“We have not gotten in touch to set a date but I am reassured by what is appearing in the press and what I’ve been told,” Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon told reporters, while noting that there is equal commitment on both sides to move ahead. “So I don’t believe that that will be a major obstacle in resolving this issue,” he added.
Talks on the four-year £3 million (nearly $1 billion) Security Sector Reform Action Plan, which was signed between Guyana and the UK in August 2007, recently broke down over what Luncheon said was disagreement with the British proposals for implementing the reform plan. He claimed the proposals disregarded an agreement for local ownership of the process and affirmed that the government is not prepared to cede an inch of its sovereignty.
Pressed again about the exact source of the government’s objection to the British proposals, Luncheon said “external management” remains the fundamental issue. He said while there is an agreement to implement the security sector reform plan, the question of “how” it would be done is the problem. “…We are not waiting for the messiah, we are implementing all along, but there is a subset captured in this agreement,” he said. “How we do it is where we [are] going to break a lance and their submissions to us unilaterally say we [are] going to do it the British way, so that is fundamentally the issue.”
When asked whether he was prepared to make the British proposals available to the public, Luncheon said, “I will think about it. I will think about that–but you can take Luncheon’s word for it–that it offends.”
British High Commis-sioner Fraser Wheeler had recently revealed his frustration with the delay in implementation of the reform plan, saying some persons in government were quibbling about administrative details. He did not go into the details of the delay but emphasised that the UK sees the need for “very tight management of resources” in the current economic climate. “The administration of money should not be a deal breaker, I would hope, [the reform is] too important for that,” Wheeler said.
The British High Commission did, however, reaffirm its commitment to “Guyana’s national ownership” of the programme and to “build the capacity of national institutions to implement it. We remain open and ready to discuss any issue in relation to the programme,” it said in a brief statement.
In response to Wheeler’s comments, the Guyana government released letters written by Luncheon to President Bharrat Jagdeo and Wheeler, in which he accused the UK’s representatives here of pursuing “ulterior motives,” while taking offence at an alleged suggestion that Guyana is incapable of managing the reform process. Luncheon recommended that the proposals be rejected in their entirety and also requested that Jagdeo relieve him of responsibility for concluding the negotiations for the project. However, the President did not grant the request.
The government was criticised by both the main opposition PNCR and the AFC for its handling of the situation. The PNCR urged that cooler heads prevail and emphasised that once differences are ironed out the administration “must move with energy to secure the funding for the [plan] and ensure its smooth implementation.” PNCR spokesman Basil Williams did, however, say the party would not support external management of the process.
Meanwhile, AFC leader Raphael Trotman said his party was “extremely disturbed” by the report of the government’s unwillingness to proceed with joint implementation of the plan. He said it was reflective of a pattern by the Jagdeo administration of refusal to participate and implement whenever the need for comprehensive reform was identified within institutions that touch on governance.
He accused the government of frustrating the process to achieve its objective of ensuring minimal or no governance reforms.
The five main elements of the plan cover building the operational capacity of the police force; strengthening policy-making across the security sector to make it more transparent, effective, and better coordinated; mainstreaming financial management in the security sector into public sector financial management reform; creating substantial parliamentary and other oversight of the security sector; and building greater public participation and inclusiveness in security sector issues. The plan was specifically designed to complement the ongoing Citizen Security and Justice Reform programmes, in a bid to tackle crime and security in a holistic manner.
