Posted August 25th 2002 Trinidad Express

By Selwyn Ryan

Why power sharing won’t work

Guyana continues to be wracked by civil unrest and crime, much of which has an ethnic dimension to it. Questions have been raised as to whether the Guyana tragedy can occur here. I agree basically with Dr. Claude Denbow who argues that despite surface similarities, the two societies are different demographically, geographically and in terms of their historical differences. 

These, taken together, suggest that the Guyana problem is not easily replicable in Trinidad and Tobago. I would however not go as far as saying that it cannot happen here. Accidents do happen, especially when elites do crazy things that are meant to serve their private agenda rather than what is right for the general public. The events of last July are in fact the cumulative product of a number of crazy things that were done by Guyanese elites in the past few decades as they struggled for group domination and as individual leaders sought to monopolise the political stage or survive leadership challenges. What occurs in Guyana is thus of more than passing interest to us. This is especially so since the issue of power-sharing could well be on our agenda again following the forthcoming elections.

A number of doleful conclusions can be drawn from what happened in Guyana during July, 2002. Guyana’s economic, political, judicial and security systems are clearly in a state of near collapse. The crisis made it clear that civil society in Guyana is weak, atrophied and ethnically divided, and that the small middle class is impotent and unequal to the task of getting the parties to act sensibly and responsibly. It is also evident that Guyana’s political culture, like that of the Irish, nurtured as it has been over decades on a diet of struggle, strife and strike, paralyses its leadership. Any attempt at purposeful action triggers a sit in, a strike or a long march during which much damage is done to life, limb, and property. 

Partisanship and political temperatures are also much too high, and the incessant radio and TV talk shows continuously inflame the minds of the masses. Memories of political victimisation, past and present, real and imagined, are also much too vivid. Hardliners, who are in the ascendancy in both parties, talk past each other, much like the Israelis and the Palestinians. All of these cultural and conjunctural factors are aggravated by the structural poverty which exists throughout Guyana, though more particularly in the hinterland and the urban centres where a sense of alienation and hopelessness is pervasive. Everyone wants to migrate to Canada or the US, whether legally or illegally. In sum, the dense political jungle seems to be reclaiming the civic landscape.

Attempts to broker political peace in Guyana must take heed of the fact that Guyana is a deeply traumatised society in which the two major ethnic groups each have their chosen rituals, traumas and hurts (real, invented and imagined) which mark and sustain their identity as a group. These feelings of shared belongingness and of being besieged, which were nurtured over many years of silent and open conflict in and around the plantations and villages, are reactivated during periods prior to and following elections, when strikes or marches in the streets take place, or during ethnic festivals. Any attempt to build political bridges by the implantation of super-structural devices such as dialogue or power sharing must recognise the historical, social and psychological contexts in which these attitudes were developed. To be effective, social reconstruction must accompany efforts at political reconstruction, if not precede them. Power sharing cannot work in a vacuum.

In traumatised societies, calls for power sharing and the empowerment of out groups are seen by the group or the regime which is being asked to make the greater number of concessions or sacrifices as a prescription not only for material loss and deprivation, but for symbolic loss as well. Power is conceptualised as a zero-sum commodity, and calls for power sharing are seen as a threat to the ruling elite’s control over the commanding heights of the state apparatus, and also as a recipe for the loss of psychic income and social face. This is especially if the new partner to the proposed shared arrangement is seen as being socially challenged or to have moral values that are more “flexible” than those claimed by the erstwhile hegemon. If one party thinks of itself as the party of god or virtue, and the other as ethically or religiously challenged, fears of contamination arise. 

Power sharing seems to work best with groups which have shared core values and past associations, and equally important, where the relationship between them is asymmetrical. Where the parties are roughly equal in terms of power, or one is seen as a threat to the political survival of the other, the chances of success are less than would be the case where one party is clearly dominant, but needs the support of the other as a junior partner. Power sharing also seems to work best in societies where parties, though distinct, see themselves as part of a mosaic which must work together pragmatically to get public goals achieved. In certain political systems, people are encouraged to be what they are and to hold the views they have; but they are also expected to cooperate with others to get certain basic things done. Parties in these systems are also mature enough to accept the discipline of coalition. Caribbean politics are however not driven by a search for consensus, but by the notion that the winner takes all. 

Another problem with the power sharing concept in the Caribbean is that the word itself poses ideological problems for many. Desmond Hoyte, for example described the word as a “shibboleth,” something without any precise meaning. His complaint, and that of others, is that people use the term but do not stop to give it any precise definition or think it through thoroughly How does one give the concept “traction” in a society where civil society is weak, ethnicised, and not easily mobilised, and where the political culture does not conduce towards consensual problem solving and pragmatic coalition building? How does power sharing work in societies where leaders believe that they must present themselves to their followers and to each other as “strongmen,” cocks of the political gayelle? 

Part of the problem is that Caribbean leaders have been programmed to see themselves as sabre rattling maximum figures. Politics is seen as an activity wherein macho men block their rivals and monopolise the political stage. Power sharing also becomes a problem because the state and the spoils and patronage that are derived therefrom are considered the ultimate prize of politics, not to be shared with any competitor. Only one combatant can wear the golden crown. While power-sharing might thus be an antidote to the deep feelings of ethnic insecurity and deprivation, the prevailing tension in Guyana is much too high to accommodate any such entente. What is ideologically necessary might not be politically possible. 

Guyana is at the proverbial crossroads, and clearly needs the help of regional and international interlocutors to get civil discourse and dialogue back on track. PNC elements have even suggested that initial meetings may need be held outside Guyana under the auspices of diaspora groups and/or the regional and international community. We in Trinidad and Tobago need to reflect on the Guyana situation in an attempt and ensure that we do not replicate the many errors which have brought that country to this sorry pass.

Posted May 5th. 2002 Trinidad Express

By Selwyn Ryan

Instability and power-sharing

THE election results of last December were interpreted by some analysts to mean that the electorate had consciously opted for an abandonment of the Westminster “winner take all” political paradigm and for its replacement by an “all take win” power-sharing alternative. Some argued that even if the electorate did not do any such thing, given the 18-18 tie, power sharing was the only fair option, and that as such, the President should have used his constitutional prerogative and his skill as a political alchemist to engineer such an arrangement. Yet others argued that power sharing was not only a political necessity but an ideologically desirable option. They saw cohabitation as a formula for bringing to an end the ethnic polarisation that was threatening to consume the country. In their view, the election result presented the country with a magnificent and perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity to experiment with a political formula that had creative possibilities for rekindling the spirit of 1986. Idealists felt that the need to live in the same political mansion and lie in a national as opposed to a UNC or PNM bed would encourage the political class to develop conventions of political behaviour and manners which would help to make the marriage work. The need for such conventions was said to have become necessary in a (hopefully) “post racial” world.

Realists argued that politics is a functional equivalent to war, and that the attempt to change the arena or the terms of engagement does not alter that brute fact. At most, it may disguise it until the parties involved calculate that political divorce is a more profitable option than an unhappy condominium arrangement. As soon as crises strike or elections loom, the separatist itch begins to manifest itself, and the alchemy becomes tarnished.

In the last few weeks, we have seen this occur in India, Italy, France, the Congo, and Guyana. In India, the many partied (19) National Democratic Alliance coalition led by Atal Behari Vajpayee of the BJP shows signs that it has begun to unravel as the country responds to the disgusting pogrom that has snuffed out of lives of some 900 Muslims and Hindus in the state of Gujarat. If the blood letting is not stanched, elections, which are due in 2004, may have to be called earlier as parties such as the BJP which espouse the ideology of Hindutva (Hindu cultural nationalism) do battle with rivals which have a more secular agenda and which appeal to Muslims and other minorities. All the parties are seeking to milk the crisis to gain electoral advantage at both state and national levels.

In Italy, labour unrest is imposing severe strains on the coalition of fascists, separatists, and crooked capitalists represented by the National Alliance, the Northern League and Forza Italia respectively. In France, the uneasy cohabitation arrangement between President Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin has long turned sour, and the relations between the two men clearly had something to do with the manner in which the French cast their vote in last week’s Presidential elections. Sixteen candidates faced the polls and none received more than 20 per cent of the votes cast. Many of the candidates claimed to have entered the race because of disillusionment with “old fashioned” French politics in which the left and the right found themselves locked in a clinch of death. In the Congo, efforts on the part of South Africa and other neighbouring states to engineer a power sharing arrangement that would formally end the civil war and bring stability to the region, is floundering. The President, the young Mr Kabila, is reluctant to share power with the Rally for Democracy. In his view, that arrangement “was equivalent to a coup d’état, and would bring conflict from the field into the government.”

Closer to home, Guyana also seems to be coming unstuck once more. As many had predicted, the dialogue process between Desmond Hoyte and Bharat Jagdeo which was put in place following the 2000 election collapsed ignominiously in March. The PNC/Reform had long been signalling its dissatisfaction with the process and with the PPP/Civic’s failure to implement the constitutional reforms which had been agreed to between the two parties. 

The PPP/C was also accused of treating the opposition parties in a cavalier and disrespectful manner. The PNC complained that Parliament had only met three times since October 2001, and had only met in March because the Constitution mandated that the annual Budget had to be presented in the first quarter of the year. The PNC likewise expressed frustration with the progress of the work of the cross party dialogue committees. The dialogue process was said to have deteriorated to a crawl. The Government was accused of failing to implement decisions that were already made and of seeking to preempt the work of the committees. The PNC/R declared that its patience was “exhausted” and that it could no longer pursue “business as usual.”

As the party told the country, “We will take appropriate extra parliamentary action to ensure that the governing elite recognise the seriousness of the issues concerned, and the harmful consequences of treating with them in this casual and dismissive manner. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Hoyte also warned that the PNC/R would embark on various non-parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forms of action to oppose the “recalcitrant” regime’s bad policies, and relentlessly expose its corruption, incompetence and general misgovernment. He likewise promised to use the prerogatives enshrined in the Caricom Charter of Civil Liberties to get the regime to understand its obligation to administer the affairs of the country in a fair, honest, and just way.

It is not yet clear where Guyana goes from here on the question of power sharing. There is still some discussion of the issues in the press, but the dialogue process seems to have ground to a halt. We wait to see whether the militants in the PNC would give up the quest, or whether what we have now is an uneasy “calm” before the fire strikes next time.

Some Guyanese intellectuals argue, quite correctly, that power sharing did not fail in Guyana and that it was in fact never seriously attempted. What one had was an extra-constitutional arrangement between two political leaders who had similar views about how power was to be won and held. The people were left out of the equation. What was needed was a more inclusive model of governance that widened the network of stakeholders.

One of the arguments used against power sharing is that it often leads to gridlock. Dr David Hinds, a Guyanese political scientist, however believes that gridlock was not necessarily counter productive to good governance, and that in certain circumstances, it could facilitate democratisation. “One of the potential benefits of trying power sharing is the possibility that it brings more eyes and ears to the governance process…. For me, containing the racial conflict is only one of the potential benefits of power sharing: most importantly, it must lead to more substantial democracy than currently obtains. For Hinds, “horizontal power sharing” at the executive level had to be supplemented by “vertical power sharing” i.e. power-sharing between the national and local governments. 

Power-sharing may be an unavoidable political necessity in some contexts. It is however not a balm that one can apply to any and every festering political sore. Ideology must be tempered by reality. As we have argued, instability is built into all power-sharing arrangements.

Posted April 28th. 2002 Trinidad Express

By Selwyn Ryan

T&T not ready for power-sharing

THE election campaign which realists had long predicted would have had to be held before the end of the year has now begun in earnest even though it has not been officially declared. Only the naive or the delusional expected that this outcome could have been avoided whether by power-sharing or by someone crossing the floor in response to a prise de conscience or inducements of one kind or another. No one planning to cross would have declared his intention openly. To do so was to commit suicide literally and figuratively. One is in fact surprised that Mr Panday chose to billet his troops in the Crowne Plaza and to bus them to Parliament. That strategy could not possibly have been informed by genuine fear that any MP would have been arrested, kidnapped, assassinated, seduced, or suborned. That was comic theatre of the absurdest and grossest sort, and one is surprised that big men and women with families would have allowed themselves to be treated as members of a herd! They should have been put in striped uniforms!

Power-sharing is clinically dead, at least for now, though its ghost will return to haunt us soon. Few believe that a renewed attempt to elect a Speaker will bear fruit. That is wishful thinking on Mr Manning’s part. The Prime Minister clearly likes to whistle in the dark. Either that, or he believes he must sell hope to a disillusioned following. Both parties know they have to begin gearing up for a long, bruising campaign which in large part will be waged in two constituencies. Indeed, they have already begun to assault our senses with silly ads meant to appeal to the very lowest common denominator. Both sides have chosen to rely on a spin attack even though the UNC has chosen to bowl a few bouncers in between. How else can one characterise its ad about PNM’s “gestapo” tactics? Should ads be so obviously lacking in credibility? Should they insult the people’s intelligence? 

What we are witnessing at this conjuncture and will continue to have over the next six months is fierce competition between two “narratives” as to what has happened politically since December 24 and indeed over the past six years. We call them narratives because narratives have nothing to do with what is true or false. They constitute an interpretation, a “reading,” a tale, a story or fabled account of what has, or is taking place. Narratives are informed by myths or the narrator’s understanding of how the “world” that he knows is constructed. Every people have “gospels” that help them to interpret “reality”. These gospels tell them who are the chosen people and who are the dragons and enemies that must be slain or done in pre-emptively. It also tells them how they must behave in order to be numbered among the elect and the saved. Truth has little to do with any of this, although many assume that it does and worse, that they have it.

According to the gospel of Panday and his disciples, Mr Manning and Mr Robinson are, and have long been in a conspiracy to overthrow the UNC for reasons which have to do with competition for ethnic dominance, spite, or assumptions about the UNC’s tack of moral fitness. And indeed, the UNC is seen by many PNM supporters as a pre-modern neo-oriental party which is totally unfit for Western style democratic governance. As Manning himself expressed it, “Panday and I are two different people. We come from two different perspectives. We come from a perspective that stems from integrity. We understand the administration of the public trust.” Manning has justified his appointment of a mega cabinet which includes his wife on the ground that “we have set ourselves a target of making Trinidad and Tobago a developed country by 2020”. It is however not clear as to what a large Cabinet, composed as it is, has to do with making Trinidad and Tobago a developed country. President Robinson’s views about the UNC being ethically challenged are a matter of public record. 

In the UNC’s narrative, President Robinson and Prime Minister Manning are seen as having caricatured their party. We are also told that PNM myths about the UNC are informed by an epistemology which sees the Caribbean as being located in an Afro-Creole/Afro-Christian lake, which ignores the fact that Indians are a political majority in Trinidad if not in Trinidad and Tobago and an integral part of the Caribbean reality. The UNC also challenges the PNM’s claims about its integrity and suitability for good governance, and Mr Manning has gratuitously provided grist for their spin machines. The UNC, as is evidenced by its most recent ads, sees the new PNM, inter alia, as a veritable gestapo regime that threatens the country’s democracy; as a spendthrift regime which will soon bankrupt the Treasury; as a crony regime which is doing little more than harassing and victimising Indians and providing jobs for its old boys and girls; and as a regime which is institutionally arrogant and which is prepared to run the country as an executive dictatorship without recourse to Parliament. The UNC totally ignores its own sordid record while in office, and projects itself as a virgin on all these matters.

What is one to make of these narratives and counter narratives, both of which are competing to be inscribed in the popular imagination as the true and authorised version? There is an alternative narrative which claims to be non-aligned and to have a national as opposed to a party perspective. It argues that both party narratives are flawed, but that the 18-18 result is a fact of political life which cannot be gainsaid. Some who espouse it believe that given the tie, the President ought to have played a more constructive role in mediating the crisis. In their view, neither party was capable of reaching a solution on its own that was acceptable to its supporters and to the non-aligned community. Both sides hoped or expected to win the next election and adopted stubborn stances that they assumed would put them in the best light and allow them to score propaganda triumphs. 

This school of thought is of the view that given this stand-off, the President should have used his diplomatic skills to advise, warn, delay and broker a power-sharing formula, and also to fix a firm date for election. Lloyd Best is among several who believe that Robinson has what it takes to negotiate a power-sharing revolution, and that this option is still open to him. To quote him, “it is not too late for him to broker a resolution. His best option was always to preside over a joint administration, led by a toss of the coin, comprised by a handful of ministers only, one charged to carry out limited measures and to undertake restricted spending within a fixed time horizon given by an agreed election date, determined by reasonable EBC readiness”. Much of this is Pollyannaish, even if well meaning. It is a totally unrealistic solution to seek to impose now, and was equally so in December 2001 when both sides were negotiating and confidently expecting to win and hoard everything, offers to power share notwithstanding

My own narrative on the power-sharing issue is that while it is theoretically and ideologically attractive, it was unworkable in the concrete circumstances and would merely have transfer red gridlock from the country and Parliament into the Cabinet. For horizontal power-sharing to work, the “planets” either have to be lined up in favour of it, or the concrete reality such as to make it clear that it is the only alternative to civil unrest. No party voluntarily gives up power once it has it or thinks that it can maintain its hold on it. My judgement is that the country is not yet ripe for the paradigm shift that power-sharing involves. It will however be if we go back to the polls and again have a hung Parliament and no budget that would allow the country to be put in funds to meet salaries and services. Then and only then would the President get the cross ethnic support he would need to do what it is said he ought to have done on December 24. To expect otherwise is to engage in “Monday morning quarter backing” as the Americans describe the wisdom of hindsight. What is historically necessary is not always politically possible.

Posted March 17th. 2002 Trinidad Express

By Selwyn Ryan

Power sharing failure

POWER sharing as an option in the current political conjuncture is now clinically dead. I however have a feeling that its ghost will continue to haunt us. 

Ironically, the initiative failed even though almost all the major stakeholders and civic elites openly agreed that the Westminster architecture had to be modified and replaced by something that was better suited to our complex demographic and political reality. 

Why did the power sharing initiative fail? Who or what was primarily to blame? Some place the blame at the feet of the President who they say was so anxious to spite and punish Mr Panday for all that he had done over the past six years in terms of misgoverning the country, that he failed to grasp the historical opportunity presented by the tie, to force the two leaders to work out a condominium arrangement that could well have provided a platform for a more durable political unity. 

Several critics have accused the President of either having dropped the baton on December 24 or of passing it badly. In their view, he should have engineered a concordat which would have allowed him to pass the baton to a mixed relay team. Handing it to Mr Manning alone inevitably doomed any attempt that could have been made subsequently to award “gold” to the two political gladiators.

While it is arguable that some blame should be attached to Mr Robinson, one assumes that he had no way of knowing in advance that Mr Panday would renege so spectacularly on the Crowne Plaza Agreement which he had faithfully promised to sell to his supporters. Did Mr Panday not say that it was the responsibility of leaders to sell unpopular things to their followers in the public interest? Did he also not say that while the agreement was not legally binding, anyone who walked away from it would pay for it, and pay dearly? How right Mr Panday was, since it is clear that he has lost a great deal of civic face for having reprobated the agreement.

From this latter perspective, blame for the collapse of the power sharing initiative must be placed squarely on the shoulders of Mr Panday who put his private political fears, ambitions, and agendas above that of the public weal. In my view, Mr Manning and the PNM leadership would never have broken their word as cavalierly and cynically as Mr Panday did. The PNM support base would certainly have puffed and grumbled, but in the final analysis, it would have taken the view that a deal is a deal, and gentlemen must honour their word. Clearly, Mr Panday and Mr Manning are not judged by the same civic yardstick. Mr Panday’s flock seems to allow him greater moral latitude than does Mr Manning’s.

Mr Panday however did more than walk away from the Agreement. In doing so, he reminded the country that he could not be trusted as a political partner, and that he was not above putting a political knife in Mr Manning’s back if the latter were to make the mistake of exposing it to him. In sum, Mr Panday’s legendary reputation for always trying to be cunning, tricky, and of being too clever by half, made it easy for the PNM to write him off as an unreliable and an untrustworthy political ally. There were few who were in a position to offer a more charitable characterisation of Mr Panday. In sum, the message about the potential benefits of power sharing was contaminated by the medium.

Mr Panday could also be blamed for the collapse of the Hilton Summit. The proposals which he put on the table must surely have been among the most extreme ever to have been presented by one party to another following an election. 

It was utterly unacceptable to the PNM and much of the country, and it was therefore easy for Mr Manning to dismiss it as unworkable and “downright dangerous”. It could in fact have led to so much conflict that the concept of power sharing would have been tarnished for many moons to come. One might argue that it was merely meant to be a basis for negotiation, but Mr Panday presented it in a truculent “I do not back down” manner, with the threat of civil disobedience in the wings. 

Mr Panday in fact boasted that in his talks with Manning, “we asked for power sharing and not any mambie pambie Mickey Mouse type of power sharing. Based on the results of the election, 18-18, 50-50 in everything. 50-50 not only in the Parliament; 50-50 in the Government …. No power, no sharing of responsibility”. Mr Manning was able to reject this proposal and look statesmanlike in the process, warning that the country would be viewed as a “forced-ripe banana republic if we keep entering into political arrangements that objective reality forces us to change every third day”. He was also able to invoke the ghost of partition to frighten those who were old enough to remember that a call for “parity or partition” was made prior to independence in 1962 by disaffected Indian militants. 

The UNC of course blames Manning and the PNM for the collapse of the talks. The PNM was accused of not taking the discussions seriously, of not making serious counter proposals, and of playing for time. All these accusations are correct. The PNM stood pat on the viability of the Crowne Plaza Accord, insisting that informal power sharing at the parliamentary level and other veto points in the system had to be the basis of any forward movement instead of a formal sharing of juridical power. In Manning’s view, one simply could not negotiate away the notion of a parliamentary opposition which he saw as a fundamental ingredient of parliamentary democracy as he understood it. If one did not exist, one would have to create it as Dr Williams felt compelled to do in 1971. The suggestion that the function of opposition could be achieved by allowing MPs to vote freely in accordance with their consciences was not seen as being an adequate safeguard, since party players would want to avoid scoring “own goals.”

Mr Manning clearly wanted the talks to fail, and Mr Panday obliged him by putting forward proposals that no leader who had tasted restored power could countenance. Mr Panday should have understood that once Mr Robinson had pulled the rug from under his legs, he had to find another way to negotiate with Mr Manning other than by saying that the game had to be played his way, and on his playing field, or not at all. 

Mr Manning in fact had no incentive to share juridical power with Mr Panday once there was mutual agreement that fresh elections had to be called soon. Why share power when there was nothing to gain other than a few extra months in office, and everything to lose by having to deal with Mr Panday in a Cabinet in which he had the power to block or frustrate everything? 

Mr Panday wanted power sharing primarily to abort the various enquiries that were taking place or which were being planned. These, which we could well view as our functional equivalent to a “Truth Commission,” will either confirm or put in question the extent to which axes of venality and sleaze were a central feature of UNC governance, and the extent to which the public was hoodwinked by exaggerated and hollow claims about performance. They should also hopefully allow us to determine who was responsible for what, and who should be targeted for legal punishment. 

Whether one agrees that power sharing is desirable or not, there is, I think, general agreement that governments have to be made to account to citizens, and that any power sharing formula which fuses government and opposition completely at the parliamentary level is not in the public’s interest, and perhaps too high a price to pay for the admitted benefits of power sharing. In sum, in reconstructing the cathedral of Westminster, let us not bring down the edifice on our collective heads.

Posted February 10th. 2002 Trinidad Express

By Selwyn Ryan

Power sharing questions

A “REREAD” of some of the things which Mr Panday has been saying since President Robinson identified Mr Manning as the person whom he was going to appoint as Prime Minister leads me to ask several questions. 

Mr Panday has said that he was “misled” into believing that he was the person whom Mr Robinson was going to ask, and that he trusted Mr Robinson to do what was indicated. In effect he is openly accusing Mr Robinson of lying to him. He has even said that he would not be that trusting in the future. As Mr Panday himself put it tearfully, obviously by way of an apologia to his supporters, “I am a human being, not God; and I had trusted people. I don’t blame myself, and neither have I committed a sin by trusting people. I would be a fool to make the same mistake if such a situation arose again.”

A few questions immediately spring to mind. Did the President send any messages, whether live and direct or indirect to Mr Panday causing him to believe he would be the anointed one? Was the message unambiguous or fuzzy, allowing Mr Panday to read into it whatever he wished to hear? Did Mr Panday miscode the signals which he received, or did the President deliberately wrong foot Mr Panday? How could Mr Panday have ever concluded that given all that had happened, and all that President Robinson had said in his national addresses, the President would think that appointing him was “the least dangerous course?” Was Mr Panday living in the sky?

The more important question, however, is whether Mr Panday initialed the terms of the Agreement only because he assumed that he would be the “selected one”? One might also wonder whether he agreed to the PNM’s nominee for the office of Speaker as a concession to the PNM believing that he would be the Prime Minister. If this is correct, as seems to be the case, it would also follow that much of what Mr Panday had to say about the responsibility on the part of leaders to sell unpleasant policies to their followers and about the high price that any leader would pay who broke the Agreement was meant for Mr Manning and not for him. Mr Panday is clearly now paying a price among all but his die-hard supporters for declaring the Agreement “null and void”.

It seems clear to many who can read and spell for themselves that the argument about the President acting illegally and unconstitutionality only applied because Mr Manning was chosen. What would have made the choice of Mr Panday constitutional and legitimate that was not applicable in the President’s choice of Mr Manning? Clearly, any choice which the President made would have met with critical comment. My own view is that the President made the right choice since to do otherwise would have been to go against what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, the intellectual and moral spirit of the times, which was clearly unfavourable to the Panday administration which had become ethically challenged even in the eyes of many of its supporters, their vote for it or against the PNM notwithstanding. In terms of his behaviour, Mr Panday was the outlaw in Gypsy’s “Western Rodeo”.

In emphasising the importance of moral and spiritual values, the President was in my view not indicting Indo-Trinidadians as a community, or the religions to which a majority of them subscribe. A careful reading of what the President said seems to indicate that he did not in fact base his decision on these principles, though he alluded to them. 

This was a “blue herring” which was used by UNC spin doctors to delegitimise the President’s choice. It is however arguable that by implication, the President was criticising the Panday administration which, over the past six and a half years, had done more to scandalise Trinidad and Tobago than had any previous regime, boasts about performance notwithstanding. Gangrene was gnawing the flesh of the regime, forcing many, including this author, to take a principled stand. All the signals warning about civic decay and eventual collapse were flashing red. 

The President had also seen the “owl of Minerva” taking flight and may well have felt that he had an obligation to give “history” a much needed nudge to bring it back on course. Time will tell how well he read the script and how well he played the bit part that the Zeitgeist had assigned him.

All of this brings me to the vexed question of power sharing. Mr Panday is now insisting on power sharing at the executive level as his conditionality for agreeing to the identification of a Speaker. No power sharing, no speaker! No speaker, no Parliament, which means elections in 2002 rather than 2003. Mr Panday has even threatened to mobilise his troops and bring them into the street to force early elections. All of this is meant to intimidate the PNM and frighten its supporters into submission. It will of course not work as Mr Panday well knows, but the threat could have unintended consequences for which we may all have to pay dearly. One agrees with Mr Manning that Mr Panday is not really negotiating but trying to force an early elections to short-circuit the ongoing investigations which will no doubt embarrass him. 

The question of power sharing at the Cabinet level is one which has radical implications for the way in which we govern ourselves, and the population should not be bullied into it in order to extract Mr Panday’s chestnuts from the fire. Intellectually, I am firmly in support of office and power sharing. I am also firmly of the view that given the gridlock that currently obtains in our society, the zero sum “winner takes all” paradigm has to be replaced by a non-zero sum “win win” alternative. To say this is however to approach the matter rationally. In politics, however, rationality rarely ever triumphs over emotion.

Before the society decides collectively whether to plump for power sharing, we have to assess the gains and losses that would accrue, and then decide whether we wish to be governed using such a formula. To put power sharing at the executive level in place now, Mr Manning would have, inter alia, to retire most of the members of his ministerial army to make room for Mr. Panday and some of his troops. On what principle would these adjustments be made? 

Would PNM and UNC MPs share authority and responsibility in the same ministry or will the PNM control some and the UNC the others. What role will Mr Panday and Mr Manning play in this dispensation? Would we have co-Prime Ministers (one Benz each) or would the office be held sequentially? If the latter, who will go first? Who will chair the Cabinet? To whom will ministers, civil servants, and statutory boards and state owned companies be beholden as the source of their authority? Will we have prime ministerial government, ministerial government, or collective responsibility? How will competing antagonisms be arbitrated or resolved if the Prime Minister is not to have a casting vote. Whose budget proposals or campaign promises would be privileged? Will Cabinet decisions be made by a show of hands? Will we have parallel Cabinets or Cabinets within Cabinets, each one seeking to undermine or outperform the other? 

There are other questions which are also crying out for answers. Can anyone, let alone a PNM leader, enter into any deal with Mr Panday without fear that he will be knifed in the back if perchance he were to doze off? Can foes of yesterday become trusted Cabinet colleagues in the future? Could one put outlaws and the sheriffs in the same corral? Mr Panday has a blemished record, and as many a former political ally can attest, Mr Robinson and the NAR included, he is not one who believes that his word means anything. Mr Panday believes that everyone has a price, and seems to think that in politics, anything goes.

And what happens to all the Commissions of Enquiry that both leaders have agreed to appoint? Will those be scuppered as the price of accommodation? Frankly, I do not think the broad public will accept such a cynical departure. 

The public, I would like to believe, would insist that the enquiries be held, no matter where the chips fall. The enquiries do not constitute a witch-hunt but a strategy designed to secure accountability for past policies as well as to remind others that white collar crime is a very serious offence to the society, and that he who commits it, be he at the highest or lowest levels of the society, must do the time like any “common” criminal.

To be continued

Posted January 27th. 2002 Trinidad Express

By Selwyn Ryan

The other side of power-sharing

IN MY column of Sunday, January 20, some of the political and social benefits of power-sharing were explored. While many agree in principle with coalitional politics or power-sharing as a formula for achieving greater equity in deeply divided societies, there are serious down sides to it which those advocating it should be aware of. The following are some of its main failings:

•It makes it difficult to view or to treat the nation or the society as a whole rather than as a coalition of discrete ethnic cohorts and subgroups.

•The process of national integration is frustrated and in some cases, what was achieved, or assumed to have been achieved in this regard, is reversed. The society becomes recommunalised.

•Governments take unduly long to be formed. Deadlock, defection, and opportunistic party switching or aisle crossing also become endemic as groups trade campaign finance or some other “currency” for access to elites who allocate resources.

•It makes Cabinet formation, national planning, and policy-making incoherent and irrational. Policy-making becomes characterised by ad hocracy, muddling through, crass deal-making, and the use of the group veto rather than consensuality. Coalitional cabinets have difficulty determining how critical decisions should be arrived at. Should it be by consensus or by the majority principle? Should there be provision for a minority veto, express or implied?

•The governing coalition becomes an “elite cartel” which carves up the political market and the economic resources of the society among its members excluding all those who do not belong to it. This is in turn may lead to “overbidding” by out elites who either seek to break up the ruling cartel or to gain inclusion to it. Inclusion is also often cosmetic rather than real, and invariably only obtains at the elite level.

•Corruption, clientelism, cronyism, and rent seeking become deeply entrenched as groups operate a “live and let live” policy. Any attempt to address corruption meaningfully is seem as boat rocking. 

•Excessive corruption encourages disaffection, and may also lead to governance or market failure, or both.

•Power-sharing frustrates reformist and democratic movements generally. It also inhibits transparency and accountability and could serve to marginalise civil society.

•In some contexts, power-sharing could paradoxically lead to “loser take all” instead of “winner takes all” since minorities could come to have real power to block change.

•Power-sharing in fact does not eliminate opposition politics. It simply relocates it or may drive it underground or into channels such as the army as we have seen in the case of Suriname. As Best would say, by opting for power-sharing, we might jump from the frying pan into the frying pan.

In the view of some analysts, our choices are not limited to power-sharing or the Westminster system. We need to think outside the box. At a Conference on Constitutional Reform in the Caribbean which took place earlier this week in Barbados, former Minister of Finance in Guyana, Haslyn Parris observed that the debate on the subject of power-sharing was getting nowhere. As he observed, “the flow of argument and counter argument on the matter of power-sharing in Guyana appears to have dried up. Maybe, what has happened is that all the arguments for and against have been put, no new arguments are on the horizon, and there is a ‘time out’ while the antagonists recover their energy. This is not the same as saying that there has been a resolution of the matter. Indeed, it appears that we have arrived at a stalemate, and neither of the main political parities can in the existing circumstances do anything rational to cause the matter to arrive at a definitive closure.” 

Parris believes that the stalemate was due to the fact that the problem was being approached in an “upside-down” manner. Advocates and opponents of the concept were viewing it in terms of an old paradigm when what was in fact required was that we go outside the win/lose Westminster paradigm.

The argument here is that elections should not mean that the electorate had divested power to a party or coalition of parties for a term. If this is conceded, then “there is no power that the elected government has to share … To speak therefore of “power-sharing” is to adhere to the old upside-down paradigm under which the Government of the day has unfettered decision-making power, and claims that the voter has given it that mandate, valid until the next election. This driving licence model under which the licence (the mandate from the vote) gives the designated driver (the government) the right to drive the vehicle (make all the important decisions about the society) without the interference of (meaningful consultation with) back seat drivers (the various interest groups in the society) is the old paradigm. To speak of “power-sharing” is also to ignore the inappropriateness of Parliament as a decision-making body, since a government majority in Parliament, under a regime of the “party whip” and “no crossing of the floor”, guarantees that whatever the government proposes must pass into law unless the Government chooses to change its mind.”

What is being advocated here is that Parliament should be the arena in which decisions arrived at consensually are ratified rather than made. These decisions ought to be made by people in a process of “meaningful consultation” and not between government and opposition, categories which are only relevant in terms of old paradigm. In the latter paradigm, debate is adversarial. Groups attempt to demonstrate that their policies and their versions of reality are true, and that the opposition’s views are heretical and false when, the truth often lies in between the arguments, if indeed the truth can ever be established. The old paradigm adopts a lawyer’s and cleric’s approach to religion, politics, and argument generally while the new paradigm involves exploration and meaningful consultation. According to Parris, “sharing of ministries has nothing to do with the new paradigm of decision-making. At most it has to do with the sharing of responsibility, accountability, and ministerial perks and prestige; but not the sharing of decision-making power, which [ought] to reside firmly and inalienably in the relevant communities that comprise the society whose affairs are to be managed.” 

What is needed, then, is change of the processes of governance rather than an alteration of the structures of government. “The attempt to amend the old structures is based on the old driving licence paradigm; it assumes that if the drivers concur, with whatever political horse trading underpins that concurrence, all would be well among the occupants of the vehicle being driven. That cannot be so.”

For the new paradigm to work, relevant consultation protocols need to be constructed. “It is only then that all the upside-down talk of “power-sharing” will truly cease and be replaced by “accountability and participation.” Parris, who was a member of the commission appointed to restructure the Constitution of Guyana, tells us that the Guyana Constitution sought to move in that direction when it provided in the new Article 13 that “the principal objective of the State is to establish an inclusionary democracy by providing increasing opportunities for participation of citizens and their organisations in the management and decision-making processes of the State, with particular emphasis or those areas of decision-making that directly affect their well-being.”

One waits to see if those “new age” post-Westminster principles would ever come to inform political behaviour in Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, or anywhere else in the region. One is entitled to be cynical. 

Posted January 20th. 2002 Trinidad Express

By Selwyn Ryan

Two sides to power-sharing

POWER-SHARING or non zero sum politics is rapidly becoming one of the preferred political flavours of the month. It is being widely regarded as an essential ingredient of the good governance paradigm. Many multilateral financial agencies or international peace brokering teams insist on power-sharing as one of their conditionalities for helping to stabilise failing states or resolving critical conflicts in bitterly divided societies such as Afghanistan, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, the Sudan, Yugoslavia etc. The basic argument is that no individual or group should be allowed to hoard power arrogantly and systematically exclude other groups since a sense of ethnic powerlessness or insecurity is one of the most enervating feelings any group can experience. 

Powerlessness, whether of the group or the individual, not only reduces feelings of national commitment, but also gives rise to frustration and anxiety which may result in civic withdrawal, poor teamwork, or extremist behaviour which could give rise to organised or anomic violence or aggravate it where it already exists. The basic argument is that power-sharing or co-rulership helps to build the sense of ownership which is needed to legitimise regimes, institutions, and the elites who run them. Words such as diversity, inclusivity, equity, and mutual respect have thus become more central to global political discourse in recent years than they have previously been. Trinidad and Tobago is not exempt from what is taking place globally, and demands for some sort of political power- sharing have grown louder in the wake of the recent 18-18 tie. 

Power-sharing takes many forms, the most familiar being those in which two or more parties agree, either before or after an election, to share in the distribution of ministerial and other critical posts and patronage appointments. This type of power-sharing is routine in the countries of continental Europe such as Italy, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands where politics is more consensual than adversa-rial. Such agreements to share may involve prior agreement on the policies that would be pursued, as well as on a legislative programme. This is normally the case in the Netherlands, for example, where governments may take weeks or months to be formed. 

In 1977, it took as many as 207 days to form a government; in 1973 it took 164 days. Some agreements are not as well structured or elaborate, and leave the policy agenda to be negotiated on an ad hoc basis. 

Executive power-sharing is however only one of the forms that power-sharing might take. Also familiar are pacts between two or more parties in which a minority party or parties enter into a pact to give “critical support” to a dominant party without formally seeking to join the government at the executive level. The famous Lib-Lab pact of 1974 which was arranged between the British Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats provide a good example of this model. The pacts usually last as long as the policies agreed to are honoured or until such time as one of the parties believes that it was time to go back to the polls. 

Guyana also has a very limited form of legislative “power-sharing.” What one has there are a number of cross party committees which are expected to come up with policy recommendations which the Government is expected to implement. There is however no sharing of power at the executive level. The PPP runs the government with or without consulting the Leader of the Opposition, leading many to claim that the Guyana power-sharing model is cosmetic and has merely served to hobble the Opposition PNC and neutralise its militants.

Power-sharing may also take the form of sequential or rotational sharing of the Prime Ministership. Such an arrangement took place not too long ago in Israel, while one is currently in place in Mauritius where the leader of the Mouvement Militant Mauricien, the radical creole based party, holds the Prime Ministership for two and a half years; Berenger will be succeeded by Anerood Jugnauth, the leader of the Hindu-based Mouvement Socialiste Militant for the remaining two and a half years. There have been other kinds of complex power-sharing arrangements in Mauritius where it is generally recognised that given the demography of the country, the electoral system, and the number of parties which exist, no political party is strong enough to win an election single-handedly. Pre- or post-election coalitions are thus the norm.

Fiji’s newest constitution, (1997), also provides for power-sharing if certain electoral thresholds are met. The constitution provides that any party which secures 20 per cent of the votes in a general election is entitled to be represented in the cabinet. In the elections which were held last year, the Indian-based Fiji Labour Party secured 26.5 per cent of the vote and 39 per cent of the seats and was thus entitled to eight of the 20 posts in the cabinet. Prime Minister Laisenia offered the posts to the leader of the FLP, Mr Chaudury, who accepted them without however agreeing to give the required undertaking that the FLP would ensure the continued political dominance of indigenous Fijians. 

The Prime Minister also claimed that giving eight posts to the Labour Party would make it difficult for him to offer posts to some of the other native Fijian parties which were part of his coalition. That, he said, would create a situation that was unworkable. As such, no cabinet posts were offered to the FLP, a course of action which has not found favour with Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand, India and Britain which are presently putting pressure on the Fiji government to respect the constitution.

Other power-sharing or co-ruling formulae include self-determination, political federalism, devolution, cultural autonomy (e.g. giving groups responsibility for managing their own religious, linguistic and educational institutions) conventions about multi-channelled elite consultations, co-sharing of important gate-keeper offices (e.g. several deputy presidents or prime ministers,) qualitative majorities, separation of powers, co-speakers, rotating or alternating chairmen of important parliamentary or congressional committees, the right to filibuster in the legislature as a strategy for giving minority groups a veto on matters of fundamental importance, coin tosses, or the integration of cultural icons or symbols in flags, anthems etc. Information sharing is also an important dimension of power-sharing, especially in contemporary society where knowledge is power.

Advocates of these and other arrangements argue that in deeply divided societies, the principle of “winner takes all” with alternating or circulating majorities or pluralities even if reformed, is not an acceptable or equitable way of governing since the system often means that some groups are systematically kept out of the power loop for extended periods. “All hands must be on the tiller. All groups must be on-side.” Mandela acknowledged the principle in 1991 when he said that “it may not be enough to work purely on” one person one vote because every national group would like to see that people of their flesh and blood are in government…The ordinary man must look at our structures and see that as a coloured man, “I am represented.”… and an Indian must also be able to say, “I am represented.” And the whites must say… “I have got representation” especially in the first years of democratic government….. We may have to do something to show that the system has got an inbuilt mechanism which makes it impossible to suppress the other.”

Power-sharing, if it is to work, cannot however be forced or made to depend only on constitutional or electoral engineering or crafted leadership deals. It must be sustained by a political culture and a civil religion which preaches consensus and encourages group and leadership trust. Without these and other facilitating conventions, the system will never work. Gridlock would become entrenched. One must also recognise that governments must not only be representative, but must also enable decisions to be made effectively. The South African interim constitution recognised this when it provided that “the cabinet shall function in a manner which gives consideration to the consensus-seeking spirit underlying the concept of a government of national unity as well as the need for effective government.”

To be continued

Posted December 16th. 2001 Trinidad Express

By Selwyn Ryan

State of paralysis

ONE recalls Lloyd Best saying on election night 1995 that the political system in Trinidad and Tobago was in a state of precollapse. Has the system as we know it now collapsed? Arguably, the answer to the question is “yes”. The collapse is however not total. It does not approximate what we have seen in places like Somalia, Fiji, Yugoslavia, or Afghanistan, to cite but a few of the worst cases of state collapse. The state apparatus still functions in respect of routine administrative matters, and the security services and the Judiciary still execute their functions. Everywhere else, however, stasis and incipient paralysis obtains.
How do we put Humpty-Dumpty back together again? Do we patch up the battered Westminster “winner takes all” formula which has brought us to this pass and continue to muddle through, or do we experiment radically with some version of the power-sharing paradigm?

We should bear in mind that the consensual power-sharing model characterises most political systems, and that the one which we use flourishes mainly in the Commonwealth with some notable exceptions, among them New Zealand which transited to a mixed variant of the consensus model in 1996. There is a significant body of scholarly literature which argues that the pluralitarian or majoritarian “winner takes all” formula is unsuited to societies such as ours which are deeply divided or stratified on the basis of ethnicity as opposed to class. One of the most impassioned critics of the Westminster model in multi-ethnic societies was the late Sir Arthur Lewis who argued that “what is good for a class society is bad for a plural society … . To exclude the losing groups from participation in decision making clearly violates the primary meaning of democracy”. Lewis argued that the Westminster model fails the test of fairness and leads to bad governance at best, or civil war at worse. Others such as the Dutch scholar Arend Lijphart, argue “that the real choice of plural societies is not between the British majoritarian model and the continental consociational model, but between consociational democracy and no democracy at all.” 

It is however important to note that there are many variants of the power-sharing model. These range from the routine type where one significant party agrees to work with one or two others in order to manufacture a majority to control Parliament, to the more granulated and fissiparous type such as exists in Switzerland and Belgium where several minor parties are yoked together to try and achieve the same end. Some are stable coalitions of parties in which the leaders trust each other while others are fragile and coalitions collapse with great frequency. Some parties share power sequentially, taking turns in office, while others do so by dividing up the executive offices of the State. 

While there is much to be said about the desirability of power sharing or even the absolute need for it in certain kinds of crisis situations, serious downsides are associated with its use.

Most, if not all coalitions, are characterised by intense and prolonged bargaining over the prime ministership and other key posts. Policy incoherence and inflexibility are also the norm since vested groups have to be persuaded that proposed policy changes will not upset the balance of power to their disadvantage. The system also encourages parties within the coalition to threaten to or to actually veto each other’s policies if they have the leverage to do so. In many cases, policy making is not informed by consensus at all, but by the mutual veto which the members of the cartel wield when necessary. In fact, in most of these systems, dissensus and stalemate are the norm rather than consensus.

Petty and grand corruption are also a chronic feature of the consensus model since “cops” and “robbers” are in the same elite cartel with the former not being able to blow whistles on the latter due to fear that they might bring down the coalition. The system is also characterised by low transparency, minimal accountability, and excessive cronyism and clientilism. As the IDB noted in its comment on governance in Suriname which has a power-sharing model, “patron-client networks tend to lead to an under provision of collective goods and bias policy makers away from generalised policy making towards particularistic administrative decisions”. Another key problem in power-sharing arrangements is the allocation of credit for things which go well and blame for things that go badly. How are these credits and liabilities shared on the campaign trail?

 Who gets bragging rights for performance and boos for failure?

And what of Trinidad and Tobago? Would full power sharing work well here? I still have my doubts. Power sharing works better where leaders trust each other and where there is a consensual culture to sustain it. Both are lacking in our context. We however have no alternative but to experiment with a limited version of it if only to give us time to get out of the mess in which we now find ourselves. If we are to put arrangements in place to elect a speaker, restructure the budget, fulfil campaign promises (or at least some of them), restructure the EBC, rationalise the constituency boundaries, appoint a Constitution Reform Commission and Commissions of Enquiry into the many allegations about grand corruption, some sort of interim government of national unity must be put in place. Either that, or there has to be an agreement by one of our two parties to give “critical support” to the other to allow it to undertake an agreed number of legislative and other initiatives to get the system back on track and avoid sustained collapse. Such an arrangement was put in place in the United Kingdom in 1977 and lasted for a year until the Labour Government was brought down by a vote of no-confidence.

There is however some curiosity as to why Mr Panday chose to put power sharing on the table. My own view is that Mr Panday is the proverbial “fox”, and that his offer was driven by tactical considerations which are designed to avoid him being relegated to the political remand yard. Mr Panday also wishes to project himself as an apostle of inclusion and moderation, as well as pre-empt Mr Robinson from appointing Mr Manning to the office of Prime Minister. Mr Panday has signalled his true intentions by saying that he does not intend to “surrender power”, as if power was his to retain or surrender! Little does he know that he has lost both political and moral power, and that he is in fact a lame duck PM and will certainly not be acceptable to the country as its next President if it is true that that is the deal which he is trying to negotiate as the price of agreeing to surrender the prime ministership.