A United States-funded project aimed at boosting citizens’ engagement with local parliamentarians and improving overall governance here is about to begin its work even as the country prepares for local government elections in the coming months.
USAID last evening hosted a reception to welcome the Leadership and Democracy (LEAD) project’s Chief of Mission, Glenn Bradbury, to Guyana as the project will soon kick off.
“We were pleased that USAID shared our view and was willing to support a programme to strengthen parliamentary democracy, local governance , and youth and women’s engagement”, US Ambassador Brent Hardt told invitees at last evening’s reception, held at the Cara Lodge.
He said that the programme will engage stakeholders across the political spectrum in a way that supports the interests of Guyanese in effective and responsive democratic institutions.
“Specifically, the LEAD programme seeks to strengthen the functioning of the National Assembly by encouraging consensus building; to work with civil society and the public to boost citizens’ engagement with the National Assembly and to work with all parties to support the legislature’s role as an effective deliberative body,” Hardt said.
Further he explained that when the results of the last elections revealed a minority government and opposition-controlled legislature his country realized that it would pose many challenges, if not handled with compromise and national interest as its focus. As such the State Department and USAID were asked to support a specifically tailored, democracy and governance programme to enhance the National Assembly’s functioning and encourage consensus building.
He said that over the past months they had been had been meeting with stakeholders across the political spectrum as they plan for the successful implementation of project programmes.
Through these interface sessions the call for local government elections was echoed.” After a nineteen-year hiatus, it appears that the National Assembly is poised to approve legislation that will pave the way to elections and a restoration of local governance,” he said.
The New Chief of Party to guide USAID’s LEAD programme informed that he was eager to embark on the programme’s activities as the programme seeks to give support to members of the National Assembly and all interested groups that envision betterment of people of Guyana.
Bradbury served as legislative programme director under a USAID funded programme aimed at supporting the Assembly of Kosovo and has decades of experience in the areas, such as providing constructive and impartial engagement to strengthen the National Assembly.
