For A Renewed Guyana

Jun 12, 2011 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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This week we feature the final installment of the address delivered by Presidential Candidate Khemraj Ramjattan at the IDB’s – Civil Society Consultative Committee Dinner and Discussion – 25th May, 2011.

Crime and Security
We realize that wealth without education, social harmony, public safety and private security guaranteed, will mean the opposite to development. In our Action Plan we have set out, after consultation with local and foreign experts, a menu of sound measures to address the crime situation.
Unlike other candidates, we feel that the crime situation is critical, and that lives are too precious for us to play the fool by rejecting British and US training and assistance.
On a per capita basis, our crime rate is unusually high and that in itself tells a story of a government that is too weak, compromised, and therefore lacking the strength and will to deal with crime condignly. Thankfully, our new Minister of Justice and National Security will not have visa problems.
The big challenge in developing and emphasising law enforcement will be privacy rights. Privacy is important yet it must be balanced against the need for the State to have the information required to effect and prevent criminal activity.
The AFC will not reduce liberty nor pry into homes, but the State will have to know where people are going and what they are doing in the public realm.
This, we believe, will be accomplished through extensive use of cameras, biometrics, scans and a more intensive monitoring of financial and monetary transactions.

LCDS and the Environment
The AFC’s fundamental premise is that development and preservation are not mutually exclusive and therefore, a healthy and profitable balance can be found between protecting and preserving our pristine environment whilst setting aside sufficient lands for the sustainable extraction and development of the rich resources they possess.

ICT
We in the AFC believe that Guyana needs to be a part of the Information Revolution. Our comparative advantage of having less than one million people allows us to leapfrog into new technologies relatively easily. Our objective is to see Government providing the catalyst to allow Guyana to leverage Information Technology to benefit citizens, communities, businesses and ultimately, the nation.
We propose, however, not to go the route of providing electioneering handouts, but to firstly establish a National Skills Authority before going after lucrative contracts in South and North America.
Our second comparative advantage of being the South’s only English-speaking continental nation will be developed to ensure the creation of Business Process Outsourcing Centres (BPOC).

The Donor Community
Every state strives towards the day when its dependence on donor funds is zero or at a minimum; but that is in an ideal world.
The AFC is made up of men and women who are fiercely independent and patriotic, but we are also pragmatists.
Tying our development to the Millennium Development Goals and our own programme will require the kind assistance and support of the donor community. We have always respected and encouraged the work of the World Bank and the IDB in Guyana and do not see their presence diminishing in our administration.
On the contrary, we expect their presence in helping to tackle corruption and supporting our ambitious agenda and robust growth.
We know that their presence has a disciplining effect which, until we have mastered that competence and instilled that culture in our financial institutions, will be useful for Guyana.

Readiness of GECOM for Election
The AFC supports the work of GECOM, and this is so despite past bad experiences dating from the 2006 elections and continuing.
Some of the offences committed against us, such as poaching of our polling agents, paying for PPP and PNC E-Day staff and not the AFC’s, locking out approximately 50% of AFC’s Polling Agents out of Polling Stations on E-Day for several hours, the Reg. 10 seat issue, denying scrutineers’ money totaling some $21M, and most recently, being less than forthright with regard to concerns about the format of the PLE.
The AFC believes that GECOM ought to be given its required funding, and it must resist all pressures to be influenced by the PPP Government. It can then become a truly professional and credible body and a true referee.
Law and Order In the Run-Up To Elections
The AFC takes pride that its entrance onto the political scene has positively influenced the level of discourse and did much to defuse tensions that tended to be combustible. This was recognised in a report on an Assessment by Terrence Simmons and Roxanne Myers which, among its many findings, established that “the emergence of the AFC on the political scene, had a decisive impact on the way the two entrenched political parties approached the elections.
The AFC promoted itself as a departure from the past and as “unlocking the future” …several apolitical citizens heeded the AFC’s message of peace, a just society, equality, racial harmony, non-violence and an end to ethnic voting”.
For the 2011 elections we intend to be no different in our approach to non-violence, and in fact, intend to do even better and convince more citizens to eschew violence.

GOVERNANCE
We must ensure that Parliament is given its status as the premier institution of the land. That it will be truly deliberative, with members who are not beholden to their Party leaders, but who must exercise their respective independent judgments on all matters there arising, in the national interests. The AFC will thus move to recall the Recall Bill.
We propose to bring to completion stage and implement the recommendations for Public Sector Reform. Services in this area at present leave almost every Guyanese vexed and frustrated. Just check the lines in front of the Passport Office every morning.

CONCLUSION
Our challenges in Guyana, however described, I see not as an inevitability of suffering, but a crisis of leadership and followership; and, a failure to make necessary and rational choices. We, since Independence and we celebrate our 45th Anniversary tonight, have not chosen well.
We need to shape a generation of compassionate leaders who will take the action needed and make the hard choices we choose to defer so often.
The AFC has begun the first steps towards that process. Modest other steps can be taken to get our people, young and old, within our political/religious/ethnic divide, to connect across these divides more profoundly, sharing homes and meals, and pulpit and platform, so we can realize our common humanity. Success will be measured in degrees of enlightenment achieved.
What this will serve for our people and our leaders is to let them see that diversity is enriching, rather than threatening; they will feel compassion and responsibility for those outside their religions, political parties, races; they will become tolerant of the views of others and intolerant of suffering and discrimination.
I and the AFC want you to be a part of this process to get us there.

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