In Liberia, Lyons explained that people voted for peace, not on the basis of the leader’s democratic credentials, or his capacity to assemble a power-sharing government, but because they wanted their most important political player within the governance structure; as his exclusion could restore conflict, tension, or suspicion.

DRUMMING  and humming the exclusion of Africans from the national pie in Guyana’s politics, has become à la mode.

And I do believe that the drummers and hummers do genuinely want to advance their cause of ensuring that Africans share in this national pie.

Interestingly ensconced and intending to confer weighting to this perception are a series of other perceptions that: (1) the PPP/C Government is a perceived Indian Government; (2) that the PPP/C Government’s distribution of economic and social rewards is inequitable to the advantage of Indians and to the disadvantage of Africans; (3) that Guyana is a racially-divided society; and (4) that Africans in senior positions are tokens in the public sector.

And I suspect these drummers and hummers imagine that the cure for all these evils is power sharing, or in their taxonomy, ‘shared governance’.

Metaphorically, these perceptions then evolve into the status of a chronic disease that afflicts Africans in Guyana; that disease is political exclusion, perhaps, other kinds of exclusion, too.

I am quite sympathetic to the cause of ending any kind of exclusion; and where some treatment for this disease may be necessary. Nonetheless, any treatment prescription must have a basis in comprehensive ‘population’ management in the epidemiological sense.

And particularly, as this exclusion has a disease status, treatment now becomes the ‘in-thing’; and in the eyes of the drummers and hummers who feel that Africans are hurting, the treatment is shared governance; even so, this treatment has to correlate with an evidence-based diagnosis; and comprehensive ‘population  management’ requires the full sequential array of services pertaining to diagnosis-treatment-care.

In my recent four papers on power sharing, I attempted to present research findings on power sharing and to fully understand its challenges, should there be a
mutual ‘stakeholder’ endorsement of this phenomenon.

As with so many things, some people conveniently move toward prescriptions without any evidence-based diagnosis. I will not present any ‘pro-con’ diagnostic evidence here; the protagonists must make this evidence public, as their treatment prescription already is in the public domain.

In my recent four papers on power sharing, I attempted to present research findings on power sharing and to fully understand its challenges, should there be a mutual ‘stakeholder’ endorsement of this phenomenon. I previously listed six (6) challenges, among others, and here again is a brief presentation of the six:

First, the possibility of winning a competitive election may reduce the proclivity to prefer total power over power sharing; second, some minimal and superficial form of power sharing may emerge if party leaders believe that power sharing would work against their opponents who are part of the agreement; third, power sharing could be a trap where inclusion could bring increasing factionalism within a scenario; where some people experience exclusion even amid a power-sharing arrangement; fourth, the prerequisite that one party must yield some power may place that party in difficulty, considering the prevalence of the zero-sum power framework; fifth, the fact that power is fluid and moves back and forth from one interest group to another, may inveigle all power shareholders to strengthen their power capacity; and sixth, the presence of differential degrees of commitment to a power-sharing agreement in itself poses a danger to the arrangement.

How do the power sharing protagonists intend to address these challenges to this new treatment of power sharing? Let’s now look at a ‘health’ parallel on how the U.S. addresses challenges to approving a new clinical treatment.

The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) of the U.S. will approve a drug for treatment, once the drug’s efficacy is incontestable and its challenges reach resolution, in the public interest. For instance, the FDA, in addressing some challenges, puts in place, inter alia, regulations to minimize public health risks; ensures rapid access to new, safe, and effective medical technologies; and provides reliable and valid information to consumers on medical products in use.

And then, in addition to the challenges on power sharing, there are others, serious enough that if no resolution happens, they could negatively affect the public interest. Bruce Jones noted that the 1993 Rwanda power-sharing agreement failed because there was no consensus on the hardliners’ role; one of the flanking causes of the 1994 genocide.

Spears reviewed the following books and found no cases of power sharing where there is equal sharing of significant positions, and minimal cases where there was any sustained long-term government: Taisier M. Ali and Robert O. Matthews’ (edited), Civil Wars in Africa: Roots and Resolution, McGill-Queen’s University Press; Timothy D. Sisk and Andrew Reynolds’ Elections and Conflict Management in Africa (edited), United States Institute of Peace Press; Paul Hare’s Angola’s Last Best Chance for Peace: An Insiders Account of the Peace Process, United States Institute of Peace Press; Terrence Lyons, Voting for Peace: Postconflict Elections in Liberia, Brookings Institution Press.

And then Spears pointed to unequal power distribution which could generate different political agendas; for instance, Paul Hare on Angola noted that UNITA made it clear that it wanted its views to carry weight in the power-sharing pact, but there were others that presented UNITA as a junior player.

In Liberia, Lyons explained that people voted for peace, not on the basis of the leader’s democratic credentials, or his capacity to assemble a power-sharing government, but because they wanted their most important political player within the governance structure; as his exclusion could restore conflict, tension, or suspicion.

Again, Jones argued that the best prescription is to, either, include all the groups in the power-sharing pact, or to exclude some of them; Jones concluded that not doing either would result in the pact’s failure.

These requirements raise questions in Guyana. How would the selection of groups happen? What could be the exclusion criteria? Guyanese should not uncritically endorse any power-sharing pact, or any other pact, until there is full engagement with the problem vis-à-vis diagnosis-treatment-care; and an understanding of power sharing and key power balances of competing groups.