A section of the audience at last evening’s symposium on the constitutional reform process at the University of Guyana’s Turkeyen Campus. The turnout at the event was poor, despite its wide publicity.
Panelists at a highly anticipated public symposium on Guyana’s constitutional reform process were faced last evening with questions over the lack of engagement by young people with the subject.
The symposium, hosted by the Carter Center and supported by the UK High Commission in Guyana, was held at the University of Guyana’s Turkeyen Campus, where there was a paltry turn out, despite wide publicity.
“I see a lot of veterans in the room… which is not necessarily a bad thing. I think it would have been very lifting if we had a lot more students here to ask the kind of searching questions…,” Gino Persaud, one of the panelists, told those gathered.
Persaud is an attorney and a founding member and past president of the Transparency Institute of Guyana as well as a member of the Steering Committee on Constitutional Reform (SCCR) which was established by government in August, 2015, as the issue was one of its campaign manifesto priorities.
Aside from Persaud, none of the other panelists took issue with the lack of youth participation, including the paucity of university students.
The other panelists were social media researcher and Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Guyana Dr Paloma Mohamed, Elections Commissioner Vincent Alexander, former Chair of the constitution reform process Ralph Ramkarran SC and peacebuilding and governance practitioner Lawrence Lachmansingh. Also on the panel were international constitution reform experts Dr Jacqueline Hanoman, Geoffrey Weichselbaum, and Michele Brandt, who took part in the discussion via skype.
It was University of Guyana (UG) Communications major Nikita Blair, 22, who noted the maturity of those who spoke and questioned what was the role of young people in the constitution reform process.
Noting that she has heard many “matured spectives” during the course of the even Blair said that as a young person, she has realised that missing from the discussion is “how can you appeal to us, the youth of the country.” While agreeing with earlier commen ng that education is paramount to moving the process forward, Blair said that what realised from her "very narrow expert that there is a problem with educational Guyana. She noted that democracy is strong as its people are educated, especially youth. "The young people are the people going to drive the reform that is going in this country and so they need to be about everything we have spoken about and more " she said.
She said what she wanted to know was how young people can be educated about constitutional al reform. Pointing out that she had learnt lot from the night’s discussions, Blair said that she has realised that people her age have been conditioned to “hate this country without knowing why they hate this country.” She said that young people complain among themselves and dont how to move forward.
“…There are many mature faces here. Many mature perspectives. Many professional perspective she said before asking, “How we as young people help to bridge the gap within our own communities? Within our own educational system? Does this constitutional reform help with this inequity as well?”
Later, Persaud responded, saying that he found it “regrettable” that more students were not in the room. He pointed out that the constitution is not working because young people have very little say in it. One example is that there is no direct say about who their representatives in Parliament are.
Dr. Mohamed stated that reaching young people and elderly persons is a fundamental problem and efforts are being made to deal with it.