The Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the Linden shootings has retired to ruminate over the testimonies presented in the latest skirmish in our long running political war.
We?ve had so many CoI?s over the last sixty years but they haven?t seemed to have solved anything, have they? Why is that so?
One of the major reasons is that our politicians have studiously avoided identifying the nature of the war and so for almost half a century they have made our country bleed without offering us a chance of peace.
Because it should be self evident that if you refuse to be up front as to why you have a problem with something then on what basis would you resolve the problem? Most citizens have acquiesced in the code of silence. Our problem in Guyana is a political problem and it must have a political solution. The currency of politics is power, and politics is ultimately concerned with the competition of groups within a given society to capture and secure state power. There is nothing sinister about this struggle for power. The question is what would the power holder do with the power and would the power holder be given the legitimacy to use the power by the citizens of the country.
The composition of the competing groups varies with the nature of the divisions or cleavages in the society: all societies are split economically, most ethnically and some racially.
The nature of the political competition depends to a large extent on which of the cleavage emerge and remain as the most salient.
In Guyana you would think that we all know that our political competition is based on the fact that ethnicity (or race, which is not the same but is used synonymously) is the dominant cleavage and it not only suffuses politics but most of our other social interactions.
But yet a powerful norm has emerged that rejects the public acknowledgement of this fact. In fact, if like ROAR, one dares to raise the issue in open discourse, apart from the distaste aroused, you are immediately branded a ?racist?. The main purveyors of this obtuseness have been the politicians who have, by and large, dominated the politics of Guyana in the modern era.
Their Marxist-Leninist ideology (of whatever flavour) evidently compelled each of them to deny that when it came to protecting their political interests the Guyanese people divided themselves on ethnic lines. Our good citizens may spend 4 years and 364 days announcing ?all awe ah one? but when they went individually behind the blinds of the voting booths on election day, they divided themselves as if they were all hard-wired to some ethnic transmitters.
And the sad truth was that they are so wired. All the present political parties still mobilize along ethnic lines ? just look at their meticulous ethnic stacking of their Executive bodies.
They all define themselves as ?multiracial? parties. Meaning that these parties know that to be seen as legitimate by citizens, they had to try to convince the voters that they had representatives from all the ethnic groups in their midst and so were competent to represent all the people. But since 1957 all elections have been more or less ethnic censuses where the Indians voted for the PPP and Africans voted for the PNC. Other groups had to make their choice. Yet the parties insisted that they were multi-ethnic. Like the WPA, the AFC will eventually be shown to have been just a gesture.
The point, of course, is that since the two ethnic groups have become even more closely matched in numbers ?? the PPP and PNC each think they can win it all and so refuse to give legitimacy to the other. When you combine this view with the fact that the Civil Service, the Army and the Police are all overwhelmingly dominated by its constituency, the PNC/APNU will continue to be emboldened to threaten the status quo.
We note that in its latest ?police reform strategy? the PPP has refused to include the major recommendation of the Disciplined Forces Commission (unanimously approved by the present three parties in Parliament) for the forces to reflect the ethnic composition of the population. The APNU and AFC have both remained mum about this retrograde step.
But if PNC/APNU were to win the next elections, do they think they will be given legitimacy by Indians? Not likely. The PPP and PNC/APNU must first end the conflict about the conflict and accept that they are ethnic parties. They should get together and form a transitional real multiethnic Government of National Unity. Then they can move on to promulgate a new Constitution for the 2nd Republic of Guyana which, we suggest, ought to be constituted along Federalist principles.
Source: http://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2013/02/03/the-conflict-about-the-conflict/
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