Security sector reform will go on despite British pullout

– Dr. Luncheon
PLANNED reform of Guyana’s security sector will continue in spite of the withdrawal of projected British Government support for the programme, Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, emphasised yesterday.

At his weekly post-Cabinet briefing, he said the disengagement by the United Kingdom Government has had a material impact mostly related to the loss of the opportunity but it was not fatal to the Guyana plan.

He again indicated that differences between the British and the Guyana Government over who would have managed and overseen the plan, among other aspects, ended the engagement.

“Guyana owes no apology when it comes to its entrenched position on the inviolability of our national sovereignty”, Luncheon declared, repeating the government’s previous stand on the issue earlier this year when the negotiations faltered.

Referring to the 4.9 million pounds sterling envisaged from the British for the plan, he said “some obviously feel that Guyana cannot manage a grant of that magnitude even though our history over the years, since 1992, is replete with successful management of external funding of much, much greater size and complexity.”

The pullout by the UK from security reform in Guyana was not fatal, he said.

Promising to release a document to the media on the talks, Luncheon said the two sides reached agreement in December on a basic architecture of management of the plan, covering basic aspects like involvement, feedback and oversight.

He said Guyana acted on that and there is already a constitutional amendment that introduced parliamentary oversight of the sector.

But according to the Cabinet Secretary, the British reworked proposal for management presented in April sought to introduce full control by them.

“It was inconsistent with the tenor of our agreement in December. If they had said to me `these were our intentions’, we wouldn’t have had an agreement in December. But like a card game, they went into the back pocket and pull out the trump and throw it out…and this was the beginning of the end”, he said.

The British High Commission in a statement on Wednesday said the UK Government fully respects the right of the Government of Guyana to determine the direction of Guyana’s security sector, and any programme for that sector.

It said the latest proposal from the Government of Guyana for UK Government funding for the security sector “suggests a fundamentally different programme from the one we understood the Government of Guyana wanted. This understanding was based on President Jagdeo’s letters of 4 May and 14 August 2006 which called for comprehensive, broad based, non-partisan and compelling reform of the security sector.”

The High Commission said the latest proposal from the Government of Guyana suggests a focus on police modernisation, rather than on holistic security sector reform and after careful consideration, the UK Government therefore decided to withdraw its offer of assistance in this area.

It said the funding has been re-allocated to other pressing needs within the Caribbean.

“We remain committed to supporting the development of Guyana and the Caribbean and will continue to work closely with the Government of Guyana on economic growth, private sector development, and to support the country’s efforts to implement the Low Carbon Development Strategy”, it said.

Luncheon, who had been spearheading the implementation of the plan with the British, said he had pulled out of the process because he was outraged at the reworked document the British put to the Guyana Government.

He had previously said that Guyana was holding firm to its position that the promised aid cannot compromise national sovereignty.

He explained that the two sides concluded a policy position last December which he and British High Commissioner Fraser Wheeler signed and Guyana was told it had to be adopted by the principals in the British Government.

Luncheon said nothing was heard from the British until April when documents which in effect compromised Guyana’s national sovereignty were presented to the government here.

The Guyana Government has a plan for security sector reform with three main instruments, particularly from the funding perspective, he said yesterday.

Public funding will be provided by the budget; loan financing will come from multilateral agencies and a part was to have been provided by the British grant, he explained.

He said the UK and Guyana funding component had specific aspects and was not reproduced in the other two, so the British withdrawal has reduced these from three to two and the design of the strategic plan will now have to be redone to reintegrate those aspects that would have been met by the Guyana Government-UK engagement back into the other two.

“The design of the loan financing component is pretty much fixed in the context of the existing loan and that is why we would say it is public funding that will pick up the slack. It’s not an enormous sum of money and does not in any way approximate the citizens security or justice sector modernization (programmes) with the (IDB) Inter-American Development Bank but it has to be taken over by the budget”, he explained.

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