— President Jagdeo
THE long-awaited Freedom of Information Act will be tabled in the National Assembly in two months’ time, President Bharrat Jagdeo announced last evening  during a news conference in Trinidad.

“In two months’ time you will see this Bill being tabled in parliament. We’re already drafting  it. That’s what we are working on…,” the President said in response to a question, noting that this is a manifesto promise by the governing People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C)  when it  campaigned at the last election, and is something that will happen.

When tabled, and passed, Guyana will join several other countries in this hemisphere to have already enacted freedom of information legislation.

Freedom of information has become the international consensus deemed to be the impetus needed to bolster transparency and accountability, to curtail corruption, and raise the standards of governance in developing countries struggling to alleviate poverty. 

Despite the delay in the tabling of the Bill, President Jagdeo pointed out that Guyana has gone much beyond many other countries in terms of  change to the constitutional system.

For instance, if one were to look at Guyana’s constitution now, there are term limits for the President. “…we also have four Standing Committees where the Chairmanship of these Committees  are shared by the government and the opposition, unlike  in the U.S.  Congress and in Canada where, if you have the majority in the Congress or in the Parliament, you Chair all the Committees,” President Jagdeo told the media corps comprising local and international journalists in Trinidad for the Summit.

In Guyana, he pointed out that the Chairmanship of these Committees are ‘shared’ and Ministers can be summoned to these Committees.

“We also have a Parliamentary Management Committee with equal numbers from government and opposition which the Speaker of the National Assembly chairs. We have set up six  constitutional Commissions. Unfortunately, we haven’t had them implemented as yet, but five of them are called the Rights Commission –Indigenous People, Gender, Children, Human Rights and Ethnic Relations.”

Mr. Jagdeo said the only one functioning is the Ethnic Relations Commission.  He noted, too, that these Commissions have powers of sanction over the executive.

“To sit on these Commissions, you need to have at least two-thirds support in the national Assembly; no party has  that kind of representation in parliament,” Mr. Jagdeo declared.

The President said persons need to have an overall look at what is happening in

representative  democracies around the world and  the move  to have a more participatory system “…you can’t handpick a few issues. In our constitution, we can  only hold someone for three days without charging him or her. The U.S. has held people for six years; the biggest  bastion of democracy, without  access to even a lawyer and without a squeak from many people in the region, yet we held the U.S.  as the bastion of democracy …so you can’t have the  double standards; you can’t pick and choose issues,” the Guyanese head-of-State retorted.

“Overall, I think we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the Commonwealth and in the world…I will defend that record and we need to build on this because we are a multi-ethnic society in Guyana and a lot of the features of our Constitution are designed to give people  greater, not just declarative rights, but rights that can be enforced…,” the President added.