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Walking out of an ERC meeting

Jan 15, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I am convinced after Tuesday afternoon that the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) is a flawed organisation and its chairman, Juan Edghill, should not be allowed to continue.
The ERC invited stakeholders in the labour sector to meet with it on Tuesday afternoon at its Secretariat in Queenstown to hear labour’s views on the work of the ERC and for labour to be given an opportunity to voice its concern.
I was one of two representatives from my union. You know what they say of first impression.  The ERC is in a building that symbolizes the decay of the social substance and political life of Guyana.
The façade of this structure is dirty and dilapidated.
Earlier in the day, I ran into one of my former students who is on holiday. He told me something that I have heard so often whenever I meet overseas-based Guyanese who return for visits. You are told that based on what they see in the new country they live, Guyana appears as a primitive place.
I recall the praise that was showered on the student lounge at UWI in Jamaica by a UG student who had visited the island.
He exclaimed; “Mr. Kissoon, you should see what these people have; we here in Guyana are nowhere near to these things.”
The ERC is designed to bring out reconciliation among the major ethnic communities in Guyana and when you visit its Head Office, the building tells the story of a rundown country. Let’s continue with first impression. It was my first experience in an official gathering of ERC Commissioners.
Only three, including the President, turned up. One of them did not contribute anything to the discussion. He was silent for the two hours I was there before I walked out in protest against what Juan Edghill had said. The other Commissioner, Carvil Duncan of the Guyana Labour Union, had his credentials challenged.
And the third one, the Chairman was hardly objective in his presentations.
None of the Commissioners at the event understood the importance of “The point of Order” at a statutorily convened meeting. “A point of order” takes precedence at any such formal occasion. It does not matter who is on the floor including the chairman, “a point of order” has to be entertained and whoever is speaking has to stop.
This principle applies to all legal meetings including Cabinet sessions. The purpose of “a point of order” is that it seeks to bring to the attention of the confabulation that the discussion has reached a point where an illegality or impropriety or illegitimacy has occurred.
Here is a perfect example–if the conference is proceeding but someone without status gets up to speak, once “a point of order” is announced by another person, the meeting comes to a halt and “the point of order” becomes the focus. The chairman cannot disallow “the point of order” because to do so would allow something that was not right to proceed.
I had a rude awakening at the ERC session. The chairman accused me of being disruptive. I objected but no apology was forthcoming.
My point that the ERC is not viewed with respect by the Guyanese people was met with the chairman’s response to the effect that the Guyanese people speak to him therefore my comment is false. I made the point that the Guyanese people speak to me too. But it seems that this didn’t go down well with the chairman.
I cannot accept the modus operandi of the ERC. I was told at that assembly on Tuesday afternoon that the ERC cannot initiate proceedings on its own. It has to receive complaints on which it will act.
This is a serious weakness of the ERC and it has to be corrected when the National Assembly decides to renew its mandate.
If there is a body with legal powers to sanction wrong-doers in society why should it act only when the victims run to it? Why should the police wait for a wife to complain that she is beaten when the police witness the offence right before their eyes?
Two of us walked out of the conference after the chairman read a report that proved that there was no racial discrimination in the awarding of Government’s scholarship.
What the participants were not told was that the Public Service Ministry refused to cooperate with the researcher by releasing data. How then can the chairman make the judgement that the report was conclusive? It was not.
Did the Government have something to hide? It was a learning experience at the ERC. I left the meeting with the observation that the ERC at the moment is an illegal body.

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