FORM VS SUBSTANCE

May 25, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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It could have been worse. The government could have renamed the Ministry of Finance as the Ministry of Money.
They could have also rechristened the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the Ministry for Relations with Overseas States. They could have re-designated the Ministry of Agriculture as the Ministry of Plant, Fish and Bird.
So be thankful for small mercies. The changes in the names of the Ministry will cause mass confusion- whoever heard about a Ministry of Social Cohesion- but in the end it will all sort itself out .People will either continue to refer commonly to the various ministries by their original designations or grow accustom to the new names.
All of the rebranding reminds me of the past: form but no substance. Instead of smaller government, we will end up with a larger bureaucracy. It is not the benefits that are the problem; it is the fact that every Minister would have to be provided with staff and equipment to do his or her work.
Ministries that traditionally had one Minister will now have two. Others that should have two, such as agriculture, only have one.
The logic behind this reorganization of the public service has nothing to do with rationalization for efficiency.  But one has to understand that after an election, the spoils have to be divided.
When you are in a coalition and have just won a hard fought election, you have to reward every constituent party in the coalition, and you have to reward those who worked beyond the call of duty. This is the reality of coalition politics: the spoils have to be divided. What other choice was there?
Forget about what the PPPC did when it created a strange Ministry known as the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs.
The Government of Guyana presently comprises a coalition of six parties. The Cummingsburg Agreement led to an agreement that there would have been a 60/40 split between APNU and the AFC in terms of minister.
Well, the new arrangements have gone beyond this. The AFC, from all accounts, secured eight ministers. APNU gained the remaining 17.
Do the math and you will see that the Cummingsburg Agreement has already run into problems. But were they not also supposed to be civil society persons gaining ministerial responsibilities? Apparently not!
There is a political crisis brewing and one man has already begun to recognize this. He has criticized the fact that APNU did not meet immediately after the elections to decide on the way forward. He is being dismissed. But he may have been the first to recognize that trouble is on the horizon.
People however are getting excited by the clean up exercise that is taking place in Georgetown. They are not concerned about the political mess that is being generated because of the lack of consultations with APNU and what seems to have been a violation of the Cummingsburg Agreement.
According to that Agreement, it is the Prime Minister that is supposed to be responsible for Home Affairs. But is this still on the cards or are the requisite Ministers going to report to the President?
And it is the Prime Minister who was supposed to recommend the names of Ministers. But did he know the ministries that were being created and how many of his nominations were accepted? That question will never  be asked, and never be answered.
The Office of the President has now been converted into a Ministry. Now, the PPP may be wrong about whether it is illegal to establish certain other Ministries but if All Executive Power resides in the Presidency, how can the seat of the Presidency be administered as a Ministry?
There is likely, given the many vigilant lawyers around, to be a constitutional challenge to the designation of the Office of the President as a ministry.
All of these developments however are being overshadowed by the works at the Independence Arch, which incidentally was built and donated by a multinational company which the Burnham regime later accused of plundering Guyana. We took Queen Victoria statue and, for years, threw it at the back of the Botanical Gardens. We are now giving a facelift to the monuments given to Guyana by the imperialists.
Our Independence monument is a gift from our old exploiters. The Independence Monument is undergoing a welcome facelift.
The last time the PPPC government did that it lasted only a few days. The sprucing up provided greater comfort to the smelly vagrants who occupied all the concrete benches, defecated in the drains behind the monument and even took baths in the same drains.
Unless a permanent guard is placed there and is instructed to not allow vagrants or the homeless to take up residence there, the place will soon return to the dismal state that the present government is attempting to save it from.
What really changes in this country? Tell me!

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