How seriously does the National Assembly take national security? Given the unhurried, five-year career of the special select committee established to review the report of the Disciplined Forces Commission, last week’s barefaced resolution to extend the deadline for the submission of its report to August 6 was astonishing. This latest postponement tells a lot about the National Assembly’s perception of its obligation to the public, about the persistence of public safety problems in the country and about the predicament of the security forces today.
The life history of the commission’s report is interesting. It had its origins during the dreadful days of the troubles on the East Coast when President Bharrat Jagdeo and opposition leader Mr Robert Corbin agreed to establish the Disciplined Forces Commission. The commission was given a mandate to begin work on July 1, 2003 to inquire into the Guyana Police Force, Guyana Defence Force, Guyana Prison Service and Guyana Fire Service in order to identify their shortcomings and to recommend remedies to respond to the public safety crisis.
This was done and, in about ten months, the commission’s final report was presented to the Speaker of the National Assembly on May 6, 2004. The report was then laid before the National Assembly on May 17 and was accepted unanimously. Then the rigmarole began.
Despite the gravity of the public safety situation at that time and the urgency of the commission’s recommendations, the National Assembly sent the report to a special select committee which was not established until November 4, 2004, with a mandate to report to the National Assembly in four months. The committee dawdled for sixteen months instead until April 2006, inviting the same heads of the security forces who had already given ample oral evidence to the commission to repeat their views to the committee. Faced with the dissolution of the Eighth Parliament on May 2, 2006, however, that interim report was never presented to the Assembly.
Although the Ninth Parliament was convened on September 28, 2006, the National Assembly waited over one year to establish a new committee. Under undiplomatic duress, the Guyana Government was required to table a motion in the National Assembly by October 31, 2007 to establish a new special select committee to examine the Disciplined Forces Commission report, among other things, as one of the conditionalities of the DFID-supported interim memorandum on the Security Sector Reform Action Plan 2007-2011 that was signed on August 10, 2007.
The National Assembly eventually managed to appoint that committee on July 26, 2008. The committee had earlier requested an extension of the deadline for the submission of its final report to December 15, 2008, but seemed unable to complete its work by that date. Last week, the National Assembly approved a further extension of the deadline for the submission of its report to August 6, 2009.
The National Assembly seems to subsist in a capsule in which its leisurely schedule of after-lunch sessions and annual recesses is insulated from interruption by public business. What can be so wrong with a small committee working at night or on weekends to examine matters as important as national security?
Neither administration nor opposition members of the National Assembly seem to be fazed about the fact that parliamentary procrastination can be costly. They seem unable to make the connection between the current high crime rate in the country and the non-implementation of the commission’s recommendations. What then was the point in establishing the commission in the first place? Why the rigmarole?
