– to facilitate a more inclusive discourse on matter

THE Parliamentary Committee on Appointments has resolved to go back to the drawing board and reconsider the appointment of members of the Rights of the Child Commission.
The move follows the withdrawal by the mover, Dr George Norton, of a Motion to adopt its ninth report in the relation to the appointments.
Both Government and Opposition Members of Parliament (MPs) agreed that there was not consensus on the topic, so it would be best to take another look at the intended appointments.

“We believe that the Commission is important, and must serve all our people. So we must look beyond the politics and be able to develop consensus,” Opposition MP, Bishop Juan Edghill argued during his response to the Motion on Monday.
According to the Constitution, there should be not less than five or more than 15 members of the Commission.

Edghill contended that important stakeholders were left out. He noted that for instance the Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana and the Guyana Hindu Dharmic Sabha were listed, but there was no representative from the Christian denomination. Even the ministry with responsibility for child rights, he said, was left out of the equation.

While he was making his point, members on the Government side of the House questioned why the Opposition was not a part of the initial consultations on the appointments.

Minister of Telecommunications, Catherine Hughes argued that over the past year, the appointments committee has being trying to reach the organisations that were listed to be part of the Commission.

“We went through a detailed process, and the minutes would support the attempts to reach people; the Commission has not had the support of the Opposition in this process,” she said, adding:

“We started off working together in the interest of the country, and all of a sudden the Opposition decided that they would not participate.”
Minister Hughes contended that the Committee did not have an “underhand” approach but instead worked as a united Committee.

“Given the challenges and the circumstances,” she said, “I personally recommend that we withdraw the Motion.”

Opposition MPs Ganga Persaud and Gail Teixeira both agreed that the issue should be taken back to the Committee where there should be informed collaborative discourse and a consensus.

After noting the recommendations, Dr. Norton, who is Chairperson of the Committee on Appointments, requested that the Motion be withdrawn so that the Opposition could partake in the meetings.

Had the Motion been adopted, the organisations that were identified would have been invited by the Clerk of the National Assembly to meet as a group to select their nominees.
Dr. Norton said the list of organisations was approved by the National Assembly during the tenth Parliament.

The Committee’s first approach since then was to enquire whether the organisations still function, but the responses were limited, he said.

Seeing that the Committee was given a deadline of February 13, 2018, they decided to issue advertisements in the newspapers, but some of the organisations were unresponsive.
Said he: “The list we presented only reflects agencies which were functioning, and we decided not to consider some of the entities that were seeking to be included because they were unresponsive.”