Use Patterson’s skills in Guyana

GUYANA’S DEEPENING constitutional crisis, with its potential for worsening that country’s political instability and inciting violence, ought to be a matter of regional concern, requiring intervention from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Regional leaders should, with urgency, appoint a good offices mediator to help Guyanese political parties to peacefully work through their issues, leading to the holding of credible elections as early as possible and in keeping with constitutional norms.

As it now stands, based on Wednesday’s announcement by President David Granger, Guyanese will vote in national and regional elections in six months’ time, on March 2, 2020. However, Bharrat Jagdeo’s People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and its alliance partners insist that there is neither a constitutional nor a legal basis for a continuation of the life of the government and say that the poll must be held immediately. If these positions are not reconciled, the dangers could be grave.

The genesis of the current crisis was last December’s successful no-confidence vote against Mr Granger’s Partnership for National Unity government, whose one-seat majority was upended when a single member voted with the Opposition. In the circumstance, an election should have been held within three months, but the Government challenged the outcome in the courts on the basis of what constituted a majority in relation to confidence votes.

In June, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Guyana’s final court, upheld the legality of the no-confidence vote, and its consequential orders three weeks later said that the three-month clock for new elections began to run from the initial date of June 18. On that basis, Guyanese should have voted on September 18.

However, concomitant with the constitutional quarrels between the parties were disagreements over the legality of the constitution of the electoral commission and its capacity to deliver credible elections. The membership of the commission has been sorted out, but there are still disagreements with the voter register.

Mr Granger’s side wants a new list, and he has now reported that he has been informed by the electoral commission’s head, retired judge Claudette Singh, that credible elections are not deliverable before February 2020. So Mr Granger wants the national assembly to reconvene in two weeks to extend the life of the government until then. Such a motion will require a two-thirds vote, and, therefore, opposition support, which Mr Jagdeo’s party, thus far, is disinclined to offer.

Two factors make the Guyana situation especially fraught. Despite the increasing cross-fertilisation of Guyana’s politics, the republic’s political parties remain largely ethnically based. Afro-Guyanese, by and large, largely support the People’s National Congress (PNC), the biggest group in Mr Granger’s partnership. The PPP is backed mostly by Indo-Guyanese. The current stand-off could possibly rekindle the ethnic tensions that have haunted the country since colonial Britain undermined Cheddi Jagan’s left-wing government in 1953.

Second, with major offshore oil finds recently, Guyana may be on the cusp of an economic takeoff. The Government that has the opportunity to shape the events of the oil economy will be seen to have a political advantage. Indeed, the Opposition has accused Mr Granger of beginning to leverage the expected oil wealth to his political benefit.

We don’t expect CARICOM to take sides in this matter or to abridge its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of countries. However, that doesn’t mean that the Community has no leverage in helping countries, especially one that is part of the family, and working through its difficulties. It is in that context that we recommend that the Community name a special envoy to Guyana on this matter.

We, in this regard, recommend two candidates: the former Trinidad and Tobago diplomat Reginald Dumas, who once served as the UN’s special envoy to Haiti during Kofi Annan’s time; and the former Jamaican prime minister, P.J. Patterson.

Our preference would be the latter, not because Mr Patterson is Jamaican, but because he possesses unique skills, not least of which is the ability to make every side in a dispute feel that they got precisely what they sought. Further, he knows the personalities at the centre of the dispute, Messrs Granger and Jagdeo, and he is likely to command their respect.