GHRA urges ‘ambivalent’ gov’t to clear air on constitutional reform

The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) says it is disturbed by what it sees as government’s ambivalence to constitutional reform, calling it discouraging.

While welcoming the recent interest of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in constitutional reform, the GHRA has expressed hope that this serves to revitalize domestic interest in the issue.

“As a civic organization that emerged in response to the infamous Referendum of 1978 which sought to legitimize the current Constitution and, as an active participant in multiple subsequent coalitions and initiatives to redress its baleful effects, the Guyana Human Rights Association has been disturbed by the seemingly ambivalent commitment of the APNU/AFC Coalition Government to constitutional reform,” a GHRA statement, issued on Friday, said.

It was explained that the overriding challenge to a successful constitutional reform process historically has been the lack of political will on the part of the leadership of all major parties, rather than any substantive constitutional issue.

GHRA said that despite a relationship characterized for decades by disagreements of every description, one area of enduring common ground between the two major political parties has been “their resistance to reforms which would democratize political power.” The statement said that in the context of this historical resistance, the want of purpose and lack of enthusiasm demonstrated in the APNU/AFC Coalition statements on constitutional reform are discouraging.

The statement said that had reform of the Constitution not been stipulated in the Herdmanston Accord in 1998 it would not have taken place. The

timid reform process of 1997, it added, had settled the matter as far as the major parties were concerned. Even with this international mandate, however, the reform process of 1999-2000 was frustrated by the major parties, the statement said.

The GHRA noted that a good public consultation process with strong civic involvement was subsequently decimated and that the reforms to the electoral system were kicked into the long grass and a sensible approach to human rights was sidelined in favour of the bizarre concoction of ‘Rights Commissions’ that the country is now saddled with.

An important lesson for any future process of constitutional reform, it said, is to ensure that extra-parliamentary influences – civic, business and faith-based be sustained throughout the process. “This recommendation is not unmindful of the need for parliamentary approval as the final stage of the process, but is calling for imaginative ways of ring-fencing the process against any cynical party political manoeuvering,” the statement said.

Further, the GHRA said that Constitution-making in Guyana must address three issues: Nation-building, State-building, and Integrity-building.

Nation-building, the statement explained, encompasses, firstly, the rights of citizens and the values by which they want the State to be governed, while also seeking to make socio-economic rights justiciable. “Without this essential feature, the concept of all citizens having equal rights will always be frustrated by the limitations posed by majoritarian politics in ethnically diverse societies,” the statement said.

Rather than politicizing ethnicity, the statement said, the GHRA recommends an intensively participatory approach that works towards acknowledging differences but accommodating them within an overarching framework of being Guyanese. The constitutional reform process, it said, must start from the premise that while respecting culture and language differences, we are all Guyanese who come to public affairs primarily as Guyanese citizens.

State-building, it was explained, needs to address institutional mechanisms by which the values established under Nation-building are to be delivered. Each institution - Parliament, the Judiciary and the Presidency - must be constantly reminded of their responsibilities to citizens, the statement said.

“Promoting integrity and accountability of all those elected to public office is vital. In the past we have never paid sufficient attention to the destructive potential of corruption and have paid a price in terms of the low esteem in which politics and politicians are held. Integrity must be emphasized to counter the ever-present lure of corruption. For this reason a strong code against corruption is a constitutional priority. For too long politicians have been motivated by greed rather than service and this has to be eradicated,” it added.

The GHRA requested that the coalition government clear the air on what it hopes to achieve from the current constitutional reform initiative. “For our part, the GHRA strongly supports a broad-based, adequately-resourced consultative process under the management of a multi-stakeholder committee with a time-table that envisages implementation of major reforms,” the statement said.

A USAID-funded reported released last year said that Guyana suffers from a “consensus crisis” and constitutional and institutional reforms, while necessary, are likely insufficient without trust-building to generate increased consensus. It warned that constitutional reform was needed to remedy Guyana’s political dysfunction.

“Considering the consensus crisis Guyana finds itself in all too frequently, there have been numerous calls for powersharing, shared governance, and government of national unity by local, regional, and international experts and some politicians. Such calls have not been successful to date, in large part because of political mistrust,” it declared.

“Constitutional and institutional reforms, while necessary, are likely insufficient without trust-building to generate increased consensus,” the report said.

According to the report, the multi-ethnic APNU+AFC coalition signaled a change from the past exclusionary politics. It reached out to the PPP/C to create a government of national unity, but the PPP/C refused, it said. Some thought the coalition had not tried hard enough to convince the PPP/C to join, but the PPP/C told the assessment team that the APNU+AFC had “won the election so let them run the government,” the report revealed.

A Steering Committee on Constitutional Reform (SCCR) was established in August, 2015, with a six-person membership: Nigel Hughes, Haslyn Parris, Professor Harold Lutchman, Geeta Chandan-Edmond and Gino Persaud. The remit of the committee was to give direction and scope within which the constitutional reform process should take place. The committee has already submitted a report to government.