Sovereignty belongs to the State and not to individual groups – Eric Phillips

The politicisation and racialisation of the Land Commission of Inquiry (CoI) have served to undermine and discredit the real importance of solving local land issues, Cultural activist Eric Phillips has said.
In a missive to the media, Phillips noted that ethnic fear of Amerindians losing their land is also a false claim, as the Amerindian Act of 2006 provides Amerindians with 13.8 percent of land in Guyana.
Phillips said there are many more important reasons why the Land CoI is very important to all Guyanese. He explained that sovereignty belongs to the State, and not to individual groups.
While many Amerindian lands lie closely with the sovereign borders of Brazil, a lot more of these lands lie in the Venezuelan claim of two-thirds of Guyana.
“Our Wai Wais have 1.5 million acres of land at the border with Brazil, and this complete area is a part of the Venezuelan claim… If there was an invasion onto Wai Wai lands, it is the Government of Guyana that would have to defend Guyana’s sovereignty,” he stated.
Another important point raised by Phillips has been the need for national development planning as a precursor to national integrated planning, which in his considered view should be done in a holistic manner.
The cultural activist has also emphasized the need for the Land CoI to be conscious of the commitments Guyana has to Norway and the United Nations in regard to sustainably managing forests and reverse land degradation.
“Critically, the Guyana Government funds national development out of the treasury, as seen in the last budget. It also has to fund the implementation of domestic and global commitments under the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and the Green State Development Strategy (GSDS),” he stated.
Phillips said the task ahead is important, as the CoI not only deals with land titles and other issues associated with land management, but is also about providing a well-articulated understanding of the various interests, commitments and developmental needs in Guyana.
Given the impending effects that climate change will have on Guyana and its capital city, Georgetown, Phillips said, it is equally important that the Land CoI discuss the creation of a new city.
He also highlighted many inconsistencies, including laws contradicting each other; groups with different mandates over the same area of land; multiple concessions for different purposes on the same land, among other things, and said: “As the Guyana Lands and Surveys (Commission) will certainly be the main source of land maps in Guyana, the CoI will also have to consider these legal anomalies in their deliberations.”
In a previous letter to the media, Phillips had said that Government’s move to set up a Lands CoI was creating disunity among Guyanese. He had said it was strange that this regime had set up a whole ministry under the claim that it was to promote social cohesion, and had named it the Ministry of Social Cohesion; yet, almost every act the operators of this regime have executed is promoting disunity. His claim was that the CoI was so far the latest in a long list of measures.