One of the ironies of living in Guyana is that so many of the organisations in the public sphere are oblivious to the ironies inherent in their pronouncements. Some would say “hypocrisy”!! Take the GHRA and their release supposedly about the need for the members of the Constitutional Reform Commission (CRC) to focus on their “civic” moorings. Now that’s all good, but why dismiss the role of the political parties in the CRC?? Weren’t they also selected by a “civic” process called “national elections” – where every citizen had an opportunity to select who’ll speak for them??
Can the “civic organisations” say the same for themselves? How exactly were they chosen to represent the “cause” they purport to do?? The GHRA snidely criticised the political parties’ selection process: “National elections, for example, are symbolised by cups, trees and other paraphernalia rather than by names or photos of actual candidates, and financing of political activity is disguised in any number of fictions.” But how’s the GHRA’s executive chosen? And isn’t the organisation also symbolised by the “paraphernalia” of a scale being balanced?? And it’s a telling symbol: dozens of people clamouring for attention in one scale being balanced by one person in the other – the GHRA!!
How’d we know whether those people clamoured for THEM? The GHRA said the “civic organisations” should “hold regular meetings with the sectors they represent and for these meetings to be made public, so that ordinary people know civic representatives’ positions and are provided with opportunities to interact with them”! Has the GHRA been doing this with the clamouring masses it claims to be representing? Has it ever held a meeting outside of Georgetown? Or folks aren’t clamouring out in the boons?? Are they ‘slow” in their thinking?
As for the GHRA’s executives, do we have THEIR names or photos?? Or their source of financing?? We found out from the AG that they’re registered under the Companies Act and through their by-laws they’re supposed to be “Non-Profit”. But how come the GHRA’s so doggedly POLITICALLY biased? In its release on the CRC, it evidently couldn’t help delivering some sharp uppercuts at the PPP Government!! “While getting rid of the economic straight-jacket of ‘Marxism-Leninism’ from the Party’s constitution, the ruling party explicitly retained ‘democratic centralism’, i.e. the policy of dominant control of the State by the party in power.”
So when the PNC or the APNU/AFC coalition – or any other party – are in power, they don’t have “dominant control of the State”?? What exactly has been the function of political parties in Western democracies for the past 200 years?? To allow self-appointed “civic” organisations to run the State with them??
Would the GHRA like to handle, say, the Ministry of Finance??
…rigging ennui
There’s absolutely no reason why the trial for those who are accused election riggers is still open. The latest red herring thrown across the trail was their demand to have access to CONFIDENTIAL minutes of GECOM Meetings!! The Chief Justice rightly threw out their case and accused them of being on a “fishing expedition”!! To catch another herring, obviously!! So, we now hear the case is gonna be heard starting July 29 – just in time for Emancipation Day, your Eyewitness figures!! Maybe we’ll finally be free of PNC rigging?? Your Eyewitness frankly doesn’t think so!!
What we need is a fixed time frame for election petitions to be heard by the courts – and this should be one of the priority changes coming out of the CRC process. In Kenya – with a similar history of a fractured electorate and election petitions – they inserted into their constitution: “Within fourteen days after the filing of a petition…the Supreme Court shall hear and determine the petition and its determination shall be final.”
…or cribbing agri
The Barbados-based CXC Board has rescinded the Agri double award into a single one – at a time when the Region’s battling food insecurity!! Shouldn’t they have rejigged the curriculum to assist “25 by 25”?
