Guyana Government's five-year term should not have been cut
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Guyana Government's five-year term should not have been cut
- CARICOM Chairmanby Sharief Khan
Jamaica Observer
September 23, 2000
(First published in the Chronicle, Thursday, July 6, 2000 during the 21st CARICOM Summit)
CANOUAN, St Vincent and the Grenadines -- Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Sir James Mitchell has declared here that the normal five-year term of the Guyana Government should not have been cut once the audit of the December 15, 1997 general elections proved the polls were satisfactory.
"In hindsight, my view is that we erred in CARICOM in not letting the audit determine what decision we should take on Guyana," he told journalists yesterday.
Following violence and rising tensions from anti-government street demonstrations by the main opposition People's National Congress (PNC) after the 1997 elections, CARICOM brokered the Herdmanston Accord between the governing People's Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/Civic) and the PNC.
That January 1998 agreement among other things called for fresh elections by January 17, next year, two years earlier.
Under the accord, a CARICOM audit team led by former Trinidad and Tobago Chief Justice, Sir Ulric Cross also probed the elections and found these were freely and fairly conducted.
Sir James, whose government faced calls to resign from CARICOM erred: Sir James Mitchell
organised street demonstrations earlier this year, has agreed, under CARICOM mediation, to hold elections by the end of March next year, cutting the administration's constitutional five years in office by three years.
"...we have to look at the whole process of curtailing the lives of governments", he said.
"...when we look back on the situation (in Guyana) now, I agree with President (Bharrat) Jagdeo, that in hindsight, we (CARICOM) should have said when the audit was done by CARICOM on the elections, if the elections were found to be satisfactory, there should have been no curtailment of the life of the Guyana parliament," he argued.
Asked if he meant that the life of the elected Guyana government should have continued for the full five years, he said: "That's right!"
Addressing the summit opening Sunday afternoon, President Jagdeo noted the "worrying trend today in our Caribbean region which traditionally has been known for stable democracies and respect for the rule of law" adding that "this democracy, this rule of law, is on trial".
He pointed out that in Guyana, following the 1997 elections, "our hard-won democracy came under threat."
He recalled that after the CARICOM intervention, "the life of the popularly elected government was shortened under the Herdmanston Accord (which) required both the ruling and opposition parties to accept the findings of a CARICOM Audit of the results of the elections."
The President told the summit that the PNC "repudiated the findings of the audit."
"Let me make it clear: my government has abided with and will continue to honour the terms of the Herdmanston Accord. But for its full implementation in the interest of all of our people, it requires bipartisan commitment and cooperation."
Mr Jagdeo said he did not know all the circumstances of the situation in St Vincent and the Grenadines but added that he was reminded "of the travail of my own country when I learned that the life of the elected government was shortened."
The President said recent forays into conflict resolution in the region showed that all parties should assume their responsibilities under agreements CARICOM broker.
The President said CARICOM also "cannot and must not be seen as either supporting extra-parliamentary stratagems to eclipse the term of elected governments or consecrating new forms of removal of governments outside the ballot box."
Sir James said he intends to abide by the agreement to have fresh elections by March next year, adding, "I am not going to interfere with that. I have given my word that we will have elections."
Former Barbados Attorney General, Mr Maurice King, the CARICOM facilitator for structured dialogue between the PPP/Civic and the PNC up to last year, in an opinion to the summit, said the controversial Pensions Bill which started the protests in St Vincent and the Grenadines, must be submitted to the Governor General in accordance with the law.
Sir James said King's report "provides the basis for a resolution of the St Vincent and the Grenadines issue".
King's legal opinion requested by CARICOM "is identical to what the government had proposed to do".
The bill covers higher pensions and gratuities for parliamentarians and according to Sir James, when the government moved to address concerns about the legislation, the protests turned into calls for the government to resign.
"...they wanted to terminate the life of the parliament and not let the parliament correct what the parliament had done, which the constitution provides for," he said.
He said the position now is that the matter should go back to parliament which should postpone the coming into operation of the Pensions Act.
"...it's an important principle that we have observed here, to ensure the supremacy of parliament," Sir James said.
Grenada Prime Minister, Dr Keith Mitchell, who as CARICOM Chairman in 1998, played a key role in trying to ease the political tensions sparked in Guyana after the December 1997 elections, told the summit, "The street is no longer the acceptable place for civil society to resolve its difference".
Grenada, he recalled, has felt the "harsh consequences of short-circuiting the democratic process; we have felt the painful results of political impatience; we know the bloody price of solving political problems by the gun rather than by dialogue or by the ballot."
Mitchell declared to cheers from the opening gathering that the role of civil society cannot be "contaminating the democratic process (and) cannot be a role of bringing down the properly elected government by force or threat to the lives of the citizens, or by creating a situation of duress."
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