As Guyana enters a pivotal period with substantial revenues expected from the oil industry, the populace should push for a reemergence of the village movement to enable them to influence decision-making as it is unlikely that there would be a quick change to the current winner-takes- all system, attorney Nigel Hughes says.
“The village movement, irrespective of what the leaders said in George-town, strong villages were always able to act in their best interest. So that even if the leadership said we must go Y, and the leadership of the village said no, we go X, the village determined what happened to it. We don’t have that structure anymore,” Hughes last evening told attendees at the Buxton First of August Movement’s Annual Eusi Kwayana Emancipation Symposium.
The topic for this year’s symposium was ‘The Coming Election and the African Guyanese Emancipation Agenda’. Hughes used his address to urge the populace to pressure their leaders to have a say in the decision-making process. He said that while some may argue for constitutional reform to cut the amount of power the executive currently has, it might be more meaningful to lobby for village movement systems.