Parliamentary Decorum and the Republic
Kaieteur News – There is one great story that is often used to establish the basic mythos of American democracy. It goes like this, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi most recently said: “On the last day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when our Constitution was adopted, Americans gathered on the steps of the Independence Hall to await our government news the founders had crafted. They asked Benjamin Franklin, ‘What do we have, a republic or a monarchy?’ Franklin replied, ‘Republic, if you can keep it.’ ”
The basic concept of a Republic is simple – it is a representative system where people exercise power through their elected representatives, sometimes underpinning the more basic concept of democracy where people are governed by a government elected by a majority of voting citizens qualified country. In more homogeneous societies, the distinction can be lost but in a multicultural, multiracial courtesy like Guyana, specific representation is important. This was at least partly the idea – whatever the actual outcome – of the then Prime Minister [and Head of Government] Forbes Burnham took the country to Republic status on February 23, 1970.
The political system that evolved from that time to date – despite all its flaws – was designed at least in paper to give meaning to the official full name of this country, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. The Parliamentary session held on Monday, the Twentieth Session of the Twelfth Parliament of Guyana, Day 1 of the “Debates” for the 2021 Budget, held the day before the 51st anniversary of the celebration of our Republic status, was a betrayal of any aspiration for a co-operative republic. As reported in our comment yesterday, the session was typically not characterized by any informed, considered consideration or questioning of the actual budget presented for 2021 and the programs it is supposed to cover.
What happened in the National Assembly instead was mostly empty theater, patently false information, poor research, boorish behavior that went well beyond any established definition of heckling, ironically overt homophobia in what used to be both sides of the house, obviously paralyzing the bait of race as racial representation and general homeless behavior to / from the political representatives of the citizens of a republic.
Yesterday, largely due to the limitations of COVID-19, for the first time since its inception, the celebration of our Republic anniversary festival, Mashramani, was non-existent. Yet, it should be noted that there has been no real attempt to frame why, the logic, it is worth continuing to keep the Republic going outside the party. The virtual ghost town that was Georgetown on a day, we are familiar with friendship and celebration aptly matched the macabre decline that was the parliamentary session held the day before.
We need no more lessons on the fragility and corruption of our fundamental democratic institutions in 2021. The year 2020 was encyclopedic in that respect, a bleak reminder of how many things must be set in order for us to keep our republic going whole.
There was one bright light on Monday. Newly minted Housing Minister and first-time Senator Susan Rodrigues began her budget presentation by first expressing disappointment at the poor intellectual quality of the debates, before proceeding to deliver a tour de force parliamentary performance that was, as it should be, grounded representation on facts from her political side, cruel deconstruction of the pitfalls of opposing arguments, and framing her portfolio within the larger national developmental agenda. Just as importantly, he did it with great decor. As the debates continue over the next couple of weeks, that is the standard her house colleagues should aspire to.