BEFORE the outbreak of the Israeli bombing, if President, Dr. Irfaan Ali had gone to Japan and defended hunting of whales, the usual suspects, the Stabroek News, the opposition parties, and the predictable civil society groups would have climbed the highest mountain in Guyana and shouted – consultation! Consultation! Consultation!
I doubt the President will face that same cry if he does that whaling thing right now. Why? Because the consultation creature has been run over by a big truck since the Israeli bombing. Four western leaders, days after Israel began to bomb Gaza, travelled to Israel. Of the four, only one has a parliamentary majority – Prime Minister Sunak of the UK.
Biden in the US does not have a majority in the House of Representatives. Macron in France does not have a parliamentary majority. The German Chancellor by way of a coalition has a parliamentary majority, but there is a large parliamentary opposition.

Biden was the first to visit while Israel was bombing Gaza. But he did not consult the House of Representatives about the necessity of the trip. If he did, he would have received permission because the Republican Party is an insane supporter of Israel. I follow world news and I am not aware that Biden consulted any major American constituency before he went to Israel.

Let’s go to the UK. Scotland is an integral part of the UK. Scotland has a First Minister who is married to a Palestinian woman. His in-laws are trapped in Gaza. The ruling Scottish National Party has 43 seats in the UK parliament, making it the second largest opposition party in the UK parliament.
Did PM Sunak consult the Scottish First Minister and the 43 MPs before he visited Israel? The answer is no. Scotland and the British Government have different views on the Gaza conflict. The Scottish government wants the British government to call for a ceasefire in the Israeli bombing.
Macron flew off to Israel but he did not appear in front of France’s parliamentarians to discuss his trip with them. The German Chancellor did not either. The Colombian president made caustic statements condemning the Israeli atrocities in Gaza, but he issued his position without consulting the Colombian parliament.
The most emotional support for the Palestinians has come from the Malaysian Prime Minister. He even said that he spoke to the leader of Hamas. On such a huge foreign policy decision, he did not seek the approval of his parliament.

So what is consultation? Consultation is not an immeasurable process. It has its contextual limitation which electoral success allows for such limitation.
I am against what Israel is doing in Gaza and in one of my columns last week I asked why no signatory to the International Criminal Court has not requested an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. But I do not think that the heads of governments of the US, UK, France and Germany that went to Israel violated democratic norms.
I do not think that the Colombian president and Malaysian Prime Minister had to proceed with societal consultation before they condemned Israel. All of these heads were elected to lead their countries and they must be given democratic space to make decisions, even if there are constituencies in their respective countries that disagree with the policy decisions.
This is what elected democracy is all about – the legal, legitimate right to govern. In Guyana, the usual suspects, the Stabroek News, so-called civil society groups and the opposition parties use the mechanism of consultation to deny an elected ruling party its legal mandate to administer the affairs of the nation.

What we have seen in Guyana since August 2020, is barefaced activism by sections of society to deny the ruling party its legal right to govern, using the pretext that government must consult. In such a scenario where is the space of an elected ruling party to make its own decision?

In late 2020, the Stabroek News published a number of editorials criticizing the PPP government for removing Dr. Vincent Adams as head of the EPA. At the time, and at the moment, Dr. Adams sits in the hierarchy of the opposition party, the AFC. There is no country the last 200 years or more in which a practising opposition politician heads a sensitive governmental institution.

Co-owner of Stabroek News, Isabelle Decaires, described Guyana as a dysfunctional democracy because the government decided the composition of the board of the National Resource Fund.

This country is going to hear more demands and cries for consultation on any and everything the government does. But now after the war crimes committed by Israel, the PPP can ask its critics – “show me a democratic government that consults society as a cornerstone of its rule?”