Ms. Gail Teixeira MP, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee, has responded at length to the criticism by the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) of the procedural flaws in the nominations process for candidates to serve on the Rights of the Child Commission (ROCC). Her comments are so wide of the mark that she must be referring to an altogether different process.

We set out the following details in order to support our position that the process was seriously flawed and that the end result, in contradiction to the requirements of the Constitution, were biased in favour of the Government.

1. Ms Gail Teixeira (GT): “The 81 NGOs for the Rights of the Child Commission identified their nominees who would occupy 13 seats on the Commission. It is important to note that the Committee had no say in these 13 nominees. The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labour, Human Services & Social Security had one nominee each.”

i. The Ministry of Health nominated Ms. Suelle Findlay-Williams – one of its employees – in the Youth Caucus and she was elected.

ii. The Ministry of Education nominated Banmattie Ram.

iii. The Ministry of Labour, Human Services & Social Security nominated Shirley Ferguson.

iv. Someone nominated Kwame McKoy. Ms.Teixiera states it was the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security.

v. Ms. Teixeira claims Shirley Ferguson was nominated by the “former National Committee on the Rights of the Child” .

By our reckoning, this makes 4 Government representatives, not 2.

Question: by what stretch of the imagination is the Ministry of Health a CSO or an NGO?

Question: The National Commissions on Women, Disabilities, Children and Youth are all statutory bodies selected, funded and, in most cases, housed within respective Ministries. How, therefore, are they also considered to be NGO/CSOs?

Question: If, as Ms. Teixeira states, the ‘former’ National Commission on the Rights of the Child nominated Ms. Ferguson, at what point in the process did the nominee of this body assume the status of an automatic appointment? Secondly, why was no mention made in the Appointive Commission’s original report to Parliament on this arrangement? Thirdly, why did the Ministry of LHS&SS nominate Ms. Ferguson when she was already automatically appointed by the National Commission on the Rights of the Child?

2. GT: “GHRA was one of those organisations which attended not one of the meetings of the cluster meetings”….A little further on she states: “The report of that cluster shows GHRA submitted its nominee and attended two meetings of that cluster, but it failed to win the support of the other civil society representatives in its cluster for its nominee.”

The obvious contradiction in the two paragraphs needs no comment. The truth of the matter is that the GHRA attended the two meetings of the ‘other organisations’ caucus held at the Ministry of Health, both chaired by the Permanent Secretary, Hydar Ally, on October 9th and 24th. Since only three organisations, the GHRA, the APA and the National Commission on Disabilities (NCD) showed up at the first meeting, a second was then scheduled for October 24th. At the second meeting four organisations attended, the original three plus ACDA. The Chair/Mininistry of Health exercised a casting vote in the second round ensuring the election of the NCD, an agency that falls within the purview of the Ministry of Health.

3. GT: “The nominee (of the ‘Other’ caucus) chosen was proposed by the Commission on Disabilities, not as the GHRA statement incorrectly refers to the nominee as an employee of the Ministry of Health.”

GHRA: As indicated above, the GHRA referred to the Ministry of Health nominee as being elected from the Youth Caucus, and made no reference whatever to the nominee of the National Commission on Disabilities. The point is that by exercising a casting vote the Chair/Ministry of Health also determined the outcome of the ‘Other’ category as well as having its own nominee in the Youth caucus, which, for an organisation with no business in the process at all, is quite an achievement.

4. GT: “No one, not the opposition, nor any civil society body, has challenged the transparency of the process utilised by the Committee, the National Assembly, nor the civil society. The GHRA is upset that the Ministry of Health was asked to facilitate and chair the meetings to select the nominee for one of the clusters”…..

GHRA: The question surely is the accuracy of the facts, not how many people state them. The claim to

transparency is challenged by the following:

• The number of organisations and individuals who misunderstood or were confused about the process and received letters from the Parliamentary office telling them so (including the GHRA – cf below). This also includes people who were nominated and organisations who led caucuses.

• Every caucus needed to meet several times simply to understand what was required of them. The Women’s Caucus had to request Ms. Teixeira to attend the caucus to explain the process to them. If the National Women’s Commission had difficulty understanding it, surely this should have been a sufficient signal that less experienced people would have been in trouble.

• The number of deadlines set and later ignored.

• Selection of caucus facilitators: Apart from the inappropriateness of the Ministry of Health, as facilitator of a caucus, the GHRA was ‘upset’ also by the choice of the President’s Youth Award, housed in the Ministry of Culture, Youth & Sports with little experience or knowledge of Youth NGOs, as inappropriate, again demonstrated by their inability to get a quorum at the first meeting.

This body has no independent telephone or office of its own, making communication with them extremely tedious. In fact, of all the caucuses, only the Women’s caucus was conducted with anything like a semblance of efficiency and inclusiveness.

The ‘religious’ organisations for some reason were exempt from caucus, and three religious bodies were allowed to make automatic nominations. The ‘Services’ caucus never got off the ground and ended with some emergency procedure taking place, organised by the Parliamentary Office.

5. GT: “The Constitution 212G states that the Commission must be impartial and carry out its mandate fairly.” A few paragraphs later Ms Teixeira continued: “Let me remind the GHRA that when the Ethnic Relations Commission was established in 2003, it was based on a similar process reached through an agreed bi-partisan process in which Dr. Frank Anthony, a member of the Progressive Youth Organisation, was selected by the youth organisation and Ms. Cheryl Sampson, Executive Member of the National Congress of Women, women’s arm of the PNC, was selected through the women’s caucus. No argument was made as to their impartiality, links to political parties, et cetera.”

GHRA: We interpret the point Ms. Teixeira makes as impartiality equals horse-trading that puts a member of each major party on a Commission. By the time the Appointive Committee got around to nominations for the Women’s Commission, the horse-trading had evolved to the point where the Women’s Progressive Organisation (PPP) and the National Congress on Women (PNC) were explicitly guaranteed nomination without the tedium of going through caucuses.

6. GT: “The Constitution drafters were more concerned about the process of consultation and the identification of the entities to be consulted, rather than the individual nominees to the Commission.”

GHRA: The problem lies not with the intention of the ‘drafters’, but with that of those who currently implement the ‘process of consultation’, and their obsession with controlling the outcome, thereby creating inconsistencies, anomalies and delays.

7. GT: The GHRA also submitted a nominee to the Youth cluster in the name of the Rights of Children (ROC)/GHRA who was selected… no quibble there it seems!

GHRA: The nominee of Rights of Children (ROC), Michelle Kalamandeen, was made by the ROC itself in a letter submitted by its Coordinator, Ms. Niccollette Boatswain, on September 10th. 2008, the day the first Youth Caucus meeting was held.

As a result of the confusion which reigned at this meeting, the ROC representative thought she required other nominations. At ROC’s request, the GHRA then supplied a nomination dated September 15th for the second meeting which was held on September 16th.

As things turned out, the second nomination was unnecessary, a matter pointed out to the GHRA in a letter from the Parliament Office. If the procedures were as transparent as claimed none of this would have been necessary.

8. GT: Turning to the nomination of Kwame McKoy: “Surely the GHRA cannot reserve to itself such arrogance to refuse to acknowledge the will of the majority exercised in an indisputably democratic and transparent manner?”

GHRA: We feel the only will of the majority relevant to Kwame McKoy was his indisputable defeat in the Youth Caucus where he received 4 out of 24 votes. The only transparency issue is how his name still found itself on the list of nominees.

The upshot of all of this, as stated above, is that the Government actually has four nominees: Min of Education – Ms. Banmattie Ram; Ministry Labour, Human Services & Social Security – Kwame McKoy; Ministry of Labour, Human Services, & Social Security – Shirley Ferguson; Ministry of Health – Suelle Findlay-Williams.

Ms Teixeira has adroitly shifted blame for the nine-month delay in obtaining nominations to civil society. In a bewildering conclusion she states; “it (the process) certainly showed the weakness of civil society to handle the new responsibility conferred on them by the revised Constitution”.

Rather than this posturing, the GHRA is of the view that the Appointive Committee owes a general apology to all the people who in good faith innocently wasted much time, or got things wrong because of its inefficiency.

This allegation also neatly distracts from the fundamental problem that civil society, as a supposedly full participant, was never allowed to exercise any effective influence over the process.

Hence, GHRA criticisms are down-graded to ‘puerile’ and the word ‘quibbles’ is applied to several of its observations. According to Ms. Teixeira it all boils down to the GHRA’s “desire to control the will of the 81 non-governmental bodies and the government to appoint and establish this Commission”.

None of these exchanges would have been necessary if the Government had shown a modicum of respect for civil society.

Early in this process the Government received a memorandum from over 60 reputable civil society organisations, setting out detailed suggestions on the issue of structuring and establishing the Commissions.

Anyone interested in efficiently concluding the nomination process would have seized the opportunity to involve them.

Failure to do so was inexplicable, set against the fact that by June 2008 the Appointive Committee was already way behind scheduled deadlines.

The bottom line is that the government needs to learn to deal with civil society as organisations and groups that are politically independent.

The obsession with dividing citizens into ‘supporters’ and ‘opposition’ ensures the ruling party will always remain suspicious of concepts such as ‘independence’ or ‘impartiality’, much less “accountability”. Without movement on this front, we predict that similar stakeholder initiatives in the future will negate the building of constructive partnerships so necessary for nation-building.