UNDER his byline in his weekly Stabroek News column, Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan is listed as a former Chancellor of UG and a former acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. I don’t want to inject any interpretation to those titles except to wonder out loud if by the presence of those past status people are deterred in replying to the absolute aridity in Dr. Ramcharan’s thinking about the use of state power in Guyana.

Dr. Ramcharan’s offering on Guyana is so absurd that his critics could be severe on him through the use of dismissive adjectives. From reading what he writes about the exercise of power, I am of the incontrovertible opinion that he lacks a thorough familiarity with political theory thus uninformed rambling is substituted for careful interpretation and astute analysis of Guyana’s politics.

I have dealt in four columns with Mr. Ramcharan’s previous venture into political analysis when he talked about a creeping autocracy in this country. The content of that piece of his was just an elementary and cursory glance at governance in Guyana. In that item, the source of the creeping autocracy was the Stabroek News.
Mr. Ramcharan has now followed up on his creeping autocracy thing with another take on Guyana that he referred to as empirical autocracy. Again, his source for this empirical autocracy is the Stabroek News (SN). I have been an academic for the greater part of my life and I have never witnessed another

academic writing on governance and their source material is a newspaper editorial. There is only one word to describe such research methodology – comical.
When you are examining a country’s performance in the exercise of state power, it is a requirement that you consult academic outpourings which come from academics that research then write. It cannot and could never be from a newspaper. It could be from a newspaper but an Op-Ed piece written by an intellectual whose content is based on sound theorizing.

What is disgusting about Dr. Ramcharan’s reliance on SN is that the SN is an openly hostile newspaper to the ruling PPP going so far as to use descriptions, characterisations, condemnations and chastisements of the Guyana Government that exceed any venom that comes from mainstream opposition parties.
If you are familiar with the Cheddi Jagan premiership then you would see the connection between the anti-PPP newspapers in those days owned by rich Mulatto/Creole people and the SN today. The people who own the SN are in a rush to emulate the anti-Jagan newspapers of the sixties.
Let us briefly examine Ramcharan’s contention of empirical autocracy in Guyana which he sourced SN. I offer three examples from him:
1 -“What about the current dispensation under the PPP/C. Is there not empirical autocracy or absolute government?” His source is the SN editorial of October 12. And why is there autocracy? Because SN thinks that in the President’s recent address to the nation, he wants the current and future direction of

Guyana to be decided by the PPP only.
2- Ramcharan quotes from a news report from SN of October 4 which cites the annual report of the Police Complaints Authority about misuse of police power.

3- Ramcharan concludes that there is corruption in official circles because a SN editorial of October 14 points to its existence.
What interpretation one is to put in this shallow commentary on autocracy in Guyana? Autocracy exists in Guyana because the SN says so and the SN is the sole source of Ramcharan’s analysis. It is clear that Ramcharan’s understanding of power exercised in Guyana is derived from the SN only. Not even a first year student in the Social Sciences would accept such methodology even in a newspaper column.

So if SN says the report of the Police Complaint Authority shows evidence of police violations, Guyana is an autocracy. This is infantile commentary for one reason only – the examples of police immoralities in Guyana are a drop in the ocean compared to countries that are supposed to be democratic.
He ends his commentary by asking how in Guyana, the citizens can exercise control over the small group of politicians who exercise power on behalf of the citizens. That is a question that existed in philosophy and was first put in Western societies by Socrates. No one has been able to answer it with finality

from Socrates right up to the brilliant philosopher from India, Amartya Sen in his breath-taking 2009 philosophy text titled, “The Idea of Justice.”
While the philosophers cannot arrive at consensus on Dr. Ramcharan’s question, the mundane method used for over 100 years now is periodic election in which the small group of politicians that the citizens do not can be voted out.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.