Dear Editor,
While, as I wrote last week, Stabroek News was very open to publishing letters representing diverse views, it’s editorials also very strongly represented the publisher’s perspective on those views. One example resulted in the following letter from me in June 1998.
“The Stabroek News, as is the norm with newspapers in the West, attempts generally, by its tone and style, to indicate an “even-handedness” and “impartiality” in its editorials so as to appear to engage its reader in a reasoned discourse. However, ever so often, there occurs an eruption of polemical truculence that puts into question the coherence of its editorial policy. The editorial of 24.5.98, captioned “A Federal System” was one such polemic.
“The French post-modernist Michael Focault drew what he considered to be the `essential’ distinction between entering discussion and engaging in polemic, which is very apropos to all of us, including the Stabroek News, at our historical moment. In “discussion” participants implicitly understand commitments entailed by “the acceptance of dialogue” and avail themselves only of rights that “are in some sense immanent” in the “dialogic situation” itself. In “polemic,” by contrast, the intent is not merely “to wage war” but to regard “that struggle as a just undertaking.” The polemicist proceeds unconstrained by mutual rights and commitments, and treats each interlocutor not as “a partner in search for truth, but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong.”
“The SN, in “A federal system,” appears to be fighting its “just war” in the Foucauldian sense and to that end deploys a formidable arsenal of polemical weapons which can only be intended to bludgeon into submission those who are proposing a federalised state structure for Guyana. Firstly, SN utilised cathected, slanted language to suggest that the federalist proposals are somehow nefarious. It labels them, for instance, as “a panacea” emanating from “centrifugal tendencies… lurking… under the surface.. [which] now reveal themselves more openly.” No one has ever suggested that federalism would deliver the promised land but that it was simply, “a structural mechanism to address the ethnic security dilemma of the African community” (SN 6.5.98) or a “limited strategy for power-sharing” (SN 18.5.98).
“Secondly, SN offers as conclusive, statements that at best can only be held tentatively. Federalism, it pronounced magisterially, “would not achieve the desired end of reducing ethnic insecurities and redirecting ethnic rivalries.” Or again, “the idea appears to be of limited appeal, finding support only among a small section of the Indian community.” Only a few days earlier (SN 19.5.98) under fire for publishing “inflammatory” letters, SN had demanded of its inquisitors the unequivocal evidence, or even an opinion poll to justify the requested censorship. Should the SN hold itself to a lesser standard for its own asseverations?
“Thirdly, SN argues through definitions of its own creation and is thus bootstrapping on tautological postulates: “A federal system is best suited to nations which are geographically large, have big populations and are ethnically diverse.” When was this law promulgated? In mixing the categories of size and diversity, SN from a normative standpoint, appears to be oblivious to distinctions of congruent and incongruent federalism.
“Fourthly, in declaring that Guyanese federalists should “seek a model on a small scale… and that model is the former Yugoslavia,” SN presents a predicament (a failed example) which in fact is an artifact of its own argument and consequently encounters performative contradiction. In what way, vis-a-vis Guyana, was Yugoslavia with its 24 million citizens, diverse nationalities and historic federalised nature different, by the SN’s own criteria, from Nigeria? Would not tiny Switzerland and its cantons have been more appropriate?
“Fifthly, possessed of the asymmetrical power to edit letters, the SN, as it concedes (19.5.98) can also vitiate, or indeed alter, a discussant’s argument and then proceed to take pot shots at the resultant travesty, in its editorial. For example, in my letter (SN 6.5.98) one of the strongest arguments for federalism was excised, to wit that “political structures and institutions are introduced to provide the framework and incentives through which the moral links, essential for encouraging the needed accommodation and cooperation between the various ethnic groups (through their representatives) can develop. Without incentives, it would be naive to expect politicians to forego ethnic mobilisation simply because it is not in the “national interest.” The federalist arguments are traduced to a cold economic calculus and unfounded accusations of “dissecting Guyana.”
But to its credit, SN published the above strongly-worded rebuttal!