Following the rigged 1985 elections, the WPA appointed Eusi Kwayana as its lone parliamentarian for the one seat the party was given. He declared that the WPA was taking the people’s rebellion into Parliament.
The Desmond Hoyte regime was in power for the five years Kwayana was in Parliament. Against severe odds, he prepared numerous petitions, amendments, and motions to take to Parliament while also representing Guyanese working people in non-parliamentary ways, all the time invoking parliamentary privilege.
Kwayana developed a parliamentary posture that was polite, incisive and effective. This was not surprising given his expansive knowledge of parliamentary procedures and rights and of the legal system in general, stemming from at least the 1950s. Indeed, this was not Eusi Kwayana’s first parliamentary experience, as he had actively represented the early PPP between May to October 1953 when the Constitution was suspended.
During his most recent sojourn, the office of the National Assembly was submerged in countless motions, questions and observations of errors in parliamentary procedure not visible to mortal, non-parliamentary eyes, nay, even to parliamentary eyes.
Among the many motions the WPA MP managed to get passed were a motion for a National Dialogue among all parties and social forces arguing for national reconciliation; a motion to strengthen sanctions against South Africa; a motion aimed at pensions for housewives; and one to correct New Rules of Court that unwittingly discriminated against non-Christian faiths.
Several motions failed to reach parliamentary debate. One called for the repeal of Article I of the Constitution which provided for a “transition to socialism” on the Eastern European model, proposing instead the recognition of Guyana as a multi-racial democratic republic in which the “government would be obliged to act to correct political, economic or cultural deprivation of any ethnic group in the Republic.”
He also moved a motion for stiffer penalties for offences against females and the removal of the defence in rape that the victim was of bad character.
Kwayana was very critical of the functioning of Parliament and put forward a censure motion in 1988 on the limited number of sittings Parliament had held the same year (thirteen). He critcised the length of time motions took to reach the order paper and condemned the non-publication of the Hansard parliamentary record.
Taking his parliamentary tenure very seriously, the WPA MP also revived the use of Committee of Supply. This committee was considered a boring and exacting chore, yet Kwayana would exult in its detail to the chagrin of fellow parliamentarians. The larger opposition in Parliament soon embraced the Committee of Supply as an important arena of public business.
Kwayana’s diligence for the expanded use of Parliament extended to the activity of the Ombudsman, prompting a letter from a former Ombudsman who stated that Eusi Kwayana was the “only MP using the constitutional right of an MP to request the ombudsman to carry out investigations.”
Parliament outside Parliament
Because of the limitations of the 5th parliament and his own preferred mode of representation, Kwayana made the WPA office and his frequent visits to villages and rural areas “centres of representation”, turning Parliament into a “living forum.” He reopened the use of petitions to the National Assembly signed by citizens as a means of expressing grievances. The WPA MP, helped by other WPA activists, assisted senior citizens, mothers due for SIMAP payments, farmers with water problems and persons denied the reasonably prompt issue of passports. Kwayana also visited the Georgetown hospital on several occasions during the five years, making extensive notes of its deficiencies and speaking with patients.
In August 1987, the WPA MP stood with crowds as the kero and gas crisis unfolded. His words were strong on the deprivation and abuse of the working people: “So long as suffering of this kind is encouraged and maintained by the government my pen will not sleep in my hand, nor will my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” He went on to state:
“..I stood with kerosene crowds