FOR SOME time now, I concluded the following on race and ethnic relations:
* Guyana seemingly has no dominant ethnic group.
* Guyana has ethnic alliances.
* Guyana’s major ethnic groups ostensibly have comparable Socioeconomic Status (SES), indicators being education, occupation, and income.
* Guyana’s cultural mosaicnclines toward pluralism.
* Guyana’s fringe politicians and parts of the private media construct and reconstruct ethnic conflict, assisting them to manipulate the race card.
* Guyana has class-race-ethnicity simultaneously lived-in where each person belongs to a class, a race, and an ethnic group.
* Guyana has class divisions within each ethnic group as well as in the society at large – intra and inter-ethnic class structure.

And the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) has a useful track record since 1953 of advancing equality before the law for all persons, regardless of their race, ethnicity, class, colour, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin. And now, discrimination against people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, class, colour, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, is illegal.

The PPP constituted the first working-class Government of national unity in 1953, pulling from all racial, ethnic, and class groupings. Today, the PPP/C remains an active contributor to advancing diversity management and the building of national unity, racial unity, and working people’s unity. A sample of the PPP/C’s work in race relations follows:

* The Representation of the People’s Amendment Bill, No. 1 of 2001- to forbid incitement of racial or ethnic violence or hatred.
* The Constitution (Amendment) (No. 6) Act 2001. The Amendment at Article 119A provides for the establishment of a Parliamentary Standing Committee for Constitutional Reform.
* The Constitution (Amendment) (No. 4) Act 2001 repealed and re-enacted Article 13 of the Constitution. The Amendment endorses the establishment of an inclusionary democracy to facilitate citizen participation. 
* The Constitution (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 2001 altered Article 71 of the Constitution to engage many people in governance. 
* The Constitution {Amendment} {No.2} Act 2000 created five {5} Constitution Commissions – the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC), Indigenous People’s Commission, Commission for the Rights of the Child, Commission for Human Rights, and Women and Gender Equality Commission.
* The Constitution (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 2000 amended the Constitution, including immediately after Article 212, a series of Articles from 212A through 212F, establishing the ERC, composition, a tribunal, functions, annual report, and rules. 
* The Constitution amendment at Article 119B provides for the establishment of Parliamentary Sectoral Committees, providing oversight to Government policy and administration, including natural resources; economic services; foreign relations; and social services. 
* Article 78B, a new insertion in the Constitution enables the electoral system below the Regional Democratic Councils to provide for the participation, representation, and accountability of individuals and voluntary groups to the voters. 
* Prevention of Discrimination Act 1997 addresses prevention of discrimination on grounds of race, sex, and gender, particularly relating to employment.
* Endorsement of the optional Protocol on the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; Guyana was not a signatory under the PNC regime.
* A Race Relations Committee functioned in the 1990s.
* Endorsement of the International Instruments for the protection of human rights of all Guyanese:
– International Labour Organisation (ILO) Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention ILO 111:
– Convention on the Rights of the Child
– Declaration of the Rights of the Child
– Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons
– Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons
– Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.

In any event, what are the features of a society with endemic racial conflicts? In some ways, we could see one or a combination of these characteristics: genocide, segregation, forced population transfer, internal colonialism, and forced assimilation.

Multiethnic societies as Guyana generally exhibit some ethnic conflict, but, on the whole, management of the conflict becomes critical. But, first, policy makers need to understand the social construction and reconstruction of ethnic conflict in Guyana.