Guyana Politics: Shared Governance – Stabroek News Editorial

By Stabroek News– August 23, 2020 – EDITORIAL

There has been no term more tossed about in the political sphere in recent times than ‘shared governance’, by which is more properly meant ‘shared executive governance’. It has been trumpeted as the panacea for all our constitutional ills, which will reduce if not eliminate the political cum ethnic tensions which so debilitate us and inhibit the possibility of rational government.

Judging from the way it voted in March, the electorate is not necessarily persuaded of the advantages of this arrangement; it was, after all, the small parties which for the most part were promoting the idea, and they did very poorly, a joinder of three of them securing only one seat.         

Various writers, including to our letter columns, have pointed out that there is no trust between the PPP/C and APNU. In fact, the situation is worse now than it was two years ago, and there can be no provisions for the sharing of power if they are not underpinned by a measure of trust; for obvious reasons it simply would not work. Furthermore, the two sides do not want to share power and will no doubt go to some lengths to avoid that outcome. No one has made more obvious his autarchic predisposition and his determination to avoid collaborating with the opposition as it then was, even when that was constitutionally required, than former President David Granger. Short of a personality transformation his attitude is unlikely to change.

It is true that APNU+AFC prior to accepting the declaration of the last election result had proposed discussions about shared governance. That was just a last desperate attempt, however, to prevent the winning party from acceding to office and allowing the caretakers some form of power. Even if, for the sake of argument, it had been implemented, it would not have succeeded because in the end Mr Granger would have tried to make sure he retained control, and the compromise would have broken down.

But there is something more important. The PPP/C understands very well that it needs the Indigenous vote in order to achieve power, and therefore has no intention of allowing any kind of Indigenous political party room to evolve.  Mr Lenox Shuman will find that he has his work cut out for him. Apart from naming five Indigenous representatives to its parliamentary complement, the party has wasted no time in re-appointing the 200 Indigenous workers who were dismissed by the previous government on its accession. They were dismissed because their function was to perform political work for the PPP/C in their communities. Now they are back, along, one presumes, with Freedom House’s carrot and stick approach in the hinterland. The current government won’t go for shared governance because it doesn’t think it needs to, and most fundamental constitutional reforms require a two-thirds majority in the House, if not in a few instances a referendum.

The last election was fought with a certain amount of desperation because both sides thought that whoever won office could stay in power for a long stretch because of the oil money. Even although the parties were still committed to helping their own constituency first, they operated with the economic assumption that a rising tide lifts all boats.  One suspects, however, that the electorate was a great deal more cynical than it was given credit for, and that the supposed oil bonanza was not in the forefront of voters’ minds when they went to mark their ballots.

Unfortunately shared governance does not prevent corruption. As the case of Lebanon has demonstrated, it can even make it worse. There the different antagonistic groups making up the former government simply purloined from their slice of the pie. In a situation too where there would be no official opposition in the House, there would be no political entity which could ask the necessary questions and apply pressure on a range of issues, and not just corruption. In a democracy that is plainly dangerous. An autocratic shared government is no better than a single party one.

In the end, a clean society depends not on shared governance but on a number of autonomous, well-manned institutions with appropriate powers which are independent of political interference, such as the Audit Office and Procurement Commission, to cite just the two obvious ones amid a number of others. It also presupposes an effective, honest police force and an independent judiciary.

All of which does not mean to say that we are not in urgent need of constitutional reform. We are.  But there needs to be a public discussion on the kinds of changes to our constitution we would like to see now, bearing in mind that this is a complicated society which is probably in a transitional state.  If there is enough public pressure the two Cyclops-like parties may be forced to accede to the proposals. It just has to be remembered that constitutional reform is not the same as shared governance.