–Alexander urges radical reform
…says people need decision-making power
GUYANA Elections Commission (GECOM) Commissioner Vincent Alexander in his personal capacity believes that Guyana’s electoral system is dysfunctional and needs to be revamped to put decision-making power in the hands of the people.
Speaking to the media on Saturday evening, at the end of Day Four of the national recount, Alexander said that Guyana’s current electoral system allows whichever party represents the majority to impose itself on the minority — an age-old problem affecting the country.
“This is a view that I express not as a commissioner, but as an individual: our electoral system is dysfunctional. It is dysfunctional,” Alexander set out to first establish.
In his view, the system should allow greater power to be placed in the hands of Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) and Regional Democratic Councils (RDCs).
His remarks were informed by the reality of Guyana’s ethnic challenge, whereby the country is always either governed by one of the two main political parties, which are primarily supported by one of the two main ethnic groups.
“My own view is that the country needs to move in a direction of greater decentralization; that it needs to give more power to local authorities and to regions and develop a sub-system of subsidiarity that allows for the allocation of funds to those levels of authority, so that people can have real power in their local [districts] and are able to pursue the things that are doable at the local level. I think that would help us a great deal because we live in enclaves and so we have no one to complain about when we do that,” Alexander reasoned.
Alexander is the longest- serving commissioner at GECOM. Giving further examples of his reasoning, he used the community of Foulis/Buxton as reference.
He said that the village is a known African-Guyanese village which has now found itself in a situation whereby ‘Buxtonians’ are outnumbered. The village has therefore come under the administration of persons who are not from the community and may therefore see their opinions and wishes being disregarded if in non-alliance with the majority. Alexander said that such an example can be replicated in Indo-Guyanese villages.
“The point that I am making is that our electoral system, our governing system, given the ethnic configuration of our country and the tendency for ethnic voting, does not represent people’s power; it represents a majority being able to impose itself on a minority and this has been our problem from time immemorial,” he stated.
“Our country has been built that way, not by us necessarily and we need to wake up to that reality and to address that reality, so that we can then have a society where we are diverse — but not diverse conflictual — in unison because we feel that we all are a part of the decision making because the decision making will devolve and only things that have to be national will be national.”
Based on the 2012 census, East Indians are the largest ethnic group representing about 39.8 per cent of the population. Persons of African heritage represent some 29.2 per cent of the population.
Giving another example of how decision-making power at the local and regional levels would help to remedy Guyana’s electoral system, Alexander turned his attention to the current COVID-19 health crisis.
He stated that the regional administrations in Regions Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) and 10 (Upper Demerara-Upper Berbice), have dealt with the crisis and contained the same far better than Region Four, because they possess local power. He stressed that the country must evolve to system that better allows for these possibilities.
With firm conviction, he stated: “Our politicians that are ranting and raving over winning the elections — on all sides of the fence — need to wake up, smell the roses and confront the real problem.”
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_05_11_2020