What should the public expect from the Oversight Committee on the Security Sector that is to be established in the National Assembly?
The Constitutional (Amendment) Bill passed last month establishes the oversight committee which is the result of the agreement of the multi-stakeholder consultation that brought together the administration, opposition, and representatives of civil society in the aftermath of last year’s massacres at Lusignan and Bartica. Some seem to think that the committee will be a watchdog over the policies and administration of the disciplined forces but that is unlikely.

It is well known that the work of the existing security-related, select parliamentary committees – on the Disciplined Forces Commission Report and the Security Sector Reform Action Plan – has been reduced to a crawl.  All parties, nevertheless, seemed to assume that the new oversight committee is desirable and its aim is achievable.

The first question to be asked is whether this, or any future, administration would tolerate having the heads of its defence and security forces being answerable to a parliamentary committee at all. The People’s National Congress Reform, for example, was demanding, quite unrealistically, that the committee be empowered to scrutinise all government policies and the administration of the security services.

The second question which no one has tried to answer is exactly how such a committee would function and what it is expected to accomplish. Ms Gail Teixeira, who articulated the People’s Progressive Party-Civic’s position, called with Delphic expectation for “trust between the parties involved.” She added opaquely that the composition and terms of reference will be determined in a subsequent motion to be brought to the National Assembly when parties agree on those issues. But how would such trust be created? It was only a year ago that the administration had claimed that the gangs that carried out Lusignan and Bartica killings and robberies were “politically-motivated.”

Mr Robert Corbin, leader of the People’s National Congress Reform-One Guyana argued that, without knowing the committee’s terms of reference, his party would not support the bill.  Mr Winston Murray, who also spoke for the PNCR, suggested that the security sector oversight committee as envisaged by the stakeholders ought to have had greater scope, for example, the power to summon the minister responsible for national security to answer to it. Both Corbin and Murray felt that, in order to emphasise the separation of the executive branch from the legislative branch, “no minister should chair the committee” and the chairperson and deputy chairperson should be elected from opposite sides of the Assembly. Expectedly, their proposed amendments to the bill were rejected. How could they dream that the administration would renounce its responsibility for state security in this way?

Leader of the Alliance For Change Mr Raphael Trotman lectured the Assembly on the decade-long efforts to establish some form of parliamentary oversight of the security sector, blaming the administration for non-achievement. Recently, he had also complained about the lack of progress of the two existing security-related parliamentary committees chaired by members of the administration. Why should he expect the new committee chaired by the same people to be different from the older ones?

In the final analysis, the bill seems to have spawned a committee that will be doomed to impotence and irrelevance. The National Assembly hardly works (it met only 19 times in 2004); adding more committees will not make it work harder. The country certainly needs a vigilant watchdog over public safety. Given the administration’s past and present attitudes to transparency, however, it is unlikely that the Oversight Committee on the Security Sector will ever become anything more than another tame lapdog.