Emile, you’re wrong!

Dec 04, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Let me say upfront that I thank New York-based Guyanese, Emile Mervin, for reading my columns. I would like to congratulate him for his constant concern about the descent into terrible governance as obtains in his frequent letters in the two independent dailies.
Mr. Mervin has responded to one of my columns, “The sins of the PNC and AFC have caught up with them (Nov. 30). The contention of that piece was that the AFC was engaged in deceiving its voters when it took out a full page advertisement denouncing Parliament’s ineffectiveness in the most devastating ways.
My argument was how the Parliament could be such a waste under the PPP yet the AFC has been faithful in its attendance the past four and a half years.
Mr. Mervin replied (“The PNC and AFC are duty-bound to be a voice for their constituencies,” KN, Dec 20) and compared the attendance of the AFC in Parliament with my persistent stay at UG even though I have adequately described the failures of UG over the years.
I think that the analogy cannot hold and is based on the wrong concepts used by Mr. Mervin. Key concepts to note are terms like “employee”, “elected” and “effectiveness.”
It is unwise to compare the two situations because of the different purpose a MP serves in Parliament and the role of an employee at UG.
More importantly, the term “effectiveness” takes on extensive importance when one examines the respective roles of UG and Parliament in the national context.
I will start with the term “elected.” No one elected me to go to UG and transmit the desire for change at that institution. I went to work there and found out at UG that persons needed my help. Together we have brought good changes to UG. It is not becoming of one to boast of their achievement but as a single individual and as the vice- chairman of the union we have achieved positive things at UG.
I will only name one. When UG was formed, the statutes prevented lecturers from bargaining for their fellow lecturers as trade unionists during contract renewal hearings. I fought long and hard alone in the UG Council for the statutes to be changed. That happened three years ago.
How can UG be compared to Parliament when lecturers and other workers have accomplished positive transformation in many areas that we can be proud of? We have prevented countless staff members from being wrongly dismissed.
The difference between UG and Parliament is that at UG there has been some measure of effectiveness. This is where a comparative index could be used. But more importantly, whereas UG employees are not elected to seek transformation at UG, Parliaments are elected by the people to do just that.
More than one hundred thousand and fifty thousands citizens sent the PNC and AFC to the National Assembly to do what Emile Mervin says; “Be a voice for their constituencies.”
Here I am in agreement with Mr. Mervin. But have the PNC and AFC been a voice for their constituencies in Parliament? The answer is no and I didn’t say that. It was the AFC that made that point in a full page advertisement in this newspaper. There has to come a moment of reflection when a person or an organization has to decide whether they are truly serving the people who trust them to be serve their interests in whatever forum they are in.
If no parishioner comes to a church, it is time to move on to another church. If school children are not listening to a teacher, he/she is ineffective. If a salary cannot make ends meet, it is time to look for more meaningful employment. It came from the horse’s mouth, (the AFC (in that advertisement) the revelation that Parliament is a manipulative tool of the ruling party and is an undemocratic institution.
The AFC has stayed inside Parliament for four and a half years. The question then is two fold; were you a voice for your constituency and how productive has been that voice that changes were made that benefited your constituencies.
The AFC cannot point to one single, I repeat, one single area of achievement for its constituencies in Parliament since 2006. On the contrary, the PPP can claim that it has had opposition support for many items of its legislative agenda from the AFC. Mr. Trotman’s Freedom of Information Bill is covered with cobweb on the parliamentary shelf.
The voices of the PNC and AFC have long been stifled in Parliament rendering the PNC and AFC dysfunctional. Those voices should have been elsewhere than Parliament a long time ago.