Dear Editor,
There is no getting away from it. The argument about the constitution that is now being joined in earnest is not about dull technicalities. It is at heart a complaint about the kind of country we have become… and a statement about the kind of country we want to be. It is politics of the highest order.
To a conservative apologist for the status quo, this is barely comprehensible. If there are problems about contemporary Guyana, they can be ascribed variously to political interference and negative engineering by foreign governments and institutions under their control, lack of patriotic fervour and above all, a political opposition with the inbuilt capacity to whinge.
To these status quo apologists, our present constitution represents the acme of political arrangements, entrenching freedoms and guaranteeing participation by the people however illusory; its essential contours are largely unimprovable even if there are minor reforms to be made at the margin.
There is a truth in arguing that the constitution has gained a veneer of legitimacy and stability over the decades. In a sense it has withstood the test of time but not gallantly.
We know the absurdity of claiming that the boundaries between executive, legislature and judiciary are policed by mutual restraint, that power has not been centralized, that our Parliament allows the ‘people’ to control the executive and the judiciary is not politically biased. The political aim is not to enlighten or be straight; rather it is to frighten voters about the constitutional aims of the Opposition parties.
But the substantive point stands. Essentially Guyana has had nearly half a century of constitutional stagnation. Yet constitutional conservatives invite us to believe that the present system must be defended with our lives; that any attempt to meddle with it would unstitch our way of life and threaten the institutions that make us one nation. But do they and are we?
Yours faithfully,
F. Hamley Case
