National development will not hinge on political cooperation, says President Bharrat Jagdeo.

According to Jagdeo, while it is desirable to have political cooperation to move the country forward, he would not delay dealing with “real issues” in order to win approval from a political group. “If you have people who don’t want to participate in national life and who feel they have to find fault with everything, then I simply have to go forward,” he said on Thursday, when asked if anything would be done to address the fact that there has been no significant development in dialogue with the political opposition this year.

During a news conference at the Office of the President, Jagdeo re-emphasised that the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) is a developmental tool for Guyana. Asked about the importance of political cooperation in advancing the strategy, he said the real issues would not await meetings between the political parties. “…I’m not going to wait to fix the sea defences until I have a meeting with [Opposition Leader Robert] Corbin, or someone else,” he said, “I would go ahead and fix the sea defences. Or try to build the hydro or invest in the indigenous communities or to build the canal at Hope or to raise the conservancy dam or to spend more on education or health.” He added: “I don’t see what fixing real things [and issues that affect people] have to do with awaiting approval from some political group. I was elected to move the well being of all the people forward.”

At the outset of his term, President Jagdeo pledged to pursue national unity and development with the broadest participation across all divides.

He said there would be scope for all political parties to work together under an enhanced framework of political cooperation, rooted in the primacy of parliament, grounded in a system that is responsive and accountable, and extended to civil society to deepen its participation in decision-making.

However, he and the opposition have traded blame the failure to realise the “enhanced framework” for cooperation, with the latter accusing the administration of only seeking a national approach in times of emergency, like in the aftermath of the massacres last year at Lusignan and Bartica, in which 23 people were killed. A National Stakeholder’s Forum was subsequently convened by the government and attracted broad participation by both political parties and civil society representatives.

‘Never a promise’
The Forum resulted in agreement on five areas, including the appointment of the five constitutional rights commissions and the Public Procurement Commission within a 90-day period; the urgent establishment of a parliamentary standing sectoral committee on national security; the activation of a Constitutional Reform Committee; to ensure the meaningful and effective participation of civil society in the parliamentary process; and to explore an agreed mechanism for the continuation of the National Stakeholders’ Forum.

Only two of the rights commissions have been appointed, while the National Assembly has passed a motion to set up a parliamentary committee with oversight for the security sector. But both commissions and the committee are still to be set up.

Asked about the failure to institutionalise the National Stakeholder’s Forum in order to coordinate a unified approach to national issues, Jagdeo said on Thursday that there was never a promise to do so. “So, I don’t know that there is a failure,” he said, when asked, adding, “If I didn’t say I’ll do it, I can’t be held for that…”

President Jagdeo had previously stated that the Forum was intended to be only an “ad hoc mechanism” to deal with various issues from time to time, rather than as a permanent mechanism to replace the National Assembly as the medium for political cooperation. “Throughout, we have sought to make the National Assembly the place where the deliberations could be done between the parties because of the openness of that forum and because the closed door sessions were not yielding results,” he said earlier this year.

He had also said that the National Assembly can provide for civil society participation in its hearings where it can give views on certain matters.

However, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA), as part of a coalition with 60 civil society groups, has declared the stakeholder process as “effectively dead.” It has also urged civil society to focus on reforming the parliament towards greater constituency representation, to ensure wider participation in governance, including the implementation of Article 13 of the Constitution, which addresses greater participation of citizens in public life.