Social partners float steps to boost dialogue
Meeting held with Jagdeo
Stabroek News
July 24, 2002
The Social Partners grouping, comprising the Private Sector Commission, the Guyana Bar Association and the Guyana Trades Union Congress, has proposed a number of measures to support a resumed dialogue process between the major political parties.
The proposals call for, among other things, widening the process to include the other parliamentary political parties, the establishment of a permanent, consultative mechanism on shared governance, the prioritising of the issues to be discussed with precedence being given to crime prevention, ending extra-judicial killings, youth development and the creation of jobs through civil works and other programmes. The proposals also call for the establishment of a small secretariat staffed by professionals to monitor and issue timely reports on the progress being made in the implementation of agreed programmes. The dialogue between President Bharrat Jagdeo and PNC/R leader Desmond Hoyte was suspended by the PNC/R as it was unhappy with the way decisions were being implemented.
Representatives of the social partners met President Jagdeo for about 90 minutes yesterday at the Office of the President and sought to discuss with him a paper on Shared Governance which was prepared and circulated to the parties.
A release from the grouping said that the objective of the meeting with the parliamentary parties was to get their “observations on the usefulness of their proposed approach (as set out in the paper)” and to learn of the “specific and concrete ways in which we can help in the task of achieving better and more participatory political, economic and social relationships in our country.”
The team is to meet Opposition Leader, Desmond Hoyte, today at his Congress Place party office to obtain the views of the PNC/R, which he leads.
Contacted by Stabroek News after the meeting at the Office of the President, Lincoln Lewis, who represented the TUC at the meeting, said that he and his colleagues had decided that they would make no comment about the meeting. “We have a task and we are pursuing it.”
Stabroek News understands that besides Lewis, the other members of the delegation were Nigel Hughes of the Guyana Bar Association, and Chris Fernandes and Ramesh Dookhoo from the Private Sector Commission.
A release from the Office of the President said that President Jagdeo and Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon, met “a delegation representing the Private Sector, the Guyana Bar Association and the Guyana Trades Union Congress.”
It said that the meeting was one of two President Jagdeo had yesterday as part of his “policy of engaging in dialogue with various groups on issues of national importance, including the present security situation.” The other meeting was with a delegation from the Guyana Council of Churches.
Stabroek News has confirmed that The United Force (TUF) and ROAR received requests for meetings with the social partners. It was unable to ascertain up to press time the status of the request, which was addressed to Paul Hardy, Leader Guyana Action Party/Working People Alliance (GAP/WPA). Hardy is out of the country and a spokesman at the WPA office said that it had not received a request for a meeting.
TUF leader, Trade Minister Manzoor Nadir, confirmed receipt of the request, which he said had been circulated to the members of his party’s executive committee.
A spokesman for ROAR told Stabroek News that the party had received the request and intended to meet the group next week. He said the delay in meeting the group was to allow for such a meeting to have the benefit of the views of party leader, Ravi Dev. The spokesman said that at that meeting ROAR intended to endorse the principles set out in the paper, which the organisations had circulated.
A release from the grouping said that the organisations which comprise it are “specifically concerned with the Rule of Law and the Constitution, the conduct of business and the welfare of workers” and that they “are merely fulfilling their social responsibilities and obligations to become engaged in helping to improve the quality of governance in Guyana.”
The grouping also addressed, in the release, a concern which President Jagdeo voiced at a press conference last week about the involvement of government and opposition parliamentarians with an advertisement supported by a group of citizens and organisations including the three, which met him yesterday.
The group said that because Article 13 of the constitution required the participation of citizens and their organisations in the management and decision-making processes of the state with particular emphasis on those areas of decision-making that directly affected their well-being, then the term “civil society should properly embrace all citizens who are not members of Parliament, elected officials of local, regional or national government or political parties.”
In their paper ‘Shared Governance’ the three organisations said that among the several weaknesses of the suspended dialogue process between the two main political parties, was the attention being given to “their issues” when many of them were national in scope and required consultation with, and involvement of interest groups and people outside the parties.
Another weakness, the groups said, was that “the deliberations focused on a set of specific matters without a clearly stated overarching context, and opportunities to apprise the population about the aims of the deliberations were not explored, thereby leaving popular expectations to define themselves.”
Other weaknesses were that the “implementation of agreed actions depended on traditional mechanisms in which the agreeing, or affected groups had no representation” and the failure to explore opportunities “to educate the population about the aim of the deliberations” and to undertake efforts “to secure public participation in sustaining the intended outcomes of the deliberations.”
Given the weaknesses they identified the three groups proposed:
* that a structured ongoing and permanent consultative mechanism on shared governance be established by agreement among the parliamentary parties;
* that this consultation should initially provide for the participation of the established social partners whose objectives focus on the rule of law, the conduct of business and the affairs of workers;
* that the measures for examination and implementation should be structured within an agreed timeframe and be categorised as “immediate”, “medium term” “and long term”;
* that “immediate matters should include crime prevention, the end of extra-judicial killings, community relations in rural and urban areas, establishing criteria to define “disaffected” areas, food production, job creation through civil works and other programmes, youth development, printing and distribution of the revised Constitution and expeditious implementation of already agreed and assented to Constitutional Reform matters;
* that “medium term” matters should include moving forward with the National Development Strategy, establishing appropriate machinery for further Constitutional Reform as foreseen in the Constitutional Reform Report for example, the Standing Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reform and the arrangements for Local Government Reform;
* that the “long term” matters should include examination of, and attention to, the major outstanding governance reform matters such as the Constitution, the Judicial System, the Electoral System, the Local Government system and the reorganisation of the Security Forces with a focus on both domestic and international issues;
* that a small secretariat of professionals should support the proposed mechanism on shared governance by monitoring implementation of all agreed matters and by preparing and distributing reports that should be made public in a timely manner and, in particular, should also be routinely made available to the leadership of the Security Forces as background information against which they can undertake their responsibilities to maintain a stable environment in which progress can take place.