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.
