I DO not think I will ever stop repeating on this page the point that it is important to counter the egregious, irrational and unscholarly outpourings against democracy in Guyana that come from people who think that what they are publishing is sound and informative.
Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan does not stop. As a critic of the Guyana Government, he puts out commentaries that cannot survive meticulous academic examination. He would reject any advice offered by me since I am one of his detractors, but I would suggest he gives himself a period of abstention before he writes again because he is looking bad.

Here is the latest offering of the gentleman that simply goes in a direction that makes no sense in the study of governmental behaviour. Dr. Ramcharan rejects the thesis that a person cannot postulate the existence of unintended autocracy because autocratic behaviour by governments is designed action.
He finds solace in an analogy that simply is outrageous and in order not to hurt his feelings, I will stick with the use of “outrageous” and avoid any insulting adjectives though I feel harsh words should be used in rejecting his analogy. He submits that a driver kills someone and though the death was not intended, the effect is that death occurred.

Thus he goes on to say that autocracy may not be intended, but the result is the same as in the driving situation. This is a jejune comparison with the governmental practice of autocratic power. This is a poor analogy that explains absolutely nothing and achieves nothing in the understanding of how state power is exercised in this country.

Autocratic power is the use of authority outside of moral, constitutional and legal guidelines by the state to achieve a certain objective in which the power holder feels that the action will either make his/her grip on power more secure or the opposite of the coin is that the targeted action weakens a detractor of the government.

Autocratic exercise of state power is never episodic but is a policy direction. In other words, the action against an opposition politician or a media house cannot symbolise the descent into autocratic governance if it is an isolated case.
The most one can say was that the step was not the right thing to do, but an academic cannot use a single act of a government to dismiss that government as an autocratic regime.

Then there is the role of interpretation. What happens when context comes in? Is it possible that the politician or the journalist was at fault? One does not have to go far but to look right here in Guyana where we have opposition politicians and media houses that have crossed the line.
An opposition politician, Tacuma Ogunseye, was charged. I cannot comment on the case because it is before the courts, but it would be downright propagandising to say that the charge against him is a sign of autocratic government in the making.
Dr. Ramcharan yelled out in a letter in the Stabroek News last Saturday that facts speak for themselves. But he failed to add that he is taking “facts” for convenience sake and putting his own interpretation on them, and what is even more unacceptable is that he gets his “facts” from a private newspaper that is hostile to the government rather than from researchers and scholars.

One of his “facts” is that there is no consultation with the opposition. But where is context? In a matter of Guyana’s sovereignty being threatened by Venezuela, the Opposition Leader refused to accept an invitation to join a governmental delegation to meet with the Venezuelan President.
The Opposition Leader refused to shake the hand of the President on two occasions and it is rumoured that the Opposition Leader side-lined a key figure in the PNC’s leadership for in fact shaking the President’s hand.

This is where context comes in and this is where Ramcharan’s interpretation becomes questionable. Context has to be used in interpreting human action. Furthermore, it is unwise for a scholar to categorise a government as being autocratic using as his source, an entity that has anti-government agenda.
Why is the Stabroek News his only source? What about the editorials in Guyana Times? What about academics who write columns in the newspapers like Leonard Craig and Nazim Baksh? These are highly educated men in the social sciences. Does Mr. Ramcharan give them any credit for their analyses?
Or is it that since they write along the lines of appreciating the positive things the President is doing their analyses are flawed but the anti-government editorials in the Stabroek News are more instructive? Dr. Ramcharan is entitled to his opinions but his opinions are hardly enlightening.

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.