Guyana Observer News

Ramotar's reasoning is stupid

Wednesday, 18 August 2010

By Keith Williams

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Today I wish to talk about the recent comments by the General Secretary of the PPP that his party is open to power sharing, but refuse to enter into any such arrangements because they cannot find any party in the opposition they can trust for such an endeavor. This is a patented example of the ass backward reasonings that emanate from the PPP leadership. These leaders, within the ethnically structured reaches of their psyches, seem to be imbued with a God Complex that produces these patterns of hubristic thinking. In this context, they arrogantly reserve the right to determine who should be accorded the privilege of exercising power in the society, and the criterion for such choice is, obviously, only those who will shuffle and be obedient to the dictates of their commands.

Mr. Ramotuar asserts that the nation would be harmed if they placed power in the hands of people who would abuse it. If the situation in Guyana was not so serious, so utterly deplorable, his comments would be great material for the comedic relief circuit. The dry faced hypocrisy with which Ramotuar delivers this absurdity, is indicative of the arrogance with which the Government deals with the real concerns of the Guyanese people. Pray tell, have there ever been greater abuse of power than what we have witnessed from the PPP regime over the past 18 years? From using the tripartite state owned and publicly financed national media for propaganda dissemination, corrupting the delivery of justice through the agency of intimidation, selective prosecution and preferential non prosecution, and giving a wink and a nod to the most ghastly spate of lynchings to have ever occurred in the Commonwealth Caribbean and South American territories, the PPP leadership have engaged in the kinds of abuse of power that is grotesque and appalling. In view of that reality, it is utterly ridiculous for Mr. Ramotaur to advance a specious argument that fear of abuse of power is the obstacle to a movement towards inclusive Governance in Guyana.
The political and parliamentary system in Guyana facilitates and encourages a winner take all end result in elections period. And the real obstacle to efforts to change that outcome is not the potential of abuse of power by the political representatives of the near majority that do not vote for the PPP, and are thus excluded from every aspect of decision making in our nation. Rather, it is the intoxicating greed and avariciousness of the PPP leadership to control the entirety of the power spectrum in Guyana.
The leadership of the PPP invariably put the cart before the horse in their considerations of what should happen and when. The President, in response to calls and demands for investigations into scandals and atrocities relating to the CLICO debacle and the lynching of hundreds, continuously claim that there is no evidence to launch investigations into those situations. Guyana has to be the only nation in the world that takes the backward view that evidence of a crime must preclude an investigation. In every other part of the civilized world investigations are carried out in order to determine whether a crime or wrong doing has occurred, particularly when the scent of such comes from Governmental agencies. The investigative agencies of a criminal justice system would be unnecessary if that was the established principle, since all that would be required under such circumstances would be to prepare a case and lay it out before the courts for judicial decisions and recommendations.
They have compounded the corruption of justice in Guyana by orchestrating legislation that allows their tame Attorney General to nullify the most widely dispersed system or principle of justice in the world. To wit, that when a jury finds a person innocent, that decision is final, and cannot be appealed. Now you understand why they refused Mark Benschop bail after a jury dead locked 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal at his trial. The unquestionable purpose behind the enactment of the jury nullification legislation is to keep their political opponents under judicial lock down when a jury discerns that the persons or persons in the dock before them are there as a consequence of political prosecution and persecution.
Mr. Ramotuar’s expressed reasons for his party and Government not engaging the opposition in discussions on power sharing follows that same line of reasoning. And it is stupid. There would be no need for such discussions if there was trust between the political forces in Guyana. It is because of the absence of trust that such discussions become imperative. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s views on the subject, expressed in Vol. 8, No 2, of 2006, under the caption “Democracy and Power Sharing in Multi National States or Societies enlighteningly states among other things that, quote, “….democracy in deeply divided societies is possible only when power is shared instead of monopolized, devolved rather than centralized. Majoritarian democracy is judged unsuitable for plural societies, because the winner takes all character and concentration of power allow a dominant group or coalition groups to capture state power, relegating the minority into permanent opposition. The breakdown of democracy in many post colonial states in Africa and Asia can be attributed to the adoption of the Westminster style democracy inherited from the British Colonial Powers. Power sharing is synonymous with democracy…” end quote.
This describes the situation in Guyana in a manner that could not be more accurately and coherently expressed. Guyana is a multi ethnic society, a divided society, and we inherited a Westminster style political and parliamentary system from our former Colonial Masters that is used by the PPP regime to marginalize the hopes, ambitions and aspirations of a significant portion of the population. The PPP regime, favored with a numerically dominant ethnic constituency, relishes its position, and avariciously intend to extend it into perpetuity. Thus the evasive excuses being postulated by Mr. Ramotuar.
I will leave you with this quote from Martin Luther King. “…Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers. Nothing pains some people more than having to think…” end quote. I sometimes musingly ponder whether Martin Luther King looked into the future, saw what we have in Guyana today as Government, and as a result formulated that observation.

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