National Purpose

May 27, 2012 Editorial

The flags have been raised; the speeches have been made; the congratulations have been received. We are celebrating our 46th anniversary of independence. We do this because the British were sucking our wealth to develop their own countries. Once independence was achieved we would be masters of our fate; captains of our destiny and we could enjoy the fruits of our labour.
But forty-six years down the road, we have to confess that those fruits are not as sweet or as abundant as we expected back then. What went wrong? There is no point in answering that question in a spirit of casting aspersions. We have to look backwards, not in anger, but in trying to ensure that we rectify those mistakes or at least try not to repeat them. The first problem we can discern that continues to befuddle us and is that we still lack a unified national outlook.
We can always complain that the British fostered our divisions through their ‘divide and rule’ policies. Recruiting one race for the state sector and steering others into the private sector certainly has not worked to our advantage. But we cannot continue to hide our heads in the sand or alternatively, wring our hands at the consequences of these artificial divisions in the new globalised economy and minimalist national governments.
Policy makers in countries that started from the same base as ours but were able to forge ahead like Malaysia initiated policies to ensure that the national patrimony and burdens were more equitably distributed. This does not mean that they did not encounter problems with their innovations but at least we have the benefits of their experience. But then again there will always be unintended consequences in every human institution after they are introduced: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
A decade ago there was a healthy debate about what new institutions may be appropriate to develop a sense of national purpose in Guyana. We do not have to repeat the debate but surely, some department at UG can recapitulate the points raised then, for decisions in the present. We respectfully submit that the question of ‘national purpose’ is a threshold issue that must be addressed by our political directorate and a minimum consensus reached. Notice that we are not talking about ‘national identity’ which is a related but not identical subject.
The delivery of a ‘new dispensation’ by the electorate at the last elections led to great expectations that the parties elected to parliament would have worked together to arrive at a ‘national purpose’. So far there has not been much progress. An initial bonhomie was precipitated by the president’s creation of a Tripartite Engagement facility during which the Opposition was allowed to propose matters that they felt were of importance to their constituencies and which the Executive were willing to accept as part of their programmes.
Further progress, however, was shattered by two developments that went against the grain of a ‘national’ approach. The Opposition parties insisted that since they controlled the National Assembly they would have to maintain that control within parliament committees that in essence degutted the principle of proportionality of which the constitution is redolent.
The government was forced to resort to the courts but the latter, while accepting that it had jurisdiction over the case, then sidestepped the issue by asserting that the parliament could make its own rules. In essence the court is asserting that even if those rules went against the spirit of the constitution, it would not interfere.
The British principle of parliamentary supremacy, which had been jettisoned by the adoption of the constitution as the supreme law of the land, has therefore been reintroduced through the back door. The ‘national purpose’ is now the Opposition’s purpose.
The second issue in the way of defining a new ‘national purpose’ was the seemingly arbitrary cuts on the budget made by the Opposition. The Opposition must lay a coherent plan to the public as the government did through its budget. They and the government can then work towards our progress with a national purpose.

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