Dear Editor,
This writer, who holds single citizenship, but is old enough to have held a British passport before Guyana became independent, nevertheless continues to disagree very fundamentally with those who argue that the constitution is so constipated that it cannot be moved from the twentieth to the twenty-first century.
There are still those of us activists who enjoyed the elation of becoming independent Guyanese. It was the pride which we held so consensually that informed our self-confidence in managing ourselves, to the extent of excluding those who resided overseas for whatever reason, of which the most demanding was qualifying professionally in the range of competencies needed back home.
In the past decades the playing-field has changed traumatically. More Guyanese live abroad than at home. The media is replete with news of the persistent performance deficits of under-prepared practitioners in almost every field of endeavour.
Our development institutions are retrogressing, with gaps being compensated for by persons and organisations without local citizenship.
The question of ‘dual citizenship’, and its implications, is surely not embedded in parliament alone, which in any case is not the sole mechanism for governing the country. There are other collaborator institutions, public and private, who routinely contribute to the productivity, or otherwise, of this nation. So that it is hardly debatable that major decision-making that affects our welfare is conducted by many more dual citizens than we realise.
At the other end of the spectrum, why is the voter allowed dual citizenship? The range of ineligibilities would appear to run too far and wide to justify our faith in organising the required competencies and skills to function throughout the national management structure.
Our dilemma is so much less political than of managerial, educational and health developmental; not to mention other areas of gross deficiencies.
So please tell me how the innocuous discussion on dual citizenship will rehabilitate the deterioration of which the very protesters complain? We have less to lose by reforming the constitution appropriately. Fifty years in not all that young. We need all the intellectual energy available to ensure that we live on for much longer.
Yours faithfully,
E. B. John
