Governance in the Contemporary Caribbean: The Way Forward - Towards a Political Culture of Partnership

• Author: Rex Nettleford
• Pages: 586-601

586 GOVERNANCE: THE WAY FORWARD

The Governance ChallengeThe Governance Challenge

The Governance ChallengeThe Governance Challenge

The Governance Challenge

The word “governance” has assumed emotive power since the last decade

of the last century. I have often wondered why this should have been so and

came to the view that its universal application throughout the West, of which

our Caribbean is a part, may well be an acknowledgement of the flawed workings

of government defined in terms of elections, parliamentary debates, constitutional

procedures and the rule of law. What happens outside of these formal ritualistic

offerings has in many cases left the mass of the population, the ordinary man

and woman, out of the process of decision-making that determines the destiny

of such people. And the consequences have not always been the best for the

human condition, worse still when certain kinds of decisions taken in the

name of “the people” have served to diminish their very humanity, which these

decisions purport to protect or promote. Nazism, Fascism, and Marxism-

Leninism have been the “people-creeds” which have resulted in genocide and

death camps, in gulags and other political grostesquerie denying to millions

some basic freedoms. But before we indulge the triumphalist posture which the

West has assumed since the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, let us recall the

agony of McCarthyism in what is supposed to be one of the world’s greatest

democracies and the acute racism against persons of African ancestry in that

same Republic, followed by succeeding apartheid regimes of South Africa. We

need to recall, as well, the ethnic cleansing sagas of the Balkans and Rwanda as

well as the authoritarian military regimes of Spain, Portugal, Latin America and

parts of post-colonial Africa.

We in the Caribbean have escaped somewhat, but only somewhat! For

there have been the Haitian experience, the miscalculations of Grenada leading

up to the tragedy of 1983 complete with assassinations and foreign invasion,

the continuing uncertainty of Cuba made no better by the United States embargo

Governance in the contemporary

caribbean: the Way ForWard –

toWards a political culture oF

partnership

REX NETTLEFORD

CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO

Governance in the Contemporary Caribbean 587

and the proven attempt at destabilization of the tenacious Castro regime, and

the aberrations of government in Santo Domingo and pre-Caricom Suriname.1

All these facts and features of the region’s post-War 20th century history have

given cause to take a serious look at how governments function or ought to

function and the implications for governance. The Commonwealth Caribbean

which is the most recent to enter the Independence mode and therefore to take

full responsibility for the administration of transferred power, has had little

reason to feel exempt from such reflection. Corruption, the continuing

immiseration of the mass of the population, clumsiness in the handling of

public affairs, free and frequent, admittedly, but less than fair elections, and

doubts about public probity in the conduct of public affairs, are reasons enough

for us to look beyond the nicely stated procedures of Westminster governmental

operation and to invoke the principles of good and acceptable governance.2

For to those of us who now have in our control the recently transferred

power from the Mother country, the term “governance” signifies the dynamics

of interaction and interrelationships between the governed and the governor,

between the people and the persons they elect/choose to administer their affairs

as fiduciaries, and the institutional and operational frameworks that guarantee

the perpetual presence of the people who are the proffered beneficiaries of

government organised and run in their interest. Government for and by the

people is memorable rhetoric. In praxis it is not infrequently memorable

anguish for a great many people.

Yet in fairness to the Commonwealth Caribbean the pledge to have decency

inform its public affairs persists with a vengeance in affirming the democratic

traditions of the Caricom Heads of Government in its twelfth intersessional

meetings in Barbados in February 2001, declared in its communique:

“Heads of Government considered the issue of governance and democracy

in the Region. They re-affirmed their commitment to democracy and popular

participation as enshrined in the Charter of Civil Society and adopted by the

Conference in 1997 as well as the Kingston Declaration on Democracy and

Popular Participation adopted in July 1990. They pledged to work together to

maintain and strengthen the institution and processes essential to democratic

Government and in this regard, enjoined their citizens to pursue all of their

just economic, social and political objectives within the framework of the

Region’s deeply cherished democratic traditions…They stressed that the Region

had a long-standing tradition of respect for the will of the people, as expressed

through free and fair elections on a regular basis. They were confident that this

tradition would be maintained in the forthcoming processes and called on all

concerned to honour this tradition and respect its results. They pledged their

continued support to those processes, through the provision of election of

observers where requested”.3