Once again, as there has been episodically ever since we received the instruments of independence from Britain (which included a Constitution), calls are being sounded for “constitutional changes”. It is opposite to note that these calls began with no other than PM Forbes Burnham, leader of the People’s National Congress (PNC), insisting that the entire independence Constitution be jettisoned and a new one promulgated to fit with his new “cooperative socialist” ideology, introduced in his “Declaration of Sophia” in 1974.
His new Constitution was introduced in 1980, but to the chagrin of most well-meaning Guyanese, it simply gave a legal imprimatur to his compulsions for despotic rule. This was facilitated by his rigging of elections, despite the elaborate constitutional stipulations to supposedly preclude the latter contingency.
Our experience with constitutional change makes the remarks of BR Ambedkar, the architect of India’s Constitution, very prophetic. Delivering his last speech to their National Assembly, inter alia, the great man said, “I feel however good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot.
“However bad a Constitution may be, it may turn out to be good if those who are called to work it, happen to be a good lot. The working of a Constitution does not depend wholly upon the nature of the Constitution. The Constitution can provide only the organs of State such as the Legislature, the Executive, and the Judiciary. The factors on which the working of those organs of the State depend are the people and the political parties they will set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics.”
It is advice that we should take to heart at this time in our history: Constitutions are no panacea for what ails our body politic. Constitutions are obviously necessary to delineate the powers of the institutions that will govern us on behalf of the State to which we have surrendered so many of our rights for our own ultimate security.
But we have to be careful not to fall into the trap that Constitutions will deliver us into any promised land of milk and honey in which the lion will lie down with the lamb. Yes, we should change our Constitution if we, the people, feel it necessary to do so, because we believe that the allocation of powers need to be altered. It is for this reason that all constitutions have built-in amendment procedures.
But we must do so with all due diligence and full awareness that even though necessary, constitutional changes are insufficient to create a harmonious society and there might be necessary preconditions. After the return of democracy in 1992, it was the PNC, which had been removed from office, that demanded constitutional changes to its Constitution through violent protests in the streets of Georgetown.
These were duly enacted in 2001 through the Herdmanston Accord, that was brokered by Caricom and which included some 174 specific changes. It is noteworthy that since 1787, the number of changes made to the United States Constitution by amendments amount to just 27. The first 10 of these amendments are together called the Bill of Rights and are meant to protect the individual citizen from the always-potentially tyrannical State.
In Guyana, it is quite possible that constitutional change might be necessary, but we, as a people, have to consider whether the fault in our concededly-dysfunctional political relations lie in our institutions that are delineated by our Constitution or in the nature of some of the politicians in our midst. Over the last five years, the PNC, under its leader David Granger, has shown itself to be no less cynical about observing the constitutional order than its founder leader, Forbes Burnham. We do not have to count the ways.
No Constitution will help Guyana until the leaders of the PNC decide to follow its dictates.
