Stay calm, collected, and help keep Guyana safe
I doubt when you pick up this edition of the Kaieteur News, there will be the 2020 election results. I wrote yesterday that it may very well be Thursday. Once GECOM and the international observers have pronounced, all contestants have to and must accept the results.
This evil act in every election of this group claiming it has won and that group saying that is not true, that in fact it has won, must come to an end. It is stupid and savage. You contest an election, you lost, then plan for the future and let your country strive.
One of the two big parties has won. I don’t care which one it is. I was not a supporter of either. I stated how I would have voted more than a year ago, and I voted on Monday for Lenox Shuman. My congratulation to the winner once GECOM makes its pronouncement.
In this commentary, I want to continue where I left off yesterday, and that is to advocate for inclusive reach by the new government. When a party wins a landslide in Guyana given our ethnic make- up, it means that the victor has multi-racial support. If the winner of the 2020 poll did not get a huge majority and when you examine the margin of victory through the use of demographical analysis, the victory was not by a sizeable leap, then the new dispensation has to open up to the totality of this nation.
I rehash for emphasis what I wrote for my Monday column, titled, “Only inclusive power, not oil alone, will birth a future.” When the numerical difference in ballot-collection reflects the demographic shape of Guyana, then the rulers have to put themselves in the place of the supporters of the losers who see the narrowness of the triumph as no real triumph at all. They ridicule the margin of victory.
The other half from 2011 never reconciled itself to minority government.
In 2011, the other half serenaded their constituencies with the song of minority government. In 2015, zero point three percent separated losers from victors. The other has never reconciled itself to that tiny difference. So the question has to be how can a legally elected minority regime or legally elected government with a narrow victory govern fairly and effectively without resentment from the constituencies that missed out?
The answer is they can rule, but can the tenure be crisis-free. The 2011 minority administration and the 2015 dispensation were crisis-laden. Can we go past that after this week? There can only be one answer; we have to. What is past is dead and gone. The elections of 2011 and 2015 have disappeared into history. There is a new administration that will be sworn in later this week. It cannot be business as usual.
Do I have a blueprint for inclusive governance? My answer is yes and no. A paradigm for power-sharing has been on the table years now and written by several independent analysts. So no, I haven’t got an involved document to guide power-sharing. Power-sharing and inclusive governance are two different formulations.
For now, the new rulers have to begin with inclusive governance. That simple process means – do not allocate resources and make appointments that are in essence, incestuous pathways. The other half must feel that they are entitled to the assets that their country owns. Judge the relevance of the talent you want and access that talent without regard to race and party affiliation.
Inclusive governance also means consulting with your adversaries across the aisle. They have constituencies that they have to cater for, and the rulers cannot and must not alienate them by ignoring the pleas from the other side of the aisle. The politics of accommodation also involves the reaching out to civil society and listening to their objections to your policies and legislation.
I will avoid citing examples from the minority regime in 2011 and from the 2015 dispensation, but one compelling situation needs mentioning, because in internalizing the lessons from it, the new government – whether PPP or APNU+AFC – can avoid these kinds of pitfalls.
There was a group formed in 2013 to agitate for the monument to the 1823 slave uprising to be built on the site where the captured rebels were executed – Parade Ground. No section of the Indian, African, Amerindian communities in Guyana objected to this location. Only African-Guyanese showed an interest. It was a non-issue for Indians.
All African–rights organizations insisted on Parade Ground. The Ramotar presidency erected the monument on an obscure site. The new government in a racially bifurcated nation cannot be that cruel and insensitive. All of us hope not.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)