A country prides itself on its ability to uphold the rule of law. It boasts about its people and their ability to make visitors comfortable. Most of all, many countries hold themselves against others.
When that happens we hear words like dictatorship, banana republics, democratic and until Donald Trump, sheep hole countries.
Guyana, depending on who leads, shouts from the rooftops that it is a democracy. I remember back in 1992 and for years after, the late Mrs. Janet Jagan talking about a fledgling democracy. This year I heard a lot of talk of some diplomats protecting Guyana’s democracy. I also heard talk about the restoration of democracy.
The way people use this word would make the listener believe that democracy is the be all and end all of societies. That was when the confusion started. So many countries proclaimed that they are democratic yet they appear to be autocratic.
There is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; India is said to be the greatest democracy in the world; the United States does not say that it is democratic but that it supports democracies all over the world.
Why does it not support the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea popularly called North Korea? Why did it condemn the protests that stemmed from the March 2, 2020 elections but does the very same thing in the wake of its November 3 elections?
How could Mike Pompeo declare that he protected democracy in Guyana when he tries to subvert the will of the American people who voted against his boss, Donald Trump?
This discussion about democracy would go on and on and end up nowhere. In fact, people would engage in endless discussions all leading to no conclusion unless the strongest person with the biggest piece of wood enforces his opinion.
That is why I only concentrate on Guyana. Guyana says that it is a democracy and since this is the only country in which I have lived I am forced to accept what passes for democracy. I can safely say that I certainly do not like it.
Last week I hosted a programme on social media. With me were attorney at law Timothy Jonas and politician Veerasammy Ramayya. The issue was accountability and transparency. In a democracy such terms should be commonplace. They are said to be the bedrock of democracy.
I decided to examine the dismissal of nearly one thousand people from jobs within the public sector. There was no transparency about the terminations unless, to the casual observer, they were people of African ancestry. Indeed, that was patently transparent.
One cannot conclude that they were non-supporters of the ruling party because unless they had a huge stamp on their faces or unless one saw their vote.
Some of their contracts may have been signed during the tenure of the previous administration but that did not make them supporters.
Newly elected Minister Oneidge Walrond had a contract that saw her working with the then Minister Cathy Hughes. Was she a supporter of the previous administration?
I spoke about the termination of the contract of head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Vincent Adams. No reason was offered; the termination was not transparent. It reached the point where even supporters of the ruling People’s Progressive Party questioned it.
Mr. Timothy Jonas said that I was starting in the middle when I spoke about the dismissals. He simply said that were one to look at the senior positions in the system one would see all the appointees being people aligned to the People’s Progressive Party.
He also said that the same operated with the other government. That was not necessarily true because many who worked with the PPP up until 2015 remained in their positions.
Recently, there was the termination of the contract of the head of Guyana Power and Light and the re-appointment of Bharrat Dindyal who the former Chairman of the GPL Board, Winston Brassington deemed to be unfit for the position. This recent re-appointment was certainly not transparent.
Then there were the arrests and detention of a number of people who were one way or the other assigned to the Guyana Elections Commission. Jonas did not hesitate to say that the detentions were wrong.
Again it was patently transparent that all those detained were Black people. Perhaps this is how democracy works. I don’t understand the word.
James Bond and Colvin Heath-London were detained by the police. Jonas explained that such detentions should be directed by the courts. For the police to undertake the role of the court was certainly an abuse of power. And the police do abuse the power.
I read a few hours ago about a man who was detained for robbery, made to lie on the floor of the cell and smell the faeces. After going through that, the police merely offered the man an apology because they found that he had nothing to do with the robbery.
In a democracy there is the rule of law. However, there are many people in jail because of a confession. It is common knowledge how confessions are procured.
Whenever I hear the government talk about democracy I ask myself if the talk is about any country other than Guyana.
