Dear Editor,
The basic problem facing Guyana can be stated in various ways. The primary developmental problem is how to remove the insecurity felt by the great majority, more or less in various race groups regardless of age, gender and disability, and also according to political attachment and social standing, over the right to share in the beneficial use of our natural resources, and in opportunities for the development of all kinds when these opportunities are in the control of the government.
To fit in with the existing climate, recent events and proclamations at the highest level demand a particular kind of statement of this basic problem. Here, then, is one attempt which will not of course please every individual, class, sub-class, developmental preference, or all representatives of ethnic groups, sectors of these groups, business interests or occupations. It is made in the knowledge that while small circles of one race seem to prosper above the national average, poverty is no respecter of race and in so many ways it makes women more subject to demeaning abuse.
When the PPP won the government in 1992, President Cheddi Jagan pledged that Parliament would become the highest institution in the land. Those close to Parliament may be able to say if after sixteen years it has become that.
The President cannot be unaware of two facts – firstly that already a sharp reduction in the number of rice farmers is taking place, suggesting the growth of large units. The 1946 Census report had recorded, “The status of employer is rare.” It was the age of the small farmer. The other is the century old lack of attention to the aspirations of the post-emancipation villages. To the extent that we can determine future development, it cannot be in the power of one party.
Recently the President chose a location in New York USA to proclaim a policy for Guyana’s land resources. In the heat of the world financial crisis and growing recession, he praised the virtues of private investment. He did more. He unfolded to his audience, that is, the world, a call to set up plantations in Guyana. This rather is like the Dutch ‘Governor’ Gravesande who, in 1746, issued a call to all nations to come in and set up plantations in Demerara.
These Presidents are very methodical. President Burnham announced the Paramountcy of the Party over the state, which he deemed one of the party’s “executive arms” at home in Guyana on December 14, 1974, but he also did so at a party conference, whereas the whole country was to come under the declared paramountcy. President Jagdeo also overturned the existing forestry policy and declared for standing forests at some location other than the National Assembly of the country of which he is elected the supreme executive authority.
Violations of law have become routine in Guyana and have reached a point of recklessness. A few days ago the Minister of Local Government freely spoke on behalf of the Guyana Elections Commission. The President and his advisers, huddled at the Office of the President, make and break policy, decide on contracts of the highest values, and seem to be the disposer supreme of Guyana’s assets. The President claimed that Guyana had an exemplary system of regulation.
So forgetful is the President of Parliament that he has avoided exercising his right under Article 67(1) of the constitution to attend the National Assembly, address it and to send messages to it. The present objection to the President’s habit of announcing policy in the absence of the national institutions comes in part from a grim and loaded affirmation in the editorial of the government’s Guyana Chronicle on August 1, 2007 reminding us in another context of “the coming to power of a political leadership supported in overwhelming majority by Indo-Guyanese.” No one has yet pointed out the brazenly triumphal quality of that statement. Even now it seems timely to ask, ”So what?”
Making recommendations about the President’s land and forest policies will not help at this stage. Where the natural resources are to be used, the point is to achieve clear consensus among interested groups, or to implement a consensus already reached. Another issue now logically raises itself again. In a UN-inspired consultation on a poverty programme, some young people from the East Coast of Demerara had proposed that GO-Invest become an all-party institution. To me it was a signal development of leadership, on the national scene, a much more useful and creative new avenue of practical concern. It was hailed or noticed by very few.
It is time to say publicly that those who regard any people’s destiny as a hobby will always find more hope in gunplay than in the less dramatic groundwork and mind-work necessary for dealing with an elected dictatorship . If it occurs to a President or Government of Guyana that a wholesale policy for land and for forests has become necessary, one’s place to go is the National Assembly, perhaps for something of the order of a Land Use Commission. Political and social groups, including those of indigenous peoples and those concerned with ancestral lands and gender, religious and human rights activists of all kinds and the private sector can employ such an opportunity to generate lively policy-forming conversations all over the country. There has to be a non-violent way of ensuring that all Guyanese are equal in the eyes of government.
The government is more and more callous and unaccountable. It is hard to avoid expressing an unpopular opinion − a personal one. If the East Coast post-2001 election disturbances had aimed at making the government more pompous, the plan has succeeded.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
