Robert Buddan, Contributor
LAST WEEKEND, the two major parties set their minds to matters relevant to internal reform and consequently toward change in the broader political system. The People's National Party (PNP) advanced its thinking toward 'retooling' its ideas and organisation at a party retreat and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) advanced the movement within the party for change by its election of new officers. Both developments were good for Jamaican democracy. Our two-party system is well consolidated. But it now requires that the parties establish a better quality of democracy for themselves and for society.
All social organisations should similarly engage but the parties have a special role as vanguards of deepening democracy. The PNP is and has always been more advanced in this process but the JLP has made a long-awaited and decisive change toward building a new kind of party. It still has much work to do and congratulations are in order to Bruce Golding, Karl Samuda, Percy Broderick and others on their recent elections to officer positions following the accession of James Robertson and Horace Chang to deputy leaderships.
TRANSFORMATION AND PARTIES
There is a long-held view by critics of Caribbean parties that, beyond cosmetic changes, the parties are essentially unreformable. The parties are seen as elitist, middle class organisations that depend on patron-client networks to survive. They function as agents of big business to diffuse popular demands and to control and regiment popular organisations. They use race, ideology and nationalism to appeal to and contain the lower classes. Systems of control rely on patronage, bureaucratic regimentation and personalism. Control of state resources and the rise of political bosses and their networks underline their control. Their main purpose is to control and dominate. When faced with crises of control they are more likely to become more authoritarian than demo-cratic. On the other hand, Jamaican Professor Neville Duncan says that parties can be transformed but that transformation has to come from within the parties themselves. Writing about Barbados in the mid-1990s, he said.
"The party is the essential building block of democracy in Barbados. By creating within itself an image of what it wants the wider society to be, it can become a more efficient instrument for peaceful change. When the party, however, comes to reflect the wider society?, its class biases, racism, and ethnicity, its political corruption and patronage, its elitism and other forms of particularism, it is of no use to the transforming and democratising process. If the party in structure, organisation and values remains locked in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as indeed it appears to be in Barbados, and does not adopt current and future management forms and styles, then it renders itself a useless instrument in bringing the country into the global political economy."
Duncan means that parties cannot merely reflect society, past or present; they must create an image of a better society for the future and reflect that image. The party in the Caribbean must establish a better quality organisation, a political economic agenda that reduces social inequality, a democracy that includes citizens and in which citizens themselves become more responsible.
SYSTEM TRANSFORMATION AND PARTY FINANCE.
Trevor Munroe feels that beyond the transformation of parties, the broader system of democracy in the Caribbean must be transformed. Parties will ultimately fail, and democratisation will be limited, if the larger system in which parties operate is not transformed. Munroe calls attention to redesigning critical public institutions, renovating the political culture, reforming labour markets and deepening hemispheric relations. Public institutions need deep-seated change: constitutions, electoral systems, police and prisons, local government, the state (and regulation of corruption) and party (and regulating political finance). These changes will move (Jamaican) democracy from decay to renewal. Political finance is one kind of change needed and both parties now express an interest in looking into new models together.
This matter goes beyond the choice between monarchy and republic; or parliamentary and presidential government, because whichever we choose, that form of democracy can be undermined by money, clean or tainted. Elections and offices should not be on the market to be bought and sold. One of the great contradictions of American democracy is that the real separation of powers is not between executive and legislature but between the moneyed in the executive and legislature and the people. It is a separation of government from the people.
SYSTEM TRANSFORMATION AND CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
Constitutional reform has been raised again but it cannot be treated piecemeal, like isolating the CCJ or impeachment, as they suit the politics of the time. It must be comprehensive. At the heart of the problem is the Westminster system (at least in its present form).
Noted Caribbean scholars and leaders, from Sir Arthur Lewis down through Michael Manley, Bruce Golding, Basdeo Panday and Owen Arthur, have criticised the Westminster system.
For instance, Trinidadian Professor Selwyn Ryan quoted Golding as saying: "There is no joy in being in Opposition, you know. When you are in opposition, you control nothing" If one is outside the "power loop", one is ineffective and impotent despite the fact that one may be a duly elected representative of the people". I don't fully agree with Golding. The problem arises if one does not use Opposition creatively and constructively. But there is a problem and it is better expressed by the Prime Minister of Barbados (also quoted by Ryan): "There is something fundamentally flawed about a system of governance, based upon the first past the post principle, in which the victor gets all the spoils, but in which...almost half of the population at any time feel alienated from participating in what is taking place around them". The system is an alienating one. Caribbean scholars are in favour, to use Ryan's term, of "shared governance". Mr. Golding, I presume, would be in favour. For my own part, I am less interested in separation of powers and more in shared governance.
NOW FOR NEW LEADERSHIP
These issues are way ahead of the present leadership of the JLP under Mr. Seaga. Just three years ago, in 2000, Mr. Seaga said he had lost confidence in Karl Samuda, now General Secretary. He accused Mr. Samuda of setting up an opposition within the opposition. He declared, "It is my objective to quell all that and get rid of all of that before I step away. I am not leaving the Labour Party in a position where it is going to be overtaken by any gang whose intention is to hijack it and seize leadership for themselves when they do not have the capability of leadership...Once that is there then I will feel my job has been done?. Does Mr. Seaga still see Mr. Samuda and company as a gang trying to seize power and does he still believe they have no capability for leadership?
I would ask the JLP and PNP to consider if Mr. Seaga is committed to any change on constitutional and campaign finance reform. Under his leadership, the JLP did not even agree to change the Oath of Office and he remains fixed to the Privy Council and Monarchy. These are all recent positions.
I believe Mr. Seaga's 'commitments' are part of a political ploy. Whenever he is in trouble he feigns a statesman-like approach to win sympathy. After losing the 2002 elections he joined in the Vale Royal Summits to position himself as a national leader. But by February he did an about-turn when he realised that the JLP could win local government elections which would shore up his party leadership. Coming toward the JLP Conference and challenges to his deputy leaders, he joined in a bipartisan agreement on education to strengthen his standing; and having lost the two deputy leaders, chairman and general secretary, and after angering the party and its financial backers in party elections, he has tactically agreed to bipartisan consideration of campaign finance and aspects of constitutional reform.
The JLP must build a collective around Mr. Seaga to support and secure on-going bipartisanship if the process is to be reliable. It must make constitutional reform comprehensive and not piecemeal. It should also consider that Mr. Seaga has had enough time for constitutional reform with nothing to show.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. E-mail: robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
