…school visits, debates, TV series to be part of programme

AS the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) continues its focus on promoting understanding and garnering interest in Guyana’s constitution and the need for constitutional reform, a number of initiatives are in the pipeline.

These initiatives include a debating competition for schools, school visits, and a television

series.
A Constitutional Reform Public Education Scripting Committee, headed by Co-chairs Tamara Khan and Abiola Wong-Inniss, is working on the project. Also on the eight- member committee is author Ruel Johnson and President of Move on Guyana, Vishal Joseph.
Khan explained that many citizens are confused and feel too daunted by the complexities of the constitution to be motivated to get involved in the conversation on constitutional reform; the committee is therefore aiming to package the education aspect with an entertainment factor to make it as simple and alluring as possible.

“It’s a series of projects on public education to simplify the constitution. A lot of people are intimidated by the document, the wording is high in many parts of it and yes, we need to start with reforming the language of the document, but the programme will help to point you in certain directions. So there’s the television series, debate, and town hall lectures. We want vox pop, hash tags, we want to generate some interest on Facebook,” said Khan, who is also a Legal Adviser at the OPM.

It was President David Granger who had said that constitutional reform should involve the citizens of Guyana, with consultations being held at the very grassroots level.
“The president said the constitutional reform should be led by the citizens. Because it is the citizens that have to live with the decisions. In the pages of the constitution our lives are affected, determined and so it is only with familiarity that we can properly benefit from the constitution. The rules are for empowering the people, that is what it is,” Khan notes.
Khan explained that since the OPM first began looking into constitutional reform, consultations indicated that citizens could not be involved or give their input on constitutional reform until they first understood what the constitution is and what it contains.

With the average Guyanese unaware of what is in the constitution, the need for education and sensitisation is widespread.

Joseph praised the public education initiative for securing youth involvement, as well as the steps being taken to ensure that citizens’ understand what the constitution and constitutional reform are all about.

“I’m glad that they’re including youth in the process. It shows that when we talk about constitutional matters, we’re no longer just talking about the older persons sitting at a table and youths are being seen as consultants in this process, safeguarding and contributing to their own future,” the CARICOM Youth Ambassador noted.

“I like the overall objective. The layman must be able to understand their constitution and not wait for others. They must be able to say look, I have my copy of the constitution in an easier-to-read format. Let me as someone who might not necessarily be seen as a technical person on the constitution, let me offer my two cent on how I feel this is playing out.”

Work has already begun on scripting the television series, while the school debates have also already begun, and is expected to begin airing from early next month.
“We have a broadcast committee who are working on scripting a television series on constitutional reform. The committee has been meeting for the past two months, our first script is almost done and we’re working with producers. We have a lot of material that is more than one broadcast, but we’re ironing out the entertainment value of the first one,” she explained.

The television series will be looking to not only catch the attention of citizens, but also to get their involvement.

“We’re still working on the timing, but there’s going to be several components of it. There’ll be a vox pop component of it, where we will go out and ask people about the particular area of the constitution that we intend to deal with, about if they’re familiar with it in a general sense. If they have questions we will answer those questions,” explains Johnson.
“It deals with scripts and shows that explain to people the fundamentals of the constitution; it envisions that it will eventually go on to discuss the issues of constitutional reform. The idea is that we will take it to places where people congregate. Relevant to Guyanese people and get a direct man-in-the-street, woman-in-the-street perspective on these issues. It will be issues that people are not familiar with.”
The show will be aired on the National Communications Network (NCN), with the date to begin airing still being decided on. The school debate aspect will also be aired on the NCN. The debates are being moderated by Dr Rovin Deodat.

“The recording of that started, and the airing will be at the end of the month. We selected secondary schools from all the regions; we chose 16 schools based on population size,” Khan explained.

Khan said the committee understood the importance of getting students involved, hence the debates and school visits.

“It’s not a school document, and that’s the feeling we get as we work with the debaters. This is not something that they would have engaged in at all. So we want to go and we do the talks at schools, having town hall-type sessions,” Khan said
“What we’re trying to do is stimulate interest and awareness. You don’t know what’s inside and the only way to get you to know is for you to start pulling. So what we did when we crafted the moots is, we pulled out various provisions from the constitution and we crafted moots out of those provisions in a simple way. But it was done in such a way that in order to argue the moot you kind of have to refer to the provision and sort of deconstruct the provision; we tried to pull out provisions that were not too convoluted. And generally when they argue they state their moot, they define their moot and then they pull out the provisions to arm themselves and start their arguments.”

Khan said that thus far from what she’s seen of the debates, the students have been very receptive. Johnson and Joseph have also been involved with helping to judge a few of the debates.

“I’ve had the honour of judging on two of those debates. The topics are beautiful, they’re challenging for the students; they bring a lot more out of them than the traditional run- of-the-mill debates,” Joseph commented.

Outside of the current tasks on which the committee is working, Khan says plans are also in place to widen the scope by holding carrying out community meetings to take the education campaign directly to citizens in their communities.