THERE IS the classic paradoxical question: What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immoveable object?  Logically, the existence of one thing means that the other could not possibly exist. Often, however, what is paradoxical or contradictory in the philosophical realm is made possible in the political.  Let’s take the Barack Obama Democratic presidency and its struggles with the Republican-led Congress.
As someone who has been following the Obama Presidency from its inception, I think it’s clearcut that the Republican congressional majority has no strategy beyond gridlock and frustration of the American President’s agenda.
Asked if he sees Obama having to resort to the use of executive powers as a good thing, veteran Democrat, Charles Rangel had this to say:
“I do, but I don’t want it to be interpreted that I welcome the executive branch using their powers instead of having the legislative branch do it. It’s necessary now because it’s a gridlock between the president and the United States [Congress].”
Now, I know that while we admire so many things from America, I’m not certain political gridlock is one of those things we should import or aspire to. And I don’t think on either side of Parliament, there has been as complete as possible a grasp on what the consequences of this new dispensation are.

For example, I am unsure of the exact provisions, and I am the first to admit that I may be subject to correction, but my belief is that in relative terms, Guyana’s executive presidency relative to Parliament, far outstrips the American executive presidency relative to congress.
Were a gridlocked Parliament to force the invocation of executive presidential powers, this would run counter to the evolution of our democracy as a whole, as a country that is politically mature enough for the necessarily most contentious branch of government, in that it is the more directly representative of the will of the people, to work under whatever arrangement exists.
I’ve recently read that the President’s initiative, the Tripartite Talks between the PPP, APNU and the AFC, was in danger of coming out  separately, the President’s statements on last year’s elections as recently carried in this paper, and the Opposition’s blockage of several bills brought by the government’s side.
I don’t want to go into the merits or demerits of the cases of either the government or the opposition here. In looking at other countries what I will say is that a dispensation in which the government imagines itself to be an unstoppable force, and the parliamentary majority imagines itself to be an immovable object is one that cannot work.
With regard to  those talks, I believe that it would be helpful not simply for the parties engaged, but for the general public as well, for there to be a clearly defined and publicised terms of engagement.If we take the pronouncements of some persons on the “endangering of the tripartite agreement” at face value, what is clear is that so far closed-door horse-trading has not worked.
That’s why, in my previous article on working together in Parliament, I stressed the need for greater stakeholder accessibility to what goes on in the corridors of power.  In addition to there not being enough public awareness of how parliament works in itself, and now how parliament works under a minority government, there is the additional public blankout on the precise nature and framework of the talks.
In another previous article, written just before the elections last year, I had argued that there should be some sort of system or organisation in place that advocates  political accountability by all parties using their electoral manifestos as  benchmarks for analyses.  It would cost nothing for the parties engaged to explain to the people who voted for them (as well as the people whose votes they courted but didn’t get) their objectives, relative to their campaign promises, in engaging each other.
My reasoning is that in a closed group, the chances for gridlock increases because – contrary to the spirit of democratic representation – there is little major stakeholder, meaning the electorate, scrutiny or input of the negotiation process, so the burden of progress is placed on personalities welded into these separate blocs.  And if that continues during the tripartite arrangement, it is only natural that it would continue within Parliament itself. To qualify this, I feel I need to add that I’m not above ‘in camera’ deal-making as a whole – there are crucial issues (crime, national security, for example) in which we should trust our political representatives to act in our best interest even if we do not get to see under the hood of whatever particular vehicle they choose to travel in from time to time.  But that vehicle must be seen to be going somewhere, meaning that if you go and have your private talks, it should result in concrete legislation in the Parliament afterwards.  And the opposition has to be wary of engaging in a tyranny of one vote as a policy, as opposed to – as I’ve advocated before – a rules-based operational framework from which reasonable progress can be expected to emerge.
There have been several answers posed with regard to the paradox of the unstoppable force versus the immovable object.  The one I like best, the one that makes most sense to me, is the one which posits that in a situation where both are said to exist, then neither can be said to exist because they are mutually exclusive.  I would like to stress, if that has not come out clearly in this article, the urgent need for consensus.  In terms of effective government of this country, if the gridlock continues or escalates because of intractability from both sides, then we will in essence be deprived of a political leadership, a whole and completely functioning government, and this is not what we would have voted for – whatever our political persuasion – last November.