Bishop George, the former Anglican Bishop of Guyana, passed away on Monday. Guyana lost a great son that brought pride and dignity to our country and our people. Bishop George saw that politics had brought disgrace and suffering to our people post-independence and he became a vigorous voice in demanding democracy in our country. He was a freedom fighter. I send my profound sympathies to his family, his Anglican sisters and brothers and all his comrades in Guyana. His life is worth celebrating; his name has an indelible place in the annals of Guyana’s history.
His was an authentic voice in the fight to restore democracy in the 1970s and 1980s.He must have been pleased that since October 5, 1992, Guyana has progressed gradually. No one can deny that our economy has grown manifold since then, from about US$250 per capita to about US$4000. The economy has expanded whereas rice, sugar and bauxite still prevail, agriculture and manufacturing have grown by leaps and bounds; service, tourism and ICT are dynamic new economic sectors today. Oil is on the horizon. The private sector has resumed its role as an engine of growth and development.
Life expectancy is today 71. It had risen to 60 by 1964, but was threatening to fall under 60 again by 1992. Child and maternal mortality rates have improved dramatically, with child mortality improving from about 120 per 1000 in 1990 to under 20 today and maternal mortality improving from about 400 per 100,000 in 1990 to about 100 today. Poverty has been reduced from about 66% and 88% in 1990 to under 20% today. Clive Thomas, one of Bishop George’s comrades at the time, wrote and spoke extensively then of the despair that existed in Guyana.
Incidentally, our children dominate at CXC today, our infrastructure is being expanded and modernised, greater than 90 per cent of Guyanese have access to potable water and electricity. The number of people living in their own homes has more than doubled and the number of people who use safe sanitation has increased several-fold. More people own their own vehicles, TV, telephones, modern cooking equipment and things like washing machines.
Bishop George dies at a time when Guyana is truly a very different country than it was in 1992. He had seen by 1992, after almost three decades of dictatorial rule, how Guyana had become a poverty-stricken country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, with a totally dilapidated infrastructure and an economy that had hit bottom. The commanding heights of the economy were State-controlled. Sugar, rice and bauxite had collapsed. Mining and forestry were part of the parallel economy which was several times larger than the formal economy. The country’s money deteriorated from $2 to one US dollar to $125.
In 1992, Guyana was a country where people lived in utter despair, where people lived in fear and where the social welfare needs of our people were unmet. Health, education, water, housing, sanitation and other needs of people were ignored and unmet and the social sector total expenditure in the nation’s budget was under 10 per cent. These facts are confessions in the last budget presented by Carl Greenidge, the then Minister of Finance and now Minister of Foreign Affairs.
One of Bishop George’s alarms in the pre-1992 Guyana was the total disregard and emaciation of Guyana’s Parliament. The then People’s National Congress had hijacked Guyana’s Parliament and used it to humiliate the Opposition and to rubber stamp the authoritarian rule of the PNC. The Leader of the Opposition was banned from speaking in Parliament. Bishop George insisted that Parliament was critical for good governance and for development.
The development in our Parliament since 1992 must have warmed Bishop George’s heart. It became an important part of shared governance in our country. The various sector committees, together with the Public Accounts Committee and Special Select Committees, gave the Parliament the power to hold Government accountable. All large and complex bills were referred to Special Select Committees as a rule, not the exception and not the option of Government, but imperatives. No bill was passed with all three stages at one sitting. The ability of MPs to question Ministers was a standard feature of the Parliament. Parliament made sure that laws created avenues for shared governance, for increased participation of political and civil societies and in appointments to statutory bodies.
But at the time of his death, Bishop George must have become worried that Guyana’s Parliament – the central institution of democracy – is facing a crisis of legitimacy. APNU/AFC has rapidly destroyed these developments. Sector and Special Select Committees rarely meet now, the executive dominates the agenda, bills are rarely referred to Special Select Committees, the Speaker denies the right of MPs to ask questions and present motions, and bills are passed through all stages in the same day. Now powers of Ministers have become extreme. Parliament is no longer a deliberative body championing democracy, but a central institution to move dictatorship forward.
