A successful State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) requires constitutional reform, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) said yesterday.
“The misgivings of the GHRA are less with technicalities than with the consequences of putting the Bill into effect in our current political environment. An F-1 engine in a mid-sized sedan car will more likely shake the body to pieces than produce a world-class performance. Our current constitutional and legal systems in which the SAR (State Assets Recovery) Bill will operate have been fundamentally flawed since the 1978 Constitution was approved by a turn-out of 14% of the population. No amount of tinkering and prevarication can disguise its deformity. The Constitution was fashioned to reflect the powers accumulated in the hands of the then President Forbes Burnham. The party flag flown over the Court of Appeal symbolized the end of politics as a process of prudence, conciliation and pluralism. Both confirmed the entry of Guyanese politics into an era of power struggle rather than that of a political contest”, the human rights body said.
It added that despite promises about constitutional reform since 1992, succeeding Governments did not embrace the uncertainty it implied.
“(PPP/C President) Dr. Jagan’s appeal to his personal integrity, i.e. that the excessive powers were safe in his hands, has become a mantra for subsequent Presidents. The Constitutional Reform Com-mission recommendations of the late ‘90s were largely axed by the Parliamentary Oversight Committee (under the chairmanship of the current Prime Minister), reflecting a disturbing capacity of Parliamentarians to suppress reforms aimed at weakening the over-weaning powers of the Presidency to their own benefit”, the GHRA stated.
It further argued that the legitimacy of the SAR Bill rests on ignoring this “structural deformity of Parliament”. It pointed out that no Parliamentarian can challenge the Bill (from the Government side) or welcome it (from the opposition side) without inviting expulsion from Parliament by their party leader. GHRA charged that the APNU+AFC Government is not seeking all-party support for the Bill but is relying on its Parliamentary majority – “a power struggle without politics”. It added that instead of mechanisms to make certain of moderation, candidates for the SAR Directorship of SAR are required to “possess the qualities of sainthood, essentially the same argument used by Dr. Jagan.”
Noting that it had issued numerous statements and organized various civic coalitions since the mid-1990s calling for constitutional reform of the electoral and parliamentary processes, the GHRA said it had no realistic expectations that the current incumbents will go further than their predecessors without sustained civic and public pressure.
Earlier this month, the GHRA had said that there should be consensus on the SAR legislation. It said that without this consensus the draft State Assets Recovery Bill runs the risk of “prolonging ethnically polarized politics.”
The GHRA said that the draft Bill is not the promised anti-corruption platform which was so central to the APNU+AFC coalition’s electoral campaign and while the “narrowness of focus” in the new Bill can be defended on technical grounds, the lack of an enabling governance context comes as a disappointment to the GHRA, “a case of promising much and delivering little”.
It was stated that the association submitted its comments during the consultation on the SAR legislation which was organized by the Attorney General’s Chambers and they addressed some technical specifics of the Act which introduced new concepts into Guyanese law and practice as well as some of the over-arching political and contextual issues critical to achieving its aim.
The GHRA said that the broad-based political support which the Bill needs, required two things to happen. The first, the release said, is the broadening of the scope of the Bill from asset recovery alone to a more substantive incorporation of the aims of the UN Convention Against Corruption. The second is the creation of a mechanism that brings a range of civic and private sector forces into the process of promoting the Bill.
“Anything less will inevitably prompt the question whether ‘anti-corruption’ for the ruling party ever meant more than pursuing those now in opposition for corrupt acts committed while in power,” the release read.
