THE CARBOLIC CARBUNCLE

September 7, 2014, By KNews, Filed Under Features/Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source - Kaieteur News

Everyone is entitled to change their minds. At one time, the 1980 Constitution was decried by opponents of the Forbes Burnham regime, including the PPP. There was, in particular, serious objection to the powers of the presidency. But in 1992, after the PPP had won a landslide victory, a different tune was sung. We were told, in one particular case, that it is not the powers of the Presidency that is the problem, but rather who is the person exercising these powers.

In other words, these powers in the hands of a demagogue are deleterious to the best interests of the nation, but in the hands of a democrat, need not be abused.

It was not Cheddi Jagan who announced that what is more important were the hands into which these presidential powers were entrusted.  It was one of his apostles. But that position was widely interpreted within the society as indicative of the PPP’s comfortableness with the then powers of the presidency.

This defence about the hands into which the powers were placed being more important than the powers themselves was fundamentally flawed. It in effect judges a country’s political system on the basis of the character of its leader. If the leader has authoritarian predilections then powers that give great authority and leverage to the Head of State and Head of Government are deemed deleterious to the best interests of democracy. If on the other hand the leader is democratic, then this character trait is deemed a check on the abuse of the powers.  Hitler would have loved that argument. Let it be recalled that he started out as a democrat.

The fundamental law of a land cannot be left to the whims and fancies of the leader or to interpretations about that leader’s predispositions and character. The very purpose of a Constitution is to prevent arbitrary rule, to avoid a nation and its peoples being subject to the whims and fancies of a leader. To therefore argue that what is more important is the person that holds the powers of presidency, is at odds with the very purpose of constitutionalism.

The PPP government in 1992 had pressing priorities. Understandably, constitutional reform was not one of those priorities. The economy was in dire straits and the greater attention had to be focused on the economic question rather than on political issues.

It was only after the 1997 elections, which the PNC lost and knew that it lost, that the demands for constitutional reform were heightened. Incidentally, it was the Guyana Trades Union Congress which initiated this call after it was clear to that body that the PNC did not win the elections.

And so following the 1997 elections, the opposition began to press for constitutional reform. Their motives were suspect. Under the PPP, major revisions of Burnham’s 1980 Constitution took place. In those revisions, the powers of the presidency were pared. Unlike what many people still feel, these powers are now not the same as they were under Burnham.

The revisions of the Constitution also included changes to the electoral system. But this did not bring about the demise of the PPP. It still has not. The PPP won elections in 2001, 2006 and 2011. And from all of these results, including a minority government in the 2011 elections, it has now crystallized that there is indeed a need for our constitution to address the ethnic question. Voting remains not on policy merit, but primarily on race. The ethnic question therefore, it has been argued, is the overwhelming problem in our politics, and has to be addressed, including and especially at the level of our Constitution.

There have been some formulations advanced that what is needed is power sharing between the political parties. This is seen as a means of addressing the ethnic question. Power sharing is a complex issue. It cannot be left to constitutional tinkering. Such tinkering is being supported by the viewpoint that what is needed is a return to executive powers being vested in the Cabinet rather than in an Executive Presidency which, in Guyana’s case, has been described as a carbuncle.

A carbuncle is a lump or knob-like growth on top of the skin. It contains pus which oozes into the body. A carbuncle is an abscess that needs to be drained or excised totally. It is the most revolting caricature to describe the Executive Presidency of a country. It flows from a particular mis-analysis of the system of government. And it is a mis-analysis that lends itself to the imagery of a pus-filled abscess on the body politic of the country.

But if we argue that the fundamental problem facing governance in Guyana is the legitimacy of the government. And if the basis for questioning the legitimacy of the government is no longer about rigged elections but about the fact that the  electorate is factionalized along  the lines of race, then merely removing the carbuncle and empowering Cabinet will not settle the issue of political legitimacy.  Removing or draining the abscess does not deal with the root cause of the infection.

This only goes to show that while it is acceptable for persons to change their minds about the Executive Presidency, it is wholly objectionable for solutions to be advanced that are ill considered and which are inconsistent with the problem being addressed.

Source -- http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....-carbolic-carbuncle/