Dear Editor,
I read with interest the strong advocacy made by a senior US official, Mr. Bryan Hunt, for constitutional reforms in order to create a governance structure that is representative of our ethnic diversity.
I cannot agree more with him. This is why I find it difficult to understand the delay in making the report on constitutional reforms submitted to the Prime Minister public.
The Constitutional Reform Committee has the responsibility to put in place the framework for a national conversation on the political future of this country which for decades remained race-based and adversarial.
It is interesting to recall that over fifty years ago the British Government through the then Colonial Secretary Mr. Duncan Sandys referred to race as the ‘curse’ of Guyana and took the unprecedented step of changing the constitution to allow for a new system of proportional representation instead of the first-past-the-post which was widely practised in Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth.
The reason advanced by Mr. Sandys for introducing proportional representation was to bring an end to race-based politics and to allow for the formation of coalition governments.
Needless to say, the changes imposed by the British Government did result in a change of government but it failed to bring about any significant change in voting behaviour as the recent general and local government elections so unmistakably demonstrated. The PPP in 1964 was engineered out of office and replaced by the PNC-UF coalition government but the issue of race continued to stultify the growth and development of the country.
The lesson to be learnt from that failed experiment was that any imposition of a constitutional model is bound to fail unless it takes into account the inputs and concerns of key stakeholders and has as its bedrock the democratic character of the society. Democracy, in other words, must underpin the governance structures of the state if the full and true potential of the society is to be realised.
The truth is that after fifty years of independence the society remains fractured and there still exists a high level of alienation by some segments of the population in terms of identification with national goals and aspirations.
The time is long overdue for a new governance paradigm in which all Guyanese, regardless of race or political affiliation feel that they are an integral part of the task of nation building.
Yours faithfully,
Hydar Ally
