Meaningful consultations

Sep 08, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Flashback 1997! A controversy arose over the results of the General and Regional Elections.
Some of the results at polling stations in Region 4, instead of being transmitted to the relevant Returning Offices, were instead placed in the ballot boxes.
As such, for those results, there arose a demand for a verification exercise, so that the statements of poll which were given out to the respective polling agents could be compared with the final declaration.
All political parties that had polling agents in a polling station would have had a copy of the statement of poll for that polling station. The verification exercise was simply to match the declared results with the copies of the statements of poll, so as to establish beyond doubt that there were no mistakes in the declaration.
The PNC had no choice but to take part in the exercise. Politically, they could not have opted out. The exercise was going well when a reporter asked a top official of GECOM what he thought about the process. The GECOM official said it would not result in anything different.
This caused a great uproar. The PNC claimed that this statement by the official meant that the verification process was an exercise n futility, since the official had said it would not change anything.
The PNC, of course, were looking for an exit strategy, and they found an excuse to opt out of the verification process using their own interpretation of what the official said.
In fairness to them, the choice of words of the official could have been better. What the official meant to say was that he was confident that the verification exercise would confirm the declared results of the elections. (A CARICOM Audit team subsequently went through ballot box by ballot box and did confirm, save for a few minor cases, that the votes in the boxes were in consonance with what was declared.)
What the GECOM official was doing by saying that the exercise would not change anything was expressing confidence in his final declaration. This was, however, conveniently interpreted by the PNC as an act of arrogance by the official. They saw it as implying that, regardless of the outcome of the verification, the final results would not be amended.
I found myself recalling this incident during the just-concluded national consultations on the Economic Partnership Agreement which CARIFORUM negotiated with the European Union. The national consultations were precipitated by the President of Guyana, who, at the last Heads of Government Summit in July of this year, indicated to regional heads that he had reservations about the EPA and would not sign until he held consultations with his people.
Those consultations took backstage to CARIFESTA X, and were reduced to a two-day affair at the National Convention Centre. On the first day, there were presentations from a number of persons, and at the end of that first day, the media reported the President as saying during the consultations that he was in favour of moving towards signing a goods-only agreement.
Now, this made me ask myself what was the purpose of the consultation if the President had already made up his mind as to the option he would pursue.
By saying, during the first day of the consultations, that Guyana would go for goods-only agreement — incidentally a position supported by the PNCR — it took some of the seriousness away from the consultations, since there may have been persons within the stakeholder community who may have been hoping to offer a different option, such as not signing anything at all until the ACP meets in October, but who may have interpreted the statement made, whether correctly or not, to mean that the Government had already adopted, during the first day of the consultations, a position without waiting for the outcome of consultations. They may have interpreted the statement attributed to the President as implying a futility in trying to have the Government take a more radical stance in terms of not signing anything at all.
I have seen also a statement attributed by the media to the President, indicating that regardless of the nitpicking by the opposition, the acting Commissioner of Police will be confirmed. Now, this is a highly reckless statement to make, because the Constitution of Guyana demands that there be meaningful consultations between the President of Guyana and the Leader of the Opposition.
However, if the Government is adopting the position that regardless of nitpicking the Commissioner will be confirmed, it suggests that the Government has, even before the consultations with the Leader of the Opposition commenced, made up its mind. Under such conditions, surely there cannot be any meaningful consultations.

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