Dear Editor,
The Inter-American Develop-ment Bank (IDB) is lending Guyana US$52 million for Competitiveness and Justice Sector Modernisation programmes. (See Stabroek News report of March 22) Competitive-ness will improve from a virtuous circle of inter-connected changes in a wide range of factors and cannot be addressed directly in a single programme.
Weak education systems, an inefficient civil service, all-round incompetence that leads to the Cricket World Cup Committee’s handling of the Guyana operations, calamitous drainage and irrigation operations, and arbitrariness in governance are among the many factors affecting competitiveness. They require programmes to overhaul political power relations, greater participation of competent people who are now excluded from government, de-politicisation of the public services, decentralisation of government and widespread computerisation of the government offices.
The problems are systemic and not primarily market price related. US$27 million will fill the pockets of a few consultants and politicians but will leave us just as uncompetitive as we are now.
The weakness in programme design is evident in the fact that the Justice Sector Modernisation Pro-gramme appears un-connected from the Competitiveness Programme when, in fact, they are integrally related.
Justice Sector improvement is an element of the institutional framework that underpins competitiveness by providing recourse in the execution of contracts. But the present justice system is compromised by its justification of the unconstitutionality of the government and by its preventing that unconstitutionality from being tested in the Caribbean Court of Justice.
That upholding of a major illegality is a result of the failure to separate the power of the minister as a legislator from his power as the head of the ministry.
That separation will be possible only when the public services are de-politicised and public servants are independent in terms of personnel relations from the president. Public service independence does not mean a capability to defy a minister but it does mean the application of analyses and information to reduce arbitrariness and bias in a minister’s actions.
Public service independence in personnel relations is possible when the public servant is confident that her or his promotion and tenure in the job do not depend on the pleasure of the president. Public servants in Guyana should not serve at the pleasure of the president. The law should be changed to give effect to their independence.
The IDB has reportedly complained that it has lent Guyana more than one billion US dollars but does not have much to show for all that money. These two projects help to explain why outcomes are disappointing. Loan design does not draw on the best Guyanese skills that are available nor from the best ideas that have been, and are being, discussed.
But this government is isolationist internally because of its winner-take-all mentality, among other things. Conventional donor programmes are not compatible with this environment and amount to being a waste of money. Donors have to face the fact that 50 years of racial strife have deformed the society and patchwork approaches will not work. We have to reform internally by restoring constitutionality and by drastically reducing our dependence on narcotics.
Yours faithfully,
Clarence F. Ellis
