Parliamentary Caesarism & hostage holding tactics

PULL QUOTE: THE U.S. House of Representatives with a Republican majority currently uses hostage holding tactics, meaning that if House Republicans do not get what it wants, it will hurt the government. That is to say that if the House Republicans are unable to defund Obamacare, then they would shut down the government. In fact, former U.S. Secretary of State for Labor argued that the hostage holding tactics are really extortion. This Republican House of Representatives’ present effort to oust Obamacare has now reached its 42nd attempt. In addition, the use of hostage holding tactics generally shows that a political party has no plan, as was echoed on ‘Real time with Bill Maher’ on September 20, 2013.
In fact, in all the rhetoric against Obamacare, what does not come out is the fact that 30 million Americans without health care benefits will now become eligible for health care. Whatever other blemishes Obamacare may have, bringing 30 million persons into the healthcare system is worth its salt. The hostage holding tactics are more like game tactics whereby winning in the interest of the party is more important than winning in the national interest. Obamacare is now the law in the U.S. and it is in the national interest to give consideration to its holistic benefits for the American people rather than providing a mere piecemeal review of this law. And keep reminding yourselves that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives tried 42 times to remove this law. 

These introductory remarks bring me to Guyana where there is an opposition-controlled parliament, meaning that the combined opposition can outvote the Government on any matter. Guyana is experiencing an extraordinary time because there are people out there whose pastime is to constantly reject whatever seems to work in the country’s interests.
The most blatant rejection was that of the Amaila Hydropower Project (Amaila) by the leading opposition party A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). APNU and its surrogates had a death wish for Amaila. And so to execute their will, APNU and their surrogates vehemently used emotionalism to present financial estimates without delineating the assumptions used in their formulation; and in addition, there was no presentation that the assumptions were satisfied and were reasonable in such formulations.
It is leverage, and not emotionalism and hot air that advance negotiation. The hugeness of Amaila as a project was bound to attract numerous questions and issues, whether such a project’s location was in Guyana or elsewhere. Long before Amaila came down to the wire a few weeks ago, the combined opposition and its surrogates had sufficient time to probe its referents, whether the referents had to do with inadequate disclosure of information, extravagant costing, excessive payouts, etc.
And so the intent to kill Amaila was validated through (1) APNU’s practical no-show in consensus building for more than a year when the project developer Sithe Global requested political compromise as a precondition to advance the project, and which request was repeated about a year later, and (2) APNU’s non-support of Amaila in parliament. APNU’s death wish demonstrated its non-interest in developing any leverage to input any probing and negotiation process on Amaila. Such political behavior eventually will have deleterious consequences for national development.
Where there is harm done to nation building, politicians and their motivation must be judged intended and unintended consequences of their actions. Guyana is witnessing parliamentary Caesarism, whereby everything that the Government of Guyana brings to parliament, that parliament sees it as unworthy of the Guyanese people, and therefore that parliament engages in the killing act. In effect, we see parliament’s murder or attempted murder of several Cabinet’s positions. The opposition uses hostage holding tactics or perhaps even extortion to bring forth Caesarism. The latest victim was Amaila.
The combined opposition’s application of hostage holding tactics in parliament brands its approach to development in Guyana as sterile to say the least, as it has no progressive proposal for development on the scale of Amaila that would stand the test of scrutiny for global funding purposes. Or if the combined opposition has such projects, then in the interest of nation building, it should bring them to the table, rather than to engage in a culture of parliamentary Caesarism. Hostage-holding tactics generally denote that the party executing such tactics has no credible plan for enhancing the lives of the poor and vulnerable.
As is the case with all democracies, the Government of Guyana has an immense obligation toward improving the quality of life of the weakest social stratum. The Cabinet’s support for the Government’s large-scale projects as the Cheddi Jagan International Airport expansion project, the Marriott Hotel project, and the Specialist Hospital project together would create hundreds of jobs. But again, these projects and Guyana become victims to the combined opposition’s parliamentary Caesarism.
With this constant political debauchery, the Guyanese people’s trust in the parliament or other political institutions may be waning. But we cannot be certain that this is the case, since Guyana’s legislatures have been un-theorized and understudied, resulting in minimum study accorded to legislative politics. However, the current growing rift between government and the combined opposition-controlled legislature may be testimony to people’s declining trust for political institutions.
But this waning trust can be reversed, for as a government’s performance improves, people’s trust for parliament improves (Levitt, 2011). But in Guyana where the opposition-controlled parliament blocks almost every major governmental infrastructural project, the government’s performance will not be positive, and simultaneously, trust for the opposition-controlled parliament will tend toward zero. The political people must remember that parliamentary Caesarism is the enemy of political trust among the populace.

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