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Power sharing has to be thought through completely

Apr 17, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
The recent call by Mr. Tacuma Ogunseye for Dr. Prem Misir to support power sharing/shared governance if he is sincere about ethnic alliances shows a lack of understanding of the fundamental flaws that are inherent in this strategy of governance and a naivety in its ability to cure the ethnic tensions in Guyana.
I, like Mr. Ogunseye, have read the papers on power sharing that were recently published in the Guyana Chronicle and the Kaieteur News over the past month and have gleaned from it that power sharing is something that has to be thought through completely and with the appropriate strategies being implemented to prevent the, sometimes inevitable, self interest that this form of governance generates in politicians if it is to be even mildly successful; where political leaders have to be moderate, and where parties have similar ideological interests. In Guyana, many of our political leaders are not moderate and the parties have diversified ideologies. These are indicators that would propel a power-sharing schema, according to Lipjhart.
Mr. Ogunseye’s perception that executive power sharing, or that of which he misguidedly uses interchangeably with shared governance, is the best way to give real meaning to ethnic alliances in Guyana, is a very simplistic and naïve view. The sharing of power between the political factions in our society needs to be thought through in terms that are not alone ethnic.
Certainly power sharing has worked in some societies, but it hasn’t in others, but as outlined by Dr. Misir in his research on the subject of power sharing, there are several challenges facing the implementation of power sharing in any society.
Allow me to state these again:
· Power sharing gets in the way of the preference for total power that competitive national elections present. If party leaders develop the mindset that they could win an election, then there are few enticements that will attract them to the power-sharing table.
· Some minimal and superficial form of power sharing may emerge if party leaders hold the view that power sharing would work against their opponents who are part of the agreement; then the proponents’ motive is disingenuous.
Power sharing requires mismatched persons and groups to work together, people with years of experience of vitriolic condemnations of each other; this mismatch makes power sharing untenable.
· Power sharing could be a trap where inclusion could bring increasing factionalism within a scenario where some people experience exclusion.
· In spite of the view that power sharing may bring forth mutual benefits, its prerequisite that one party must surrender some power may place that party in jeopardy, given the zero-sum power framework lurking in the shadows.
· The fact that power is fluid and shifts from one interest group to another, may entice all power shareholders to strategize to bolster their power capacity.
· There are differential degrees of commitment to a power-sharing agreement by virtue of different ideologies, moderate to extreme interests, compromise, and even a perception of betrayal by some constituents when the agreement reaches consummation.
Given the aforementioned challenges to the ideal of power sharing and Mr. Ogunseye’s perception that it is the cure for ethnic tensions in Guyana, I am very interested in hearing his proposals as to how we can deal with these challenges.
Anna Goodridge

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