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Guyana at the Cross Roads: Beyond Ethnic Paramountcy

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Guyana at the Cross Roads: Beyond Ethnic Paramountcy GUYANA AT THE CROSS ROADS: BEYOND ETHNIC PARAMOUNTCY SELWYN RYAN Guyana today stands poised at the cross roads and might well be on the brink of a political disaster of enormous magnitude. Whether that disaster occurs or not depends very much on the outcome of the impending general elections which all agree is the most critical in the country's history. Given the plural nature of Guyanese society, every election has in a sense been a critical election. This is so because elections in Guyana are not merely about which party, which programme, or which ideology prevails. More fundamentally, elections determine which racial group enjoys hegemony, which one is "on topw. The race issue has always dominated Guyana's politics, but more so since 1953 when Guyana's first election under universal suffrage was held. The salience of the race factor has continued to give to politics in Guyana its peculiar quality of violence and ethnic confrontation. The demographic pattern has also helped to aggravate Guyana's political predicament. According to 1970 Census data, the ethnic distribution of the population was Indo-Guyanese 51.8 percent, Afro-Guyanese 31.2 percent, Mixed 10.3 percent, Chinese 0.5 percent and Amerindi- an 4.9 percent. The 1980 Census figures were not very different except that, the Chinese and the European population had declined by 45 and 65 percent respectively due largely to migration. Indians accounted for 51.4 percent, Africans for 30.5 percent, mixed 11 percent, Europeans 0.1 percent, Chinese 0.2 percent, Amerindians 5.3 percent, and "not statedw 1.1 percent. The population in 1989 was officially estimated to be 754,844, but given the state of vital statistics records, it is not clear what the size of the population and its distribution by ethnicity really is, especially since migration is known to be quite substantial. Data from the 1991 Census is not yet available. TABLE 1. DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF GUYANA BY ETHNICITY - 1960-1980 Race 1960 1970 1980 No. % No. % No. % Negro/black East Indian Chinese Amerindian White Mixed race Others Not stated -- -- TOTAL 560,330 100 699,844 100 758,619 100 Sources: (1) British ~uianaPopulation Census of 1960, Central statistical Office, Trinidad and Tobago, 1968. (2) 1970 Population Census of the Commonwealth Caribbean, Census Research Programme, University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, 1976. (3). 1980-81 Population Census of the Commonwealth Caribbean, Published For The Caricom Secretariat, by the statistical Institute of Jamaica, 1984. TABLE 2. POPULATION BY RELIGION, 1960, 1970 AND 1980 Religion Numbers Percent Roman Catholic Seventh Day Advent ist Anglican Presbyterian1 Congregation Pentecostalist Methodiet Other Christian* Hindu Muslim Other None Not Stated TOTAL NOTE: *Includes Baptists, Church of God, Moravian, Jehovah's Witneesee, Brethren, Salvation Army, Mennonite, and A.M.E. (Zion). An examination of the areal distribution of the population Guyana reveals that the various ethnic groups are not evenly spread through its vast expanse. The bulk of the Afro-Guyanese and mixed "creolettpopulation is in the city of Georgetown and its suburbs, in New Amsterdam and in Upper Demerara while the bulk of the Indo Guyanese population is in West Demerara, Pomeroon East and West Berbice, Eccles Seosdykes and Industry/La Reconnaissance. TABLE 3 Major Total % % Mixed & Divisions Population Indian Black Other City of Georgetown Suburbs of Georgetown New Amsterdam Eccles/Soesdyke Industry/ La Reconnaissance West Berbice East Berbice Upper Demerara West Demerara Pomeroon, Somerset, Berks North West District The Indian majority, concentrated as it is in the plantation sector (rice and sugar) is essentially a rural population while the African, European, mixed and oriental elements are concentrated in the services sector in the two urban centers of Georgetown and New Amsterdam. The rural-urban dichotomy has helped to intensify the intransigence of party politics in Guyana. It meant that any government dominated by Indians would be rurally based and would have to seek to maintain its power in the l1jawsl1 of the African heartland so to speak. The fact that the latter group, for historical reasons, was dominant in the public service and the protective services also meant that any government which had its power base in the Indo-Guyanese community as did the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) between 1957 and 1964 would encounter resistance, if not outright sabotage, from Afro-Guyanese, especial- ly if the latter was of the view that resources were not being allocated fairly. A similar difficulty emerged when the Peoples National Congress (PNC), a party which had its centre of gravity in the Afro-Guyanese, came to power in 1964. Such a party could expect and did encounter resistance from the farming community which produced a considerable proportion of Guyana's agricultural income and which provided a great deal of its commercial services. Both ethnic communities were and remain in a position to inflict a great deal of damage on the national community, making effective governance difficult. One expression of this problem is the frequency with which strikes take place in Guyana. Indeed some sort of strike activity is a daily feature of life in Guyana. Some of these strikes are genuine industrial disputes and in some cases benign. Others have clearly been politically motivated and have involved considerable loss of life and economic productivity. In the 1963-64 period, strikes in fact assumed the character of civil war. In his Ethnic Conflict and Political Control: The Guyana Case, Perry Mars notes that strike actively increased dramatically from 34 in 1947-50 period to 130 in the 1963-1966 period and to 143 in the 1967-70 period when the PNC was in control of the Government of Guyana (Table 4) .' TABLE 4. FREQUENCY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE EVENT8 - 1947-1970 Average No. Events Per Year Anti-~overnment Insurrectionary Period Demonstrations Strikes Events/~iots,etc. Annual Average for Period 1947-70 4 70 1 Source: Quantitative content analysis of several Guyana Newspa- pers: Agrosy, Chronicle, Graphic and Mirror between 1947-70; Annual Report, Ministry of Labour, 1947-70 (c) Annual Report, Commissioner of Police, 1947-70. Table compiled by Perry Mars. Mars sees the increase in strike activity as part of the strategy used by the two competing political parties to use economic warfare to determine which would succeed the departing colonial power. As Mars writes; Clearly, the most violent and conflictual period was that between 1963-1966 when there was the most desperate struggle between the two main political organizations (PPP and PNC) to lead Guyana to independence and to inherit totally the mantle of political power from the British colonial authorities. Inter-group and political violence between 1962 and 1964, for example, reached the extreme levels of organized armed conflict and arson leading to several hundreds of deaths and millions of dollars in property damage on an insurrectionary scale embracing the entire country. Also of tremendous significance is the destructive consequence of these activities in regard to inter-ethnic relations. Hither- to,multi-ethnic villages became steeply segmented into distinctly separate ethnic c~rnmunitiee.~ It is worth noting that between January and June 1964, 136 persons were killed and 779 injured. Strikes continued to be used as a political weapon in the post independence era. Most of these strikes took place in the sugar industry. Between 1971 and 1976, there were at least 770 strikes in that industry compared to 124 in the manufacturing sector, 39 in the mining sector and 117 in the commercial and service sectors. TABLE 5. STRIKE FREQUENCIES IN MAJOR INDUSTRIE8 - 1971-76 Manu- Minina/-. Commercial Year facturing Sugar Quarrying Service Sector Other 1971 30 118 10 23 5 1972 26 112 2 26 4 1973 19 N.A. 8 15 - 1974 24 95 7 13 1 1975 N.A. 99 6 9 2 1976 15 346 6 31 - N.A. = Not Available. Source: Annual Reports, Ministry of Labour 1971 through 1976. In reflecting on the possible motivation for these strikes, Mars notes that sugar workers are extensively organised by the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union which was itself affiliated to the PPP which was responsible for calling the strikes. The GAWU was and is in fact still led by Cheddi Jagan, Political leader of the PPP.3 Figures provided by Clinton Collymore of the Peoples Progres- sive Party indicate that the frequency of strikes increased during the eighties. According to Collymore, there were 333 strikes in 1980, 718 in 1985, 453 in 1986, 497 in 1987 and 349 in 1988. Wage and production losses were substantial. In 1989, production losses were estimated to be G$924m. Collymore and other pro PPP spokesmen attribute the strikes to Ifaggressive anti-working class policies and legi~lation~~and management incompetence and not to any desire on the part of the PPP to sabotage the PNC government. The PNC argues otherwise. The PNC complains that the opposition objects to everything the Government does since its aim was to deligitimise and prevent it from performing creditably. To quote the PNC: The most important concern in the minds and moods of all Guyanese is the state of the Guyana economy and their own economic well-being. Any other issue is peripheral to this essential concern, and must be treated as such. Opposition political groups in the country, however, do not share this concern. Their philosophy, in the word of Kwame Nkrumah, is: "Seek ye firet the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto you". Put different- ly, the opposition insists on ballots before bread1 As a consequence, their every action is oriented towards obtaining power at all cost. The position adopted by the opposition is wholly incorrect, dangerous to Guyana's well-being, and unpatriotic.
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