Constitutional Reform Commission could begin work in one month
– President not in favour of “cut & paste” process
A commission that will be tasked with paving the way for significant reforms to be made to Guyana’s Constitution could be in place within a month according to Head-of-State, President David Granger.
Constitutional reform was high on the agenda of the APNU+AFC coalition in the lead up to the May 11 polls with prominent Attorney-at-Law and AFC Chairman Nigel Hughes making it clear that getting this done was one of the main reasons he ventured into politics. Hughes is widely expected to be the person that would lead such a commission.
President Granger is in full support of having this commission established so that a comprehensive process to reform the constitution could be undertaken. Guyana’s Constitutional reform process has been going on for the better part of 15 years, he noted, “since the Herdmanston Accord was signed and the Constitutional reform was convened, and there are still several unimplemented recommendations,” he said, adding that rather than simply doing a “cherry picking exercise,” he has proposed that a Constitutional Reform Commission be established.
The president emphasised that he did not want a boardroom type of exercise consultation, “I prefer to go and meet the people in the various areas, (as) sometimes, when you sit in a board room and you just receive evidence, only the people who can travel to Georgetown and people who care to come to Georgetown would give such evidence, but when you go to the people, I think you get a different result, and that is what I want to see. I want to go to the people, you might think you know everything, but sometimes people in the riverain areas have a problem with their rights, their entitlements, and sitting in Georgetown does not always help.”
The President explained further that, “What I am trying to say is this, you might speak about children’s right to education as part of the constitution, but if we were to fulfill that obligation in the constitution, it means that you must provide the means for that right to be enjoyed, so if a child is living at Parishara and the school is at Nappi or somewhere else and the child has to travel a great distance, that child is probably going to miss school because he cannot travel that distance every day.”
The Head-of-State stressed that for the Constitutional reform process to work, wide consultation is necessary. “Constitutional Reform is important, but it must not leave us in a situation we are at present, with a whole realm of unimplemented recommendations,” President Granger opined.
He likened the recent efforts under the previous administration as this, stating that “We have a situation where people attempted to do cut and paste, ‘Ah there is a good clause here from the South Africa constitution, let’s clip clip clip and paste it in and then there is another good clause from Australia, and when you look at it now it has the head of a camel, the feet of a horse, a tail of a cow. It’s wagging like a dog and the whole thing, is this really a constitution? I think we must avoid the danger of simply cutting and pasting and cherry-picking things from other constitutions and find out what it is people want.”
Asked about a time frame for the setting up of the commission, President Granger said the coalition campaigned heavily on reducing the executive powers of the president and he is in agreement, but what he is also suggesting is that it should be part of the reform process, “so that we can establish checks and balances, within the governmental system. It is no point cutting down power and weakening the ability of the executive to govern.”
The APNU/AFC government will be moving, he added to strengthen the National Assembly, “the legislative branch to make sure that the executive branch does not have the power to overrule or override the legislative branch. For example as you know we came into a situation on the 10 November last year simply because the executive branch prorogued parliament and up to now parliament has not met for ten months, and this is not acceptable for democracy.”
