Continuity and Change

Donald Ramotar has been duly elected as the seventh executive president of Guyana. We offer him our congratulations and wish him all success during his tenure. His success will be Guyana’s success and as such, our good wishes are boundless. As far as countries go, ours is still a youthful one. As such, it is imperative that the hand on the helm maintains a continuity of our progress and ebullient growth trajectory that defied all odds in the region.

As general secretary of the PPP for the past decade, President Ramotar institutionalised a revolution in the political culture of our country by abjuring every tinge of the premises of the old PNC party paramountcy over the government that had been institutionalised by that party.

His democratic credentials are impeccable. As we have emphasised in several previous editorials, Mr Ramotar will be the first head of state of our nation that had chosen politics as his vocation.

We believe that this experience should serve him in good stead in the immediate future. As we emphasised in our editorial “The people have spoken”, the ship of state is venturing into new waters. Even though the Executive will comprise President Ramotar and the Cabinet that he will constitute, for the first time in our history, the Legislature will have the opposition parties with a majority. A razor-thin majority to be sure – 33 opposition seats to 32 PPP/ C seats.

The new government will be faced with the necessity of working with the opposition as it seeks to obtain the constitutionally mandated legislative imprimatur for its programmes and initiatives. Almost a decade ago, in “dialogue” talks between the PPP and the PNC, the last and still unfinished item on the agenda was that of “inclusive government”. As with the present APNU conglomeration, the PNC had then also called for “shared governance”, but the agenda negotiated had accepted “inclusive governance” as the specific objective.

Fate conspiring with the Guyanese voters, along with constitutional stipulations, has seemingly placed “inclusive governance” on the front burner once again.

The opposition political parties now have the opportunity to work together with the new government to develop this country they assert they love. The ball is in their court.

They can no longer complain that they are merely rubber stamping decisions of the government in Parliament. As we have previously pointed out, the opposition now has an effective veto power over the government’s business.

This is an awesome power and as always, power must be accompanied by responsibility. The opposition, therefore, now has an awesome responsibility to act maturely in participating in the governance of this country.

Inclusive governance, of course, cannot ever mean “minority governance”. In our estimation, the need for the new PPP/ C government to solicit and obtain the one additional vote in Parliament will compel effective consultation.

All constitutions, including the present one, have all insisted on effective “consultation” by the government with the opposition. This stipulation has been a bane of contention in every Westminster type government, including Britain’s.

Oppositions invariably complain that consultations are perfunctory at best. But under the present dispensation, the government will not be in a position to simply go through the motions. But again we caution that the opposition must not be intemperate to push the new government beyond reason and so precipitate new elections. Experience in other jurisdictions has demonstrated that the electorate will not judge them kindly.

With the foregoing opportunities for the opposition as background, it is, therefore, surprising to learn as we go to press, that they are contemplating mounting challenges to the new dispensation. Some of these challenges evidently include actions in the streets of Georgetown. We call for good sense to prevail and we remind the opposition leaders of their own words of prudence in the tense period. God bless Guyana.