Questions for the CARICOM HEADS

Jul 03, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Guyana, the Caricom nation that needs to be in the spotlight of the Caribbean Community because of the increasing concretization of elected dictatorship in this land, is now on the front page of the region because it is the host of the annual meeting of the Heads and will take up the chairmanship of the Community.
One hopes all Heads, without exception, do a little familiarity exercise in the nature of governance and government (they are two distinct concepts, the former going beyond the style of administration) in Georgetown.
This essay here is to help in that attempt and to pose some questions about governance and government in the West Indian islands to the CARICOM Prime Ministers who are in Guyana. I don’t know if it will come as a shock or a surprise to these Prime Ministers but here is a little picture of the political landscape of Guyana that should inform these gentlemen of how distorted, deformed, decadent, debauched and disastrous are governance and government in this country.
In Guyana, the ruling party has its congress and presiding over the elections is a senior civil servant. What is a neutral public servant doing at the congress of a political party? Does that happen in other Caricom states? Well, gentlemen, this guy may not be neutral at all.
Here is the second part of this Shakespearian tragedy. Three Permanent Secretaries in the Civil Service are members of the leadership of the ruling party.
Is there another Caricom nation where this obtains?  Wait! There is more to come. Here is a direct question for the three big PMs in Caricom – Manning, Golding and Thompson. Would you gentlemen agree to let the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies participate as a candidate for a political party in the national elections?
Mr. Manning, would you accept the UWI Head running on the ticket of Mr. Basdeo Panday’s UNC? Mr. Thompson did you invite the UWI Vice-Chancellor to be part of your party’s slate at the last election? And if Mr. Owen Arthur has secured his service, would you have accepted that? I am asking Mr. Golding the same question.
In Guyana, the respected, highly prestigious role of a university head was somewhat lowered (that is putting it mildly) when he became a candidate for the ruling party in two consecutive national elections.
You, gentlemen would know that the governing party in Guyana, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), when it was in opposition, ran to the Caricom Heads for twenty- eight years crying that President Forbes Burnham’s Government was authoritarian and that the ruling party the People’s National Congress (PNC) had more national authority than the State itself in what the PPP called the doctrine of “paramountcy of the party.” But gentlemen, have I not documented the continued existence of the paramountcy of the party under the PPP? And what I have just explained is a drop in the ocean.
Do you know that in the seventeen years it has been in power, the PPP Government has only allowed three sessions of Question Day allocated to the Opposition in Parliament?
In one of those three instances, one of the opposition parties had to stage a boycott to get the PPP Government to concede a Question Day.
These are the same politicians that have begged you for 28 years to help bring democracy to Guyana when they were in the opposition
Here is some more hell-raising information. There is only one radio station (forget about the three channels; they broadcast from one studio wholly owned by the Government) in Guyana. The people in power since 1992 spent untold hours and untold amount of energy when they were in opposition crying against this same radio station under Presidents Burnham and Hoyte.
They have shown no discernible movement in changing this monopoly since 1992. May I remind you that this was seventeen years ago. I think all of you met President Jagdeo at the Summit of the Americas where he promised that in May of this year, we would have in this land, a Freedom of Information Act. We are still waiting.
Could Mr. Jagdeo be asked why his Government didn’t think of this years ago? Finally, please excuse the embarrassing information PM Thompson released on Wednesday on the statistics of Guyanese in Barbados.
In every category, be it work permit, student visas, visitors, deportees, Guyanese topped the list.
I am sure you are aware that this paranoid rush to leave Guyana has been taking place since the seventies. Kofi Annan, when Secretary-General of the UN, specifically mentioned Guyana in terms of the huge loss of skills from migration from Third World countries. The tragedy of Guyana goes on.

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