Democracy does exist in Guyana

TIMES INT'L

Dear Editor,

Ever so often, the question as to whether Democracy, and what type, exists in Guyana does arise in letters and in the general print and electronic commentaries. Suffice it to say that there are varied views, depending upon which quarter a view emanates from. There have been descriptions ranging from “nonexistent” to “limited” and “fragile”, all attempting to describe the existence of the democratic ideology as such a process particularly relates to Guyana.

Mike Persaud, in his “Guyana is a fragile democracy says Dr. Misir”, gleefully posits that such a description is well known to be the case by Guyanese, and has concluded that democracy does not exist.

I agree with Dr Misir’s view as to the kind of democracy that exists here, but not along the lines of Persaud’s analysis, which outlines the threat of ethnic voting, the hitherto non-existence of cross-racial voting, and failure of either party to attract the others’ ethnic constituents. I interpret his views to mean that those factors are a threat to the attempts at building the democratic process here.

One must be able to appreciate Dr. Misir’s description of Guyana’s young democracy, particularly emerging from a lengthy phase of heavy authoritarian rule. It was natural that a culture of democracy had to be nurtured, and be guarded against the many known attempts to undermine its process. Therefore, given the very ethnic peculiarities that Mike Persaud has mentioned, the PPP/C administration, in their wisdom, recognized the necessity of introducing social and economic programmes that were meant to improve the quality of life for Guyanese, thereby facilitating the Guyanese people’s equal participation in the national development process. In this very critical way, a democracy is protected and allowed to grow, since it removes opportunities for derailment.

Of course, democracy does exist in Guyana; one just has to read and listen to both the private print and electronic media on national issues to observe the free and unfettered opinions/ views, many times bordering on the ridiculous, inclusive of libel and defamation.

Yours truly,

Dean Clement

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