Is constituency voting feasible?
September 27,2017
Dear Editor,
Recently in your newspaper, RISE, a discussion group, came out with the suggestion that Guyana revert to constituency voting. Frankly, is this feasible? The proportional representation system was introduced to try and overcome the racial politics of the Guyanese people. At that time our population showed that an overall majority of constituencies were dominated by one race, hence, say about 30-40% of our population could never expect to govern.
It is suggested that if we are ever to have an honest, responsible government, we should revert to the first constitution which introduced proportional representation (PR).
This original constitution should be reinstated for three years, during which time the amendments which our governments have made should be studied, and even the voting system for government can be considered.
The first PR election resulted in a coalition government with the PNC and the UF. However, power corrupts, and, it would appear, that happened. Some of the abuse and amendments made over time, were as follows:
- The overseas vote was falsified.
- The change of selection from the representative list.
- The dismissal of members of parliament if they did not vote the party line.
These, among others, took away power from the people along with our socialist dictatorship, with its hopeless bureaucratic system which causes endless wasted hours as you wait to pay a bill, have a meeting, etc, etc, and we wonder why we stagnate?
Socialism works under the monastic system. But under the politician, only a small minority gets wealthy. King Sugar has become a liability under state-owned socialism.
We do not hear about bauxite. However, Guyana is blessed, as suddenly gold pops up as a saviour (mainly private sector production), and the new promise of oil? Is it a future blessing or curse?
By the way, what has happened to that US$5 million that has been ‘mislaid’ on the sale of our GTT shares? Any developments?
Yours faithfully,
John Willems