parties willing or not to share governance? This, I posit, is the fundamental issue and if addressed will point to the direction we need to head, politically. I mean how can we discuss the sharing of the power to govern if we don't discuss the bases on which the acceptable bases of the accretion of that power. We have to deal with the issue of "legitimacy".

Freddy Kissoon alluded to this issue when he pointed out that Burnham had no legitimacy to dictate terms to Jagan, since the PNC had not won any elections after 1964. But the issue goes deeper than elections. Both Jagan and Burnham were fully cognizant of the ethnic divisions of the country. From the beginning, they accepted the premise that a Government that included as far as possible the representatives of all the various groups in Guyana would be best for Guyana. This was the rationale for Jagan's recruitment of Burnham in 1949 (he thought that Burnham would command greater support amongst Africans than Chase) and the rationale for Burnham's acceptance of the offer. (Many Guyanese forget that Burnham initially earned the ire of the League of Coloured Peoples for "tying bundle" with Jagan - Burnham had been expected to join their political vehicle - the UDP.)

Our political impasse in Guyana, however, arose out of this very premise of Jagan and Burnham - that to form a legitimate Government of Guyana one needed a political party that was "multiracial" or as we would say today, "multiethnic". The Government formed in 1953 by the first PPP was truly "multiethnic" but as we all know that was but only a golden moment. The split of 1955 changed all that. As early as December 1956, Jagan in his speech to the PPP Congress accepted that Burnham's departure meant the exodus of the majority of the African/Coloured group. After the 1957 elections Burnham bowed to the reality that Latchmansingh and Jainarine Singh had brought him no Indian support and coalesced with the UDP - and worked to consolidate his African/Coloured support. Both leaders, however, insisted that they were "national" parties that could govern Guyana - but it is important to note that against all the evidence, they both had to insist that they were "multiracial. This was because these two parties still implicitly accepted the fact that no government of Guyana is legitimate if it does nor represent the major ethnic groups of our country.

Sadly, this acceptance of the Guyanese reality has not led to the acceptance of the need for there to be an arrangement to include the representatives of the various ethnic groups in government, but rather the practice of such political contortions as to have led to the paralysis of our body politic. Jagan for the longest while insisted, that the Chairman of the PPP - a la the departed Burnham - had to be African. He lamented the refusal of Kwayana (then King) to play this role and ousted Balram Singh Rai to anoint Brindley Benn. The irony that the African leader in the "multiracial" PPP had to always be the bridesmaid and never the bride was most poignantly (and recently) brought out by the treatment of the good, albeit prolix and tortuous, Dr. Luncheon. Was it not the good doctor himself, who informed us a few years ago that he was one of the young lions in the running for the PPP's Presidential Candidacy? The PNC has been equally disingenuous in its efforts at "multiracialism". What exactly were Chandisingh's and Murray's chances of ever becoming the Presidential candidate of the PNC?

Note that the greater that 50% majoritarian principle is only brought up to legitimise the rule of the party once it can claim to be "multiethnic". The majoritarian principle is the fig leaf to confer legitimacy on Governments in Guyana and in Guyana this has even been watered down to a "plurality" - that is to be able to garner the largest number of seats among the parties competing in the elections. The principle implicitly accepted by all the parties is that the Government must have representatives of all the ethnic groups. This is the fundamental principle. This is the basis of the Civic component that has brought Ms. Rodrigues (Amerindian), Mr. Xavier (Portuguese) and Messers. Hinds, Jeffrey and Lumumba (Africans) into the PPP Government.

Freddy is correct to question Burnham's moral right to restrict the PPP's level of participation in any "National Front Government". After all, by taking the trouble to rig elections during three decades of widely defined "authoritarian" rule (I have argued elsewhere that it was "totalitarian") Mr. Burnham was explicitly accepting the legitimacy of majoritarianism on the right to govern Guyana. He can't have it both ways. This gap between the implicit acceptance of ethnic inclusiveness and the explicit espousal of majoritarianism has been the contradiction that has bedevilled both the PPP and the PNC. The PPP, of course, can have its cake and eat it too - up to now it can count on the reflexive support of the Indian majority. It can blithely boast about its "multiethnic" membership - even though PM Hinds can only enter Buxton to turn sod while Corbin is there while its base is overwhelmingly Indian.

The PNC is caught in its contradiction. In its call for "shared governance", which is based on an abandonment of the majoritarian principle, it yet refuses to explicitly accept the need of explicit "ethnic" representation for the executive power sharing (one type of "shared governance") to be legitimate in Guyana. It is still caught in Burnham's historical choice to spurn the LCP and form an "ethnic" African/Coloured party to protect their interests and refuses to accept that it is an African party. The PNC still wants to insist that it is a "multiracial" party. Then why the need for Shared Governance? Shared Governance is premised on entrenched voting patterns in Guyana over the past fifty years. What, if not ethnicity is the basis of that entrenched voting".

To be an ethnic party is not to be precluded from having a "national" outlook. Look at ROAR. From the moment we declared that we were an Indian party, we could without contradiction demand that there had to be arrangements to include all groups in the Government of Guyana. The inclusiveness is mandatory in the governance structures, not necessarily in the party structure and membership. We have espoused a "Government of National Unity and Reconstruction" foe one or two terms - followed by federalism. Much on the lines of South Africa.

Speech - (PMJ) Rally 1763 Monument. May 22nd, 2004
by Ravi Dev

Posted June 9th. 2004

Namaskar, Salaam w'ali kum, Peace, Grace and Hope

My fellow Guyanese, "Namaskar" means I bow to the divinity in each one of you, Salaam w'ali kum means "may peace be unto you", and in the words of the Apostle Paul, "peace, grace and hope". Tonight I'm pleased to be invited by the People's Movement for Justice (PMJ) to speak to you on matters that concern all of us; that I'm speaking at this very august location and to this very well meaning crowd and a very open crowd.

You know, coming on my way, coming from Uitvlugt on the West Coast, the Organising Secretary of my party told me, that he heard one Kwame Mc.Koy said the intelligence of the PPP revealed that Ravi Dev visited Congress place three times last week and one time this week - to talk to you all. Well you know, the word "intelligence" has two sets of meaning: one - what you know - information, and the other, whether you have any "sense". Well if that claim is the level of the PPP's "intelligence" on both counts, it is no wonder that we are in this mess today. When, and if, I want to speak to any other Guyanese there is no other way but to speak in front of you. Because when you speak your truth you do not have to hide behind walls; for even the walls have to come tumbling down when there is truth.

So I have come here in the open, in front of this statue of Cuffy, (he's a Berbician mind you!) to speak in his shadow, of my truth. The last time you gathered here, I had received an invitation to speak but I was out of the country and I had to have my message read. So again, I'm pleased to speak my truth - face to face; face to face. Tonight I would like to speak about three (3) matters: firstly, the one immediately in front of us, the Gajraj Affair. Secondly, where we are as a nation and where we would like to be and thirdly, how we can get from here to there.

So first we talk about the Gajraj Affair. Well, one of the reason ROAR has not focused on Gajraj - not even called for his resignation - but to say he must simply recuse himself; that he should have the decency to say if these very serious charges are being made against him; that he should take the moral position to say: "I shall step aside; I shall build fire walls between me and my job to see that justice being done." If he does not have the decency to do that, then what can you and I do? I say, and I call upon him, to do the right thing.

We did not call him a murderer - as I heard in the litany that was repeated when this meeting began - for this simple reason. That if we talk about justice; if we talk about the Rule of Law, then the cardinal principle of the rule of law is that we presume your innocence until you are proven guilty. We may have the facts; we may have the knowledge, but there is a procedure that has to be followed. So we say, and I say to you this evening, that it is for this reason that the proper procedure be followed - that we must have a Commission of Inquiry that is fair, independent and impartial, to pass judgment on Gajraj. The PPP cannot have it both ways. It cannot say on one hand, in the voice of President Jagdeo, that Gajraj is innocent and on the other hand not set up a proper inquiry. But we also cannot, on one hand, say that he's guilty and then on the same breath say that we need a Commission of Inquiry. We cannot have such contradictions or we well shall be pointed out as speaking with forked tongues.

My fellow citizens of Guyana, I would like to say before you, that the ROAR Party, the Rise Organise and Rebuild Guyana Movement, rejects this commission for a multitude of reasons. Not least amongst them, is that it is a standing liable to the opposition parties of this country, (and I must say and I must mention especially the People's National Congress) to say that the People's Progressive Party did not know of what the Opposition were seeking as to what type of Commission they felt was just. They would be lying their teeth if they were to repeat that standing libel because it is the matter of the public record that the entire Western diplomatic Corps, the entire donor community, in the month preceding this "hot potato" that Jagdeo dropped into our laps, the entire community had met with the Opposition and with the Governing party to discuss the concerns of the Opposition. And these concerns were stated in clear and unambiguous language, to wit, that the Commission must at a minimum inquire not only into the Gajraj Affair.

Gajraj is only a mere instrumentality - a creature if you will - of the PPP. You cannot even cough in the PPP, if you do not have permission. Gajraj could not have done anything if he did not received permission from on-high. So we had asked, ROAR had said: let us not just make Gajraj a sacrificial lamb (even though he maybe a big lamb) because they are Shepards and one particular Shepardess, who are behind it all. Those who have ears let them hear.

My sisters and brothers, this concern was raised explicitly by the Opposition to the donor community that performed the role of an intermediary. So the Opposition said that it is not only Gajraj. Gajraj's activity, as Tacuma Ogunse said earlier, is embedded in a larger web and if we want to get anywhere, we have to inquire into that large context. I would like to go on record here - because you know we have to speak out truth - that the PPP had said that the PNC in particular (because you know the PPP says we only have a half-seat) was going to make Gajraj a scape-goat. The PNC accepted - as a member of the combined opposition - that there must be an Inquiry into the 2002 Mash-day jail-break, that there must be an inquiry into the violence on the East Coast and yea, an Inquiry into Buxton. And I want to give testimony here, that the PPP cannot and no one can say, that it must have been easy for the PNC to do that. Let us call a spade a spade my fellow citizens; let us call a spade a spade.

And if the PNC were asking for that wider Inquiry - for which the PPP itself had said that the PNC had the role to play; for which it makes that clear in all the bottom houses of the Indian homes of this country - then why doesn't today the PPP not want to have the wider Inquiry? I ask you that. I ask you that? There has to be some reason, why the PPP is now silent about having a wider inquiry and that Jagdeo is now saying he may look into the matter at some later date. (Voice from the crowd, "He say it's a tiny matter.") Well tiny ain't tiny because tiny ain't winy. You know we now have to stick to the straight and narrow truth and speak our truth. The matter is not tiny and its not winy because it threatens to bring down the very fabric of this state that supports us all.

And it is for this reason that ROAR, my fellow citizens of Guyana, is interested in having a Commission of Inquiry that is properly constituted, that is so comprised that all of us can accept its verdict - that they can be no doubts. I want to remind you that the PPP called for "trust" in each other before we can go forward. Well if the opposition parties have now called for this wider investigation which the PPP said was at the root of what ails the body politic, should not the milk of trust be raising in the bosoms of President Jagdeo and the PPP? But yet we hear that to this Commission of Inquiry, there will be no change. I will say to you, that if we want us to move beyond the morass that we are in, we must find certain strands of principles to which we can hold, to which we can tie our ships or we shall be cast hither and thither in the storms that are sure to over take this country.

My fellow citizens, I said I would also like to speak also about where we are as a country and where we want to go. The second part is easier to answer: where we want to go? All of us - it does not matter of what race or of what religion we belong - each of us want two things, at a minimum. We want to live in dignity and we want to live in respect with those who are around us. To be able to live in dignity, we must be able to create a life as we see it. We cannot have the lives of our sisters and brothers snuffled out with impunity. And I would like to say that when I listened to the litany of deaths when this meeting began, I was saddened because - and again I speak my truth to you - not only those who were gunned by the arms of the state we should mourned, but we should also mourn every individual, every innocent individual, who were killed by others. So it means that, that litany should include the Indians also who were killed by bandits, the Africans who were killed by bandits, the Chinese or whoever were killed by bandits. They also, they also suffered the ultimate denial of their human rights - the right to life.

So when I speak to you as to where we are today and I look at this crowd in front of me, we have to accept where we are today - almost forty years after we have been granted Independence - that we are still a people divided politically on ethnic lines. That's the truth and we cannot shy away from that. You know there are many of us who have a great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth when we talk about the fact that we see each other different ethnically. Some feel that we are mere sheep who have been lead astray by these wily politicians. But I say that there is wisdom in the people.

The fact that we have concerns that are ethnically based is because of a truth that we know. One of the truths of ROAR is that we should not be embarrassed, we should not be ashamed to say that some of our interests are "ethnic" interests. This year, UNESCO has declared the year to be "International Year to Commemorate the struggle against slavery and its abolition". My sisters and brothers, I'll be honest with you. It amazes me when some African leaders, talk about all of us being "one".

My fellow citizens of Guyana, no one but people of African decent (and some Amerindians) know what it is to be a slave. Slavery was a condition that is unparalleled in the history of the world: for human beings to be chattel; to be owned by another; whose lives to be taken away anytime; whose culture was derided and denied and derogated; whose children could be taken away; whose wives could be violated. How can anyone say that people of African decent does not have the right to say, "We have concerns that are particular to us as a people." That is a truth, that is a truth that we cannot move away from. You want to tell me that three hundred years of slavery - UNESCO talks about slavery leading to a culture out of a "dialogue" enforced by slavery. What kind of "dialogue" can you have, when one set of humans hold you as chattels? Dialogue means, "I talk and you talk". What nonsense is this? And today I still hear of African leaders speaking about the "fact" that we are all "one".

We are not one culturally. We are one in many ways but culturally - let us speak our truth - no one knows what it is to be a descendant of a slave but a descendant of a slave. None. I am a descendant of indentured labourers. I have a history. I have my own denials. I am not saying that one suffering is more than the other. As we sat by the rivers of Guyana, all of us cried for our Zions. All of us cried as we remembered our Zions. Suffering is subjective but subjugation, the subjugation of slavery and what it lead to - is objective and lead to objective conditions must be addressed.

So I start from that truth, my fellow citizens that yes, we are all Guyanese. We are all citizens of this country and we have a right to all that Guyana offers equally - benefits and burdens. But as individuals, we have come into and experienced different histories. We also consequently have particular concerns that must be addressed and that is partly why, political parties have to be unapologetic about representing those interest.

When I spoke out against Indians being beaten in the streets of Georgetown on January 12th (1998) I said this country has to deal with why Africans Guyanese could beat those Indians. It was because, my friends, we have to inquire (I called for a Commission of Inquiry then) that there must be reasons why these things happened. And we cannot keep sweeping them, as this Commission again is going to sweep things, under the rug.

And I will tell you this: that I spoke out then and I say to you now that if someone cannot speak out when injustice is being done to his people, how can he have any authority to speak out when injustice is being done by others? What faith can you have in those leaders who cannot speak out when their own in being oppressed? Those who have ears let them hear, let them hear.

My friends, I said where we want to go: where there can be dignity and respect. But how can we get there? How can we get from here, where we are divided, to where we can be living with dignity and with respect? First and foremost, my friends, we have to acknowledge the violations of bodies and the destructions of souls. We cannot go forward my dear brothers and sisters, fellow citizens of Guyana, we cannot go forward, unless there's some process in Guyana that says, "You know what, I'm sorry for what happened." ROAR had called for, and still feels there's a need - as happened in South Africa, where matters had proceeded far beyond what we have in Guyana - for some Commission for Peace and Reconciliation. Where we called for restorative justice not for retributive justice. Let us restore those who have been hurt by acknowledging their hurts. We have to do that.

We have to move secondly from this posture of being defensive about speaking of our particular interests. All of us speak from where we come from. I first heard of a Blueberry Hill in Guyana when I heard Mr. Corbin talking about Blueberry Hill in Linden. The only Blueberry Hill I know about before that, was Fats Domino, singing that he found his love on Blueberry Hill. (You guys now know how old I am!) Our truth has to begin from where we stand - there is nothing wrong with that. So let us be prepared to listen to the "other". I have come amongst you to tell you my truth. You may disagree with me but we must speak our truth openly and not "mamaguy" each other, as the Trinidadians would say.

I support Tacuma Ogunasay to say that each one of us have a right to defend our selves by any means necessary. All of us. This is an inalienable right - no one can take that away from us. But I want to say to you that in the context of Guyana, I have to tell you that if we want to move forward, we have to reject violence as a political instrument for effectuating change. I am not saying that I reject violence at all times and at all places. Even Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence said that he would prefer violence to cowardice. I too would hold that line. But as a political instrument, my brothers and sisters, for us to move forward to some kind of place where we can have that dignity and live with respect, there cannot be a place for violence as a political tool in Guyana. We are too small we are too fractured and it will lead to hurts that will never be healed.

The defining moment of my truth, my sisters and brother, occurred when I was a boy of 10 or 11 - when the riots of the 60's happened. I practically lived and grew up in Kashba, - the part of Uitvulgt that is African - and after those riots, Uitvlugt has never been the same again. Uitvlugt has never been the same again. I know to my own truth of how we used to live; I know how we can live. To echo Martin Luther King, I have been to the mountain and I have seen the promised land. And we can get there but it cannot be through the instrumentality of violence. That is my truth. It cannot be.

It does not mean that we each do not have a duty to struggle. We have a duty to struggle against injustice. And if this government or any government is unjust, then we have a duty in a democracy to struggle against it. But there is the struggle in the example of Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, of Civil Disobedience - and it is in paths along these lines that we have to move. And we have to bring all Guyana to this vision, so we can all struggle together. In this house that we've all built, there can be mansions for all of us but we have to work together.

In the near term, ROAR sees that there can be nothing else but a government of National Unity and Reconstruction. No other way - there is no other way. We've tried one way during the PNC regime between 1964-92 and the other way around from '92 to today. A house cast asunder cannot survive. We are going downhill at such a rate that there will be no house if we don't look out very soon. There is no other way than to have a government of National Unity and Reconstruction. I was pleased - and I would say it publicly and I've said it before - when I heard Mr. Corbin at a Symposium say that there can be no such government but that you cannot ignore the People's Progress Party. I see that as a mature position. We have to go beyond the present; beyond the present and beyond the past because we know in our hearts that if we don't have a Government that encompasses of our peoples we are not going anywhere.

In line with that we cannot practice, you know, what we call "smart-man" politics. I said you know I come from the countryside where, in the vernacular, we say you can't be a "cock-man". As a little boy there is a calypso I remember. Mighty Sparrow, I think. Boy wants to marry girl, so he comes home and tells his father he likes this girl in the village. But the father said, "Boy you can't marry the girl!" The boy asks "Why?" And the father replies, "The girl is your sister but your Mama don't know!" The boy goes back and forth and the father gives the same answer, "You can't marry the girl, boy. The girl is your sister but your Mama don't know." Finally in frustration, (because you know young love runs very deep) boy goes to his mother, tells her the problem, and the mother says, "Go ahead, son". The surprised boy asks, "Why?" To which the Mother replies, "Your Daddy ain't your Daddy but you daddy don't know!"

My friends that is the folk wisdom: that if you try to be a "cock-man", there's always a bigger cock man and Jagdeo and PPP will soon recognise that sooner or later. Can't be a "cock-man" - it means that we have to be serious. The PNC has said that its favours "Shared-Governance". Many in the Indian community have said, "Corbin is just saying that because he is in the opposition." It's possible. I myself, am still a doubter. But we have to give the process a chance. And it is you, the supporters of the PNC who have to tell them, "we don't want any body to tell us your daddy ain't your daddy but your daddy don't know!" "Cock-man" politics will go nowhere. We all gone that route and we ain't getting nowhere.

The Indians also will have to send that message to the PPP and this has been the message of ROAR from our inception. We stated two things: One we are honest to the realities of Guyana: the fact that Ravi Dev is Indian - he will get votes from Indians - so ROAR is an Indian Party. But why we say this, is that any party from one Race has to agree to a Government of Unity and National Reconciliation - no other way now my fellow citizens. And this is the secons thing ROAR has stated.

I would like to conclude. I have take probably more time that's was allotted to me, but I would like to say that if we are serious about going forward, this Government of National Reconciliation will be a beginning. It will be a beginning to show that we can work together. (Woman in the crowd, "They gon thief!") My sister there said that if it will be a corrupt Government. But I tell you one thing, when you put both sets of politicians there - thief man gon watch thief man; thief man gon watch thiefman and less thieving might happen. (You have another folk wisdom I learnt from the countryside.) But the point is, it will be a beginning for us to work on a more permanent structure.

ROAR as you know believes in some thing called "Federalism" - a principle where you must give power as far down to the ordinary man as you can. We feel such concepts will take time to sink in. Right now, people think that "Federalism" is ROAR "cock-man" story - trying to get most for Indians. So we will let that slide for now.

I close my fellow citizens with a prayer that I invoked at the funeral of Mr. Hugh Desmond Hoyte. Mr. Hoyte, throughout his life - including the debates just before the 2001 elections - said he was against any form of "Shared-Governance".. But just before he died - at the end of his days - he came around and said, "This is the way to go." I come from a society - a culture; you come from a society and a culture that give great respect to the aged because age brings experience and experience gives us wisdom. Let us heed the wisdom of Mr. Hoyte. In today's newspaper - the Mirror I see the PPP saying that shared Governance was Dr. Jagan's idea in the 60's. We will grant then that too. Let us say that it is the experience of our elders. Let us heed their advise.

So I close with this prayer - it's in Sanskrit, a very ancient language. It says:
OM Saha nau vavatu; Saha nau Bhunaktu,
Saha viryam karava vahai. Tejas vina vadhi tamastu.,
Ma Vidvisha vahai. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.,

It says:
May we be saved together;
may we be nourished together;
may our deliberations be fruitful;
and may we never, ever be envious of each other.

MAY GOD BLESS YOU.

Cowardice is always Ugly
by Ravi Dev

Posted May 19th. 2004

This weekend, in her Mirror column captioned, "Occupation is always ugly", Janet Jagan commented on the facial expression of President Bush as he attempted to explain to an Arab audience, the US abuses of Iraqi prisoners. She noted that that, "The usual smirk…on (Bush's) face, for once was absent." Occupation is always ugly." I had just read her assessment when I saw President Jagdeo, announcing to the country over the T.V., that he was appointing a Commission to inquire into the Gajraj affaire. I thought how apropos Mrs. Jagan's comments were in reference to the President she had created right here in Guyana. President Jagdeo hadn't just lost his smirk; he looked like he'd thrown up and lost his lunch. Cowardice is ugly. Using Mrs. Jagan's words, it seemed to me that the President realised that, "his carefully prepared cautious remarks…didn't work." He refused to take questions from the media present.

Listening to what the President actually said, one could understand his queasiness and his refusal to take questions. I mean, how can President Jagdeo appoint a commission to investigate allegations about his Minister of Home Affairs involvement with Death Squads and not include within its terms of reference, at a minimum, the violence on the East Coast? I suspect that what added to His Excellency's discomfiture was the fact that the entire Opposition had already agreed to a wider investigation in a letter to the Secretary General of the UN. How is the President and the rest of his cohorts in the PPP going to explain to their primarily Indian constituency that while the PNC had declared, "we expect that the inquiry will also be extended to include the examination of the violence that has engulfed the country since the jail break of 2002 February 23, Buxton and other manifestations of communal violence"- they, the PPP, had backed down and whittled down the Inquiry only to Gajraj? Cowardice is ugly.

Last week I wrote, "ROAR hopes that the President and the PPP will not once again fall prey to the pusillanimity that has characterised their regime since 1992, and will insist on this broader inquiry. The PPP has been "throwing talk" that they have all sorts of evidence of the involvement of the PNC's involvement in the violence. Now is the time for them to step up to the wicket and bowl." The insistence of the President and the PPP to confine the Inquiry only to "allegations of criminal misconduct" against Minister Gajraj, only reinforces my earlier contention that "PPP" actually means the "Pusillanimous Peoples Party".

ROAR's contention was that the Inquiry should not be seen as a witch-hunt against Gajraj - he was merely the instrumentality of the PPP's group think. If we were to get anything positive out of the Inquiry, we would have to allow the process to follow the trail wherever it may lead. The terms of reference, such as they are, while they are silent about every conceivable stipulation that would help to make the Inquiry "independent and impartial", are at great pains to confine the investigation to Gajraj's culpability. It would appear that he is to be the sacrificial lamb. However, even though Mr. Gajraj may concededly be a rather large lamb, if the allegations against him have any basis in fact, then the Commission would have to be given the authority to bring home his shepherd. Or shepherdess.

We return to the point that many, especially Indians, do not want to accept. If Guyana is to survive we must have a viable state. Arguably, the great innovation of the West that has been the cornerstone of their progress beyond every other civilisation in terms of material wealth, has been their development of this institution called "the state". In the modern world we will get nowhere if we do not have professionally run civil services, police, armies, judiciaries etc. that work for the welfare of all their citizenry. Whatever reservations we may have about any of these bodies, the Government of the day has to have the patriotism to be willing to do the right thing and professionalize the operations of state institutions.

In ROAR's estimation, the PPP in 1992 had severe reservations about the political loyalty of the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force. But rather than doing the right - albeit more difficult - thing and address their own concerns directly, the PPP chose to work around the Forces. I have publicly declared that I will defend the right of any citizen to defend their lives by whatever means necessary. But when those vested with authority to direct the state institutions use them outside the law - even to achieve a purported "good" - then this is a most dangerous development, since it undermines the very foundation that was meant to support us all. The Death Squads are simply the dénouement of the PPP's pusillanimity. Cowardice is ugly. The Death Squads may have wiped out some criminals and protected some citizens today - but who will protect your children and grandchildren tomorrow. Are we going to always depend on death squads? The Inquiry must be broadened to uncover those within the Government and those without who have conspired, or worked, to bring our country to the sorry state we have found ourselves. The PPP's refusal to have a wider Inquiry will leave us with more questions than answers and certainly more divided. Once again we exhort the PPP to show some grit, rise to the occasion and do what's best for Guyana. Hold an Inquiry that incorporates the wider societal violence in which the Gajraj affaire is embedded. No one is fooled by the fig-leaf that a wider inquiry may be initiated at some later time. You can't cash the same check twice. The President's announcement, (with which we have other objections which will be detailed later) only reveals the ugliness of cowardice.

Then again, is the refusal by the PPP for a wider Inquiry due to some more sinister reason? Is the PPP worried about the truth of the jailbreak coming out? Why is it they do not want those who created mayhem on the East Coast to be exposed? Are they stonewalling because, as is now widely believed, they actually benefit from communal violence on their expectation that Indians will then find it harder to "split the vote" since they're normally on the receiving end? Whatever the answers may be to the above questions, to paraphrase Mrs. Jagan, "however you slice it (cowardice and pusillanimity) are always ugly; always wrong." Those who have ears, let them hear.

Folding it
by Ravi Dev

Posted May 13th. 2004

As I listened to Minister of Home Affairs Ronald Gajraj yesterday announcing that he was willing to step aside from his office to facilitate an investigation into allegations of his involvement with state-sponsored death squads, a line from the old ballad, The Gambler, meandered across my mind."You got to know when to hold it (and) know when to fold it." Politics in Guyana (unfortunately) is played like poker, and while Gajraj is no Kenny Rogers, in any case it was the PPP and not Gajraj that had decided to throw in their cards. One hand, at least.

The PPP had gambled and lost. They had gambled that they could bluff the country into accepting that the allegations of their involvement (and it's their involvement - Gajraj is an instrument) with the death squads would be dismissed as a "tiny" matter. Well, I don't really believe that even with all the "tea with milk" they distributed, that they thought they could bluff African Guyanese. Actually, they gambled that their supporters would buy their bottom-house line that death squads were the only way to stop the attacks on Indians. Enough Indians, however, know enough by now to ask why is it that the PPP has not been able to muster up the courage to professionalise the Forces so that everybody in the country could be protected against attacks. They've had twelve years to do the right thing and came up short. The pusillanimity of the PPP has disillusioned many erstwhile supporters. Enough Indians understand that death squads are only quick and dirty fixes that will inevitably backfire. "Will death squads be there to protect us tomorrow?" they ask.

Since early January of this year, ROAR had called for the Minister to recuse himself (that is, to step aside from performing the duties of his office) while an independent and impartial investigation into the allegations were conducted. ROAR did not feel that the Minister had to resign his office before the investigation - that would have implied his acceptance of the very involvement which the requested investigation was meant to ascertain! The Minister has now, four months later, accepted the first part of ROAR's proposal - to recuse himself - and has called upon President Jagdeo to set up the mechanism to implement the second part - the independent and impartial investigation.

But an investigation into what? ROAR has also pointed out that many Indians, who were not necessarily buying the PPP line, were silent on the possible state involvement in death squads because there were no reciprocal calls for investigations into the larger question of the ethnically directed violence that engulfed primarily the East Coast, following the Republic Day prison breakout. Last week, the ROAR, the WPA and the PNC requested the good offices of the Secretary General of the UN, to intervene with the Government of Guyana "to mount an independent and impartial investigation into serious allegations of its involvement in sponsoring a Death Squad that has been responsible for killing of several Guyanese over the past months." Very pertinently, the request continued, "Although we recognise that immediate priority must be given to the above, we expect that the inquiry will also be extended to include the examination of the violence that has engulfed the country since the jail break of 2002 February 23, Buxton and other manifestations of communal violence.

ROAR hopes that the President and the PPP will not once again fall prey to the pusillanimity that has characterised their regime since 1992, and will insist on this broader inquiry. The PPP has been "throwing talk" that they have all sorts of evidence of the involvement of the PNC's involvement in the violence. Now is the time for them to step up to the wicket and bowl. Just as we cannot go on as a country if we have State involvement in the arbitrary execution of citizens, we cannot go on if we have the major opposition involved in violence against citizens - which has included murders, rapes, robberies and random beatings. The February 23rd 2002 cut-off gives any Commission a bite-sized chunk of violence to ruminate over at this time. Now is the time for us to let it all hang out - and for those to hang who would threaten our country with disintegration. We have written about the involvement of both the PPP and the PNC in the violence that has wracked our country since the sixties. This must end. Citizens of all hues and persuasions must put pressure on the President, the PPP and the Government to join the call for the wider inquiry, to which the PNC has already affixed its signature.

The call for the Secretary General of the UN to get involved with the Inquiry was meant to assure all parties concerned, and all Guyana for that matter, that the Inquiry would be independent and impartial and that it would not descend into a witch hunt. ROAR had originally proposed that our three living ex-Chancellors of the Judiciary could possibly conduct such an Inquiry but we have been informed that one of them has severe health issues. Additionally, and more germanely, after participating in discussions throughout Guyana on the merits and demerits of the Inquiry, we are now convinced that we must have a Commission that has, at a minimum, a foreign component of eminent men and women with backgrounds in law that would give Guyanese confidence in their findings. Very sadly we have become too fractured a society to have only Guyanese look so deeply into our dirty linen - which, even more sadly, is coterminous with looking into our souls. We may not want to accept what we find - and what it may take to cleanse the linen of our souls.

We stand on the cusp of possible far-reaching changes in Guyana. There can be no turning back. Just as we recognise that the Death Squads are related to the wider issue of "communal violence"; we must also accept that the violence itself is linked to the deeper issue of the distribution of power in our state and society. Sooner or later we have to face the fact that we have to design a political system that will distribute power equitably in Guyana. We hope that it will be sooner rather than later.

We cannot be as craven as the Pusillanimous Peoples Party. Even they should read the writing on the wall and not risk losing it all. "Know when to hold it; know when to fold it."