Category: Letters to the editor

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Not a ‘marginal’ reduction in population

The 2012 census data are now out. The report shows that Guyana’s population has dropped to 747,884, down from 751,223 recorded for 2002. Taking an arithmetic approach Chief Statistician and Census Officer Lennox Benjamin calculates and describes the decline of 3,339 as a “marginal reduction.”

I would have had no difficulty with our Chief Statistician if he had simply provided the figures and let analysts and commentators consider their implications, or himself do so. In a matter involving so many components it is misleading, even dangerously so, to take two bald figures, subtract one from the other and then make a qualitative judgement therefrom about substantial or marginal. Mr Benjamin then adds the gratuitous comment that the “marginal reduction” was “mainly influenced by migration.”

There is nothing marginal about the numbers. If we add to the population of 751,223 persons in 2002 the 124,805 representing the number of births over deaths over the same period, the population at 2012 should have been 876,028 persons. In other words, we have lost at a minimum 128,144 persons. I describe this as minimum because over the past 10 years Guyana has attracted an indeterminate number of mainly Brazilians and Chinese at a rate not experienced by this country for more than 70 years.

If the number of inward immigrants is put conservatively at 1,000 persons per annum, it means that Guyana has lost a staggering 138,144 persons to outward migration, on a population that is less than three-quarters of a million.

Surely, surely it is time for those who manage this country to reflect on the causes why Guyanese are still leaving this country in droves and on the implications for the country of its best, brightest, most productive and ablest persons opting to leave.

I will review more fully the preliminary report on the 2012 census this weekend.

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It is the President’s duty alone to appoint three members of the Judicial Service Commission

Mr Anil Nandlall, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs needs to take his own advice to the media to “exercise care in what is published” (‘President consulting on appointments to JSC, other commissions –AG,’ SN, March 18). In seeking to divert blame from himself for failing to advise the President on his duty to appoint the Judicial Service Commission, Mr Nandlall blamed the National Assembly for failing to initiate the process for nominating members with respect to the commission.

There is at least one of three explanations for the almost continuous stream of statements earning Mr Nandlall some unfavourable attention: he is careless about details, as he was in relation to the Council of Legal Education necessitating a correction by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies; he is cavalier about the constitution and the law, as in his statement that he has to issue an Assent Certificate to Bills passed by the National Assembly; or he is mischievous and obfuscatory, as in this case.
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Was Whittaker articulating government policy?

On March 7, 2014, the Stabroek News carried an article in which Mr Norman Whittaker, Minister in the Ministry of Local Government is reported as asserting that the “vast majority of the populace is not prepared for the holding of local government polls by August 1st” and that “to go ahead would result in the waste of a lot of money.”

Even by the standards of inanity now associated with the “vast majority” of the PPP/C and government spokespersons, Mr Whittaker’s statement is outstanding for its disconnect with the Constitution of Guyana and the laws relating to local government elections. But it may be more than simple ignorance: it shows the little or no regard which PPP/C ministers have for democracy and the drift to autocracy which Guyana has suffered since democracy returned to it in 1992 and the last local government elections were held in 1994.

Even if Mr Whittaker had read only up to Article 12 of the constitution he would be aware that “local government by freely elected representatives of the people is an integral part of the democratic organisation of the State.” He would also have some passing familiarity with the fact that Chapter VII in its entirety is devoted to Local Democracy, and that Article 71 pronounces that “Local Government is a vital aspect of democracy and shall be organised so as to involve as many people as possible in the task of managing and developing the communities in which they live.”

I do not for a moment believe that Mr Whittaker is unfamiliar with those articles. What I believe is his real problem – apart from the dread that local government elections will be disastrous for the PPP/C – is Article 75 which allows for local democratic organs to be autonomous. Not surprisingly, a party whose article of faith seems based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm, has successfully delayed local government elections for seventeen years, depriving citizens of their constitutional rights.

The citizens of Guyana expect that those responsible for the holding of local government elections will discharge their constitutional and statutory duties. We have a full-time Elections Commission (GECOM) which between 2007 and 2013 inclusive, but excluding election year 2011 benefited from ten billion, four hundred and seventy six million dollars ($10,476 million).

The Local Authorities (Elections) Act gives the power (and the duty) to fix the date for local government elections to the Minister of Local Government. Mr Whittaker has no discretion as to whether citizens want such elections or not and he should be confronted in the National Assembly with his unbelievable nonsense. Moreover, the President or his Governance Advisor must tell the country whether Mr Whittaker was articulating government policy.

The parliamentary opposition and civil society organisations must now provide the leadership to stop this abuse of citizens’ constitutional rights and do everything that is necessary to ensure that local government elections which were due since 1997 are held no later than August 1, 2014.

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Satisfaction with the appointment of an Ombudsman

I would like to express satisfaction and extend my congratulations on the appointment of retired Judge Winston Moore as Ombudsman. To President Ramotar I say well done on this first step to establishing and/or restoring non-functioning constitutional offices, and to Mr Moore congratulations. It must have taken courage by the President to make the announcement to fill an office that his predecessor left vacant for more than a full presidential term.

Guyana has the distinction of being the first country in the Commonwealth Caribbean and Western hemisphere and second only to New Zealand among Common-wealth countries to have a constitutionally entrenched Ombudsman system. In Guyana, the Office of Ombudsman is a requirement of the constitution and is buttressed by a separate statute.

The Office of Ombudsman was created in the 1966 Independence Constitution and its powers have remained largely unchanged since then: to investigate any administrative action taken by any government department or other authority or by the President, ministers, officers or members of any government department or other authority. The 1980 Constitution brought actions by the President within the scope of the Ombudsman’s powers.

Given the tremendous backlog of matters which would fall to be investigated and the loss of institutional capacity to deal with them, Mr Moore has a herculean task on his hands. He will need not only the necessary resources but also the cooperation of the public and of the government agencies against which complaints are lodged.

In a Foreword to the publication of the Role of the Ombudsman in Guyana by the previous Ombuds-man, Mr S Y Mohamed, former Chancellor of the Judiciary Keith Massiah noted that Mr Mohamed had “exposed the frustrations of the Office, the scant regard paid to his recommendations by public officials, seeming lack of parliamentary interest in his work and the discourtesy of some public officers…”

At the swearing-in of Mr Moore, President Ramotar said that “constitutionally the country needs not only an Ombudsman but one that is effective.” The President must now ensure that the resources to make the office effective are provided and that the government establishes a strict protocol requiring public officers to cooperate with the Ombudsman and his staff.

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Sale of 950M preference shares by NICIL does not alter response to PSC

The Private Sector Commission (PSC) in its most recent statement (December 20, 2013) on the Berbice Bridge Company Inc was unwilling to acknowledge writing the following on December 11: “As far as we are aware, the Government directly or indirectly has no investment in, or liability relating to, the [Berbice River] bridge at this time.” Seen as a crudely disguised political response to APNU’s call for reduced toll charges across the Berbice River, the statement drew questions from some of the PSC’s membership about the process leading up to its issue.

Instead of addressing the concerns whether the December 11 statement was authorised by the PSC’s executive rather than authored at the behest of one member of the executive, the PSC after an unsuccessful investigation into an email “leak” chose intrigue, diversion, distortion and deception. Its latest offering reveals that NICIL has sold to the National Insurance Scheme 950 million worth of preference shares in the Berbice Bridge Company Inc, which itself never acknowledged the existence, let alone the ownership of those shares, even in statutory filings signed by then Company Secretary Winston Brassington.
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