Almost three years ago I suggested
that like the Americans we Guyanese must adjust our voting so that the
executive should never control the parliament or the judiciary, I made this
suggestion since as the father of the US democracy James Madison visualised it,
the three branches of Government should at all times be separated but in this
country they are not! And to move forward we have to change that.
Under our present constitutional system
which is a hodge podge based on the British Westminster system and Burnham's
1980 constitution in which the position of Prime Minister was replaced by an
executive President with enormous powers far above what any Prime Minister anywhere
enjoys, even the constitutional reform process has failed to reduce those
powers to a reasonable level, any party winning 51% in any election ends up
with a virtual dictatorship, since the three branches of Government the
Judicial, the legislative and the Executive will be controlled by one person,
the President!
Baker and Lewis the two British Judges
invited here by then Chief Justice Desiree Bernard to examine our legal system mention
the numerous complaints they received about the politicisation of our judges, they
of course did not look into it since it was not within the purview of their
mandate; Sir Michael Davies brought here by the British Commonwealth to examine
our parliamentary system said it clearly, the Parliament does what the
executive tells it to do. Without these separations of powers there can be no
democracy and so as I have said before we have these contentious and more often
violent elections every 5 years to decide who the dictator will be for the next
5 years.
So I had suggested that we should vote
in a manner which can restrict the executive from having these enormous powers,
which means that whoever wins the elections should not control all of the seats
in the Parliament.
Some people feel that such a situation
can lead to deadlock, but I feel that it can lead to consultation, compromise
and cooperation three C's which are completely lacking in our winner take all
system now, and which has led to disaster since it is probably the main reason
we are in the ridiculous Socio/economic situation we find ourselves in today in
this country.
I don't see why for example if I tell
you that the PPP are doing a very poor job of managing our affairs, some of you
take that to mean that I don't like Indian people, that happens not because of
me, that happens because they have been programmed to think that way, that the
PPP means Indian and that if you attack the PPP you attack Indians, nothing can
be further from the truth. Over and over I have said that the PNC have not
proved to be a competent opposition just as I have said that the PPP have
proved to be a failure in Government.
Frankly according to polls that I have
seen private ones as well as public ones, if we had and election tomorrow the
most optimistic estimate is that the PPP will only receive 42% of the vote and
whilst this is enough for winning the executive it would not be enough to win
control of Parliament. If this is accurate and I have no doubt that it is and
it holds until election time i.e. if you the voters keep your current mindset
until the 2006 elections then we can have the biggest advance in our political
history as a nation. We will effectively put a check and balance into the
excesses of whoever is in power.
From the time of independence this has
been mainly a two party country the PPP and the PNC the Indo Guyanese and the
Afro Guyanese parties, there was a time when we had a functioning middle class and
the United Force made the third force but it is my opinion that D'Aguair
made an error by joining Forbes Burnham's government in a formal collation. I
can venture a guess as to why, but one by one his MP's became to all intents
and purposes PNC MP's and D'Aguair lost control of his own people we must never
allow this to happen again. It is important and we must remember it at all
times.
Now we come to the third force I
have seen people sitting in talk shows for hours telling us what the third
force is, well you don't need an hour to tell the story, it is really very
simple, the PPP [the ruling party now] is the first force, the PNC is the
second force, the first and second forces have been at each other's throats
since independence to the detriment of the nation, so we have to put something
in place which holds the balance of power in the parliament, which is neither
PNC or PPP to force the first and second forces to work together in harmony,
which can move the country forward.
Even if the third force wins the majority
of votes in an election it can never join either the first or the second forces
since in doing so it can and will lose its identity. But it must be prepared to
work with both the first and second forces since the PPP and the PNC will not
just disappear overnight, there will have to be meaningful dialog between them
or there will never be progress, so this third force must have as a hallmark of
its identity a guarantee that it is not for or against any race, it must be an
all race party of Guyanese not indo or afro, just Guyanese at last.
That is the way forward, many of you
have known it all along but finally the others are beginning to awake to the inevitable
the more they see the PPP in inaction in Government and the PNC in inaction as
the opposition!
Now we come to the area of confusion,
which is why members of the public have asked me to do this commentary the
third force is any political Party or Movement which is neither PPP or PNC
so the third force can comprise as many as 6-9 parties UNITY, WPA, GAP, AFC,
ROAR, JUSTICE FOR ALL, all these parties are third force parties whether they
know it or not, since if they are not in the third force they are either PPP or
PNC. See how simple this is?
Around September last year 5 TF parties
began to meet to decide how they will pool their resources to contest the 2006
elections, unfortunately they were led to believe that they would be more
effective if they became a formal alliance or platform as one party or
movement with one leader selected from among them as the presidential
candidate, i.e. the Third Force Party, somehow or the other something called
the Vision group appeared in the middle of all this which added to the
confusion, some parties from the beginning were not prepared to subsume their positions
as leaders of their individual parties to this platform, some parties felt that
they had more support i.e. more shares in the political pie and that joining
with weaker parties would not be an equitable division, some Parties had more
resources than others so forming alliances and pooling these inequitable
resources in a collation of equals would not be reasonable or possible, since
the popular parties in the mix supported by their niche constituency in the
political arena would end up with some very dissatisfied supporters if they
gave up their leadership positions.
I think that the third force platform
idea is more or less dead now, but that does not mean that they cannot support
each other in a more informal alliance maintaining their own identities thereby
removing the areas of conflict and campaign as third force parties supporting
and helping each other against the first and second forces and that is what I
think they will decide to do, if closer to the elections there emerges a clear
leader in this third force which all can agree on, and there are clear
indications through polling etc. that joining forces can actually win the
election then perhaps it would be the right time to collate formally, but doing
it now would be like betting on your hand in a poker game before you actually
got your cards, put that way it sounds ridiculous doesn't it? but that is
exactly what they were trying to do, so this perception by the public that the
third force concept is disintegrating and dying is a fallacy, the third force
is very much alive, the third force platform i.e. a formal alliance with one
leader is not going to happen now, that is true, but the parties can and will,
I think, sit down and discuss a more loose arrangement supporting each other in
the 2006 campaign instead of fighting among themselves leaving a trail of blood
from back stabbing one another to the election later this year, that ought to
make the first and second forces very happy indeed.
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