What Guyana needs is constitutional reform that has public participation

Jan 13, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Instead of a new vision for Guyana, this new year begins with the three political parties asking Guyanese to play a game of three-card monte with them.
First, the Leader of the Opposition calls for Executive Power Sharing. This is immediately followed by the AFC and its supporter, Emile Mervin, who argue against it, fearing the PPP and PNCR would conspire to leave them out. Then, to makes things worse, President Jadgeo makes up the concocted statement that the rift in the PNCR is the reason why he has backed away from “inclusive governance”.
In case the President is unaware of how the citizens of Guyana view him, everyone in Guyana — even the illiterate — knows he is not someone to be believed or trusted, and that he would never share power unless he tries to manipulate a third term out of it. After all, in a power sharing arrangement, he could, and would, argue that the two-term limit was under a different dispensation.
Let me use this opportunity to reject these Machiavellian utterings by the three political parties, who want to continue to rule us and not govern us, for their own self-centred reasons.
First of all, ACDA will not support any negotiated “shared governance” between the PPP and PNCR, or any other group. What is required is constitutional reform that has public participation, and which gets rid of the Executive Presidency and Party Lists. It should also include Parliamentarians competing in constituency elections, and not from party lists.
Shared governance should also occur at the next elections, and not at the convenience of political parties and politicians that the general public do not trust or believe in. This will allow enough time for citizen participation and for the parties to reform themselves from their current autocratic and undemocratic constitutions and behaviours.
The current public display of their insincerity at the beginning of the new year is because politicians are interested in power sharing, or sharing power among themselves…. while what Guyana needs is “shared and good governance”.
Power sharing and shared governance are two fundamentally different concepts and realities.
Anyone reading the PPP’s “inclusive government” paper and the PNCR’s “power sharing” paper will see the difference. The PPP’s idea of inclusive government is that of having a cricket team in which Africans, who do not agree with their corrupt policies and non-vision, are the water boys and the 12th, 13th and 14th men. As such, Africans are included in the team (not even the best Africans at that) but don’t bowl or bat unless the game has been rained out. Like the current crop of prominent Africans in the PPP, they however dress up in immaculate white attire as if illustrating their purity, whilst boisterously talking about “we team” winning, even though they are excluded from any meaningful participation other than as paid token night watchmen and women. The call for inclusive government by the PPP and President Jagdeo’s current statements have been, and continue to be, a purposeful deception, a broken public trust, and an international indecency.
Now we have a purposeful corruption of the Christian church by appointing Kwame Gilbert as a Member of Parliament, because many Indians are now becoming Pentecostal Christians and he is there to shepherd them into the fold at the next elections. What a moral indecency and slap in the face of those who follow the Ten Commandments and Christian principles.
The PNCR’s model of shared governance is also not good for Guyana. Their version calls for the captains of the PPP and PNCR to select a cricket team by each captain choosing every other player (ministry). The result would be the sharing of racial spoils, continued and enhanced corruption, a dysfunctional and non-competitive team, destruction of democracy, and the marginalisation of Guyanese as a whole.
Guyanese of all races and creeds should reject, like ACDA does, both of these forms of political affronts to democracy.
ACDA believes that neither the PPP nor the PNCR should be allowed to rule Guyana. What is needed is a system that allows all Guyanese to be represented, and in which civil society plays a prominent role. Currently, civil society is left out, and businessmen who claim to represent civil society are politically compromised, acting in their  own self interests at the expense of the common man. Examples abound.
With regard to the AFC, they continue to not have any ideas of their own (except a Freedom of Information Act). They have offered no vision with regard to good governance, because they are anti-PPP and anti-PNCR first, and pro-nothing second. Instead of utilising valuable time fighting for better governance through constitutional reform and civic participation before the next election in 2011, the AFC is fighting for something that is important but not as critical as Constitutional Reform.
ACDA believes that any change in political architecture must involve all citizens of Guyana, whether through a referendum or some other mechanism. Guyanese citizens need to participate in defining the political system that will be used to govern them, and not be driven by the intellectually, spiritually, culturally and emotionally challenged group of three-card monte tricksters who call themselves our political elites. Indeed, Emile Mervin is correct when he continually states that shared governance will never work with the current crop of politicians.
Missing in the debate by all the politicians and their surrogates are two issues. One is the reality that the Westminster system has failed Guyana, and something more appropriate and practical needs to be put in place, especially given the deep racial insecurities that exist. This is not about the PPP and PNCR, but about what is good for our country and our children in a rapidly more difficult global environment
Secondly, the greatest failure of the Jagdeo Presidency has been the lack of economic vision he has shown. Guyana is well endowed with a wide variety of resources, and these have been squandered or ignored because of party paramountcy, corruption, political functional illiteracy, incompetence, and sheer stupidity. The current floods prove this, as many Guyanese have been greeted by increased poverty and sheer misery for the new year.
The current economic crisis in the sugar industry provides a visible example of economic malfeasance and political incompetence. We are producing sugar at US17 to 21 cents when the world market price is 8 cents. Hence we have invested US$180 million dollars to reduce our costs to 11 cents in the next five years, if everything goes right. For this to happen, we need to grow more sugar to make this mega investment profitable.
Is this in conflict with our need to grow more food for a hungry world, given global warming? Wouldn’t it be more profitable and more sensible to grow more food and leave bio-diesel to Brazil? How then can we give control of our forests to foreign states, which will restrict most economic activities in these forests, activities that can make Guyana and Guyanese wealthy? How does this gel with the fact that our Amerindian citizens own 14% of Guyana by law, as surely some of these forests are in the 14%? Given our limited fertile land, our need to grow more food, the apparently low profitability of sugar, the unpredictability of global warming, the danger of our seawalls falling apart at any  time, and the loss of life and property associated with this….why is there no economic vision for Guyana, and why are  the citizens of Guyana not interested in a Council of Economic Advisors, comprised of our best and brightest, to assist in this development crisis that is facing us and which has made Guyanese beggars to the international community and poor as a church rat?
Shared governance, contrary to what the politicians and their acolytes are telling us, is just as important, or more important, to Guyanese for our economic survival as is the need for good political governance.
Guyanese should not let politicians use the new year to con us. Here are some of the principles our politicians should think about before trying to trick us and distract us from the floods and leadership issues they are faced with. We are no longer interested in their next bag of deception.
Here are a few questions and thoughts for these non-visionary bosses controlling our destiny.
How will Executive Power Sharing work when we have an Executive President who is above the law and who can choose to be the Minister of Communications, the Minister of Energy or the Minister of the Environment whenever he wants? Will the Prime Minister have these same powers?
How does this power sharing or shared governance work when political parties use a “list” system? This “list” system is both anti-democratic and criminal. We currently have political idiots from Georgetown representing communities whose names they cannot even spell, and some of them even believe that Bartica is an island.
Why shouldn’t the Diaspora have two or three MPs in Parliament? The reality is that there are just as many Guyanese in the Diaspora as at home, many of them far more competent that those at home.
Why are there not designated MP seats for Amerindians, who own 14% of our country and whose way of life and culture are being decimated.
Why should the Guyanese public trust politicians who are also lawyers? Many of our politicians are lawyers, and many of them defend drug lords. We have a criminal economy and a compromised judiciary. Shouldn’t it be an issue of moral decency that lawyers who choose to defend drug lords (and it is their legal right) should not run for political office?
Isn’t this the same for pastors, whose role should be to ensure a vibrant civil society and to promote moral balance in the society? Shouldn’t they be free to speak out against the excesses of politicians, rather than be corrupted by them through gifts and political appointments?
Very shortly, ACDA will be publishing a document on shared governance. The goal of this model is to promote a just, multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-party society in which each citizen is equal before the law.
Eric Phillips

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