Dear Editor,
THE Internet-based campaigning organization Avaaz noted recently that: “The UN just announced Aleppo is fast becoming ‘one giant graveyard’ and residents risk ‘extermination’.

Not one of our governments is in there saving lives, but an extraordinary group of Syrians are: The White Helmets. They have, in fact, saved 73,530 lives, rushing to the scene of bombings to pull people from the rubble and carry them to safety.

What’s amazing is that these heroes are just ordinary people – bakers, tailors, engineers, pharmacists, painters, carpenters, students and many more. The White Helmets are volunteers from all walks of life. Many have paid the ultimate price for their compassion — 141 have been killed while saving others.

The heroism of the White Helmets shames the rest of us, both governments and civilians, who have not found the energy or manner to record our outrage, however symbolically, at the systematic slaughter of Syrian civilians. At the same time, the sheer scale of atrocities is so remote from our experience that it is difficult to find applicable lessons to be learnt for Guyana.

The same cannot be said in response to the ascent of intolerant far-right politics in the normally stable parts of Europe and North America, the Philippines, Brazil and elsewhere, threatening what were assumed to be established rights of women, gender, ethnic and religious minorities.

Liberal forces around the world have watched complacently for several decades as wealth, unlimited benefits, a vaunted sense of entitlement, and impunity above the law accumulated around the 1%. The 99%, on the other hand, are increasingly condemned to ever-widening circles of insecurity in the form of low-paying jobs, worsening health-care, little or no access to the legal system; and political, ethnic, gender and religious exclusion.

We in Guyana are so oblivious to these global trends shaping our future that discovery of gas and oil is unhesitatingly acclaimed as salvation, as if wealth were the key to resolving our decades-long absorption with ethnic politics. Guyana remains reluctant to set aside the illusion that economic growth can produce a civilized and peaceful society. A more principled approach would recognize the need for equal energy directed at generating a more robust human rights and equality protection framework to match the avalanche of seminars, workshops and experts on tax reform, wealth funds, and the array of legislation provoked by the discovery of oil and gas.

The appropriate vehicle for such legislation would be a constitutional reform process.
A year-and-a-half into the new administration, however, there is little sign of robust action on pressing constitutional issues. Given the languid time-table, issues of pressing concern will not be resolved and implemented during the life of this coalition government. The first casualty is likely to be the fundamental reform of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).

Canvassing of names for the Chair of GECOM is a minor issue compared with the structural reforms required. Implementing reforms should logically have preceded appointing a new Chair. Moreover, consultations of this kind would be more appropriate by the parliamentary Opposition, were they to take up their seats on statutory bodies and Commissions to which they have a legal right. Such bodies provide opportunities in everyday politics for honing political skills, particularly the principled compromises which we normally dismiss as weakness, which our politics sorely lacks.

In 2011, a campaign of over 11,000 signatures by the civic network ‘Facing the Future’ (FTF) supported the following electoral reforms:
1. Reforms related to legal status and financial accountability of political parties.
2. Re-structuring the Elections Commission in a manner which enhances its authority, broadens the scope of its powers, and ring-fences administration of elections from party influence.
3. Reforms to the electoral system itself which seek to:
a. Strengthen accountability of elected officials to citizens rather than to political party leadership e.g. single-seat constituencies.
b. Modernise the technological aspects of elections to:
1. Give gender equal representation on party lists;
2. Ensure electoral funding is transparent.

Commemoration of International Human Rights Day (IHRD) is an appropriate occasion to raise the pressing issue of human rights’ protections in Guyana. In particular, a strong case can be made for a broad review of the so-called Rights Commissions, introduced by the constitutional reform process of 2000. These Commissions are dysfunctional, in part due to the bewildering inter-connection of the Commissions among themselves and between them and the yet-to-be constituted Human Rights Commission (HRC). They have made no significant impact. Although the chairs of the respective commissions constitute the membership of the HRC by statute, selection of the chairs themselves require no experience, or even interest in human rights.

Moreover, Mr. Brian Burdekin, the international expert from the UN High Commission for Human Rights – a former Chair of the Australian Human Rights Commission, who advised the 2000 Reform Commission — pleaded with Parliament at the time not to go this route, but to no avail.

Rather than mechanically funding another round of this costly collection of unproductive commissions, a thorough evaluation of them is required. The GHRA has always supported international best practice of creating an over-arching Human Rights Commission in which Sub-Commissions are created as required. Moreover, the work of the HRC must be guided by the appropriate international conventions to which Guyana is signatory, and be peopled by a staff which becomes progressively more confident and capable of promoting a rights-based culture throughout the public administration.

IHRD 2016 provides an occasion for Guyanese to appreciate our fortune in escaping the natural and political upheavals over the past year. A more mature response than the prevailing complacency would be to ensure that, should our turn comes, our political institutions are politically better prepared to cope with them than is the case at present.

Regards,
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE,
Guyana Human Rights Association