Dear Editor,
In mid-2013, after I again raised this issue of perennial nepotism and discrimination in the selection of delegations to represent Guyana, the Ministry of Culture boldly announced that there would be open auditions to be part of the national delegation to attend Carifesta XI in Suriname. Carifesta came and went and the public is yet to be informed on the selection process and who was selected to represent Guyana. On my own part, as I’ve publicly chronicled, what was originally an invitation to officially participate in both the Inter-Guianas Cultural Festival (IGCF) and Carifesta was somehow drastically reduced to an ‘associate’ part of the latter delegation, provided that I turned up in Suriname, information that was communicated to me roughly a week before the festival began. I suppose I should have been grateful considering that no such invitation was extended in 2003, 2006, nor in 2008, even though the festival was held in the latter year in Guyana.
Now, most recently, after I last week raised the issue of a secret Carifesta Committee being formed, both on social media and in my second response to Barrington Braithwaite, this Sunday an ad appeared in the newspapers papers inviting “expressions of interest”, which will be accepted only until the 18th of this month, in participating in Carifesta XII, scheduled for Haiti from the 21-30 of August this year. There was no announcement of a committee being selected to deliberate the matter of fielding a delegation. The most we know is that it came from the ‘Special Projects Unit’ of the Department of Culture, Youth and Sport, now within the Ministry of Education.
In short, we have a new government and the same systems seem to be in place, or rather have in fact worsened already. At least previously we had the theatre, the farce of consultation, with a press conference featuring the Minister and his senior staff putting on a show for the cameras, whereas now the responsibility for selecting a national contingent for the leading regional festival of culture and the arts seems to have fallen to an Orwellian Special Projects Unit.
Within two months, we are expected that, without consultation, the unit of nameless and faceless people will select competent participants on the basis of merit, and plan an accountably budgeted trip to a country that the delegation will most likely need to access via the US or perhaps some French overseas department, which means the procurement of at least in-transit visas.
Just as there was no excuse for failing to consult and include for the Inauguration/Independence Day celebrations, which turned out to be disastrous, there is no excuse to not be open and accountable in selecting the best persons to represent their country to the best of their ability at the upcoming festival.
Someone once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That may be so, but there is method to this particular madness that seems to have taken hold of the Ministry of Culture in that ad hoc behaviours and the excuse of expediency have been perennially used to hide nepotism, corruption and discrimination. At the very least since 2003, I’ve heard varying excuses for the glaring discrepancies in the selection process, varying from time constraints to supposed impositions from the host countries. And of course, what we have become accustomed to, both before and after the fact, is complete silence from those in charge.
I am calling on the newly appointed ministers responsible for culture to publicly introduce the members of this nebulous Carifesta Selection Committee and have them explain to the public what their plan is for ensuring that there is transparency and accountability in the selection of Guyana’s delegation for once. Also, equally important is that ministers themselves should explain the process of selection of that committee in the first place, considering the complicity of former committees in perpetuating the discrimination and nepotism that flourished under the PPP. The new government campaigned on a platform of transparency, accountability and merit-based inclusiveness – here is a situation in which the absence of all three is glaring.
Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson
Janus Cultural Policy
Initiative
