Saying that representative politics in Guyana must be complemented by participatory democracy, some local civil society groups are calling for a greater role by non-political actors in the management of Guyana’s Natural Resources Fund as a starting point.
“Installation of the new Government is to be welcomed as a step in the direction of political normalcy. At the same time, it would be a serious miscalculation to believe that pre-election normalcy is the goal to be sought,” the groups, Policy Forum Guyana (PFG), BENAB Inc, the East Coast Clean-Up Committee, the Guyana Environment Initiative, the Guyana Human Rights Association, the Guyana Society for the Blind, Red Thread, Rights of Children (ROC), Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc and Ursuline Sisters in Guyana said in a joint statement issued last week Saturday.
They argued that this is so because ethnic politics of the past half-century aggravated by winner-take-all elections have polarized the society into those who feel they belong and those who don’t.
