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The growing public interest in Constitutional Reform is a welcome

Jul 09, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
The growing interest in the subject of constitutional reform for Guyana, expressed in letters to the newspapers, is a very heartening development. Whether persons are in favour of constitutional reform or against it, the frank exchange of views on the subject is welcome.
However, it is surprising to find people calling the need for constitutional reform (CR) into question at this stage, given the commitment to it by political parties before the last general elections, the slow but irreversible measures in the legislature to launch a national process, and even the encouragement of international UN agencies and others.
Lincoln Lewis for example (Stabroek News, June 24) has called for an understanding of the relevant constitutional issues and provisions already in place. He has a point, but this surely is not an argument against the need for constitutional reform. I’m astounded by his spirited defence of the existing constitution, concluding that “authority is vested in the people, via the constitution, to hold elected leaders accountable. We are the final arbiters of our destiny,” especially coming from someone who has been on the receiving end of government indifference over the years. I doubt whether the average Guyanese ‘man-in-the-street’ feels the same way about the constitution.
Sherwood Lowe’s claim that the “political and social conditions that fuelled the last reform process after the 1997 election are not in play today” (Stabroek News, June 26) is equally hard to fathom. For him, the key issue driving constitutional reform is power-sharing which, rather interestingly, he claims was an issue when APNU-AFC was in opposition, but is no longer an issue now that they are in government.
He has picked the wrong straw man to beat, since governance issues in this country go far beyond the question of power-sharing.
If he can’t think of grounds for CR, letters by John Willems (Stabroek News, June 28) and Mike Persaud (Stabroek News, June 26) provide an ample list of issues. Our electoral system, for one thing, needs serious overhaul. This is the only country I can think of where it takes more than a week to declare national election results.
Our governance structure is characterized by unrepresentativeness – a fundamental lack of accountability of politicians to the people where, as Willems points out, parliamentary representatives owe allegiance to their political parties and leaders, and not to the people they are supposed to serve.
In general, constitutional reform has to address a governance system that has kept this country in a state of chronic instability since Independence, which has prevented it from realizing the promise of our natural resources and other fortunate attributes for the benefit of its citizens.
Connected to this is the malfunction of only two changes of government in 53 years, which has the implication that service of the citizens, as the role of the government, takes a back seat to the struggle to remain in power by any means.
With public interest in constitutional reform growing, my greatest fear is not that it will not happen, but that it will be foisted on an underprepared population by the political elites. Guyana must have had the most ‘constitutional reforms’ of any country in this part of the world since independence. The constitution is not something to be changed every few years; it should stand the test of time. It is the duty of all sections of Guyanese society to get involved, so that we can produce a document that will serve the country well and address its main issues and needs for generations to come.
Desmond Thomas, PhD

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