THE government is introducing legislation to streamline the functionalism of NGOs, also referred to as civil society groups. One suspects that this may have arisen out of concern about two things.

These NGOs are one-person outfits and such one-person entities end up getting enormous money from Western embassies and foreign foundations which are not audited.

Let’s start with the composition of these civil society bodies. Who are they? What physiology they have? The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) recently received a grant from the UK High Commission. As usual, only one person from GHRA was in the photo-shoot: Mr. Mike Mc Cormack.

Each time there is a group photo in relation to some activism in Guyana, only one person appears, representing the GHRA, Mr. Mc Cormack. It appears that Mr. Mc Cormack is the GHRA, and the GHRA is McCormack. This country does not know who are in the executive of the GHRA or when the body holds elections for its office-bearers.

Then there is a civil society body that goes under the name Article 13. No one hears about article 13 and that is because the organization is dead. Article 13, when it was alive, was a three-man operation, with Mr. Yog Mahdeo being the key man. Here is where one can find the caricature of a civil society’s existence.

The origin of this caricature begins in this way. Two or three persons are friends. They belong to the same occupational profession. They met at a restaurant on Church Street that sells a steak for $72, 000. They decide to form an organisation. That organisation then confronts the government on governance issues.

A month passes by. A year passes by. Still, there are no advertisements in the newspapers or on social media inviting the public to attend a gathering to elect a steering committee and to seek membership. This three-man affair then becomes pompous and arrogant and makes claims against the government in relation to accountability and transparency. In effect, three people only decide that the government must meet with them to provide them with documents.

In 2021, one of the persons in a three-man entity requested to see the contract for the renewed Amaila Falls project. This wasn’t just hubris and hauteur, it was insanity. By what logic does an elected government have to give documents to one of three persons in an organisation?

One hopes that in the legislation that numbers, elections and term limits are imposed on the NGOs. An organisation must have numbers because such numbers reflect national standing. There must be a register of members, with the requirement that each NGO must have a membership of at least 40 persons and an executive of no less than ten members. There must be term limits of two terms only for the chairman, with each term being for two years.

The civil society in Guyana landscape is dotted with one-man membership and the people who encourage this lopsidedness are the Western embassies through generous donations. I mentioned above that the GHRA received a generous donation a few weeks ago. A woman formed a one-person NGO and received a grant of $28 million to study the economy of the Amerindians from one of the Western embassies in Georgetown. She never submitted even one page of research and she has since been blacklisted.

There is Vanda Radzik-Veira. I saw the Hardtalk interview with her in which she was given two minutes to offer her opinion. She was listed as a civil society activist, but from which association? I was at the vigil for Palestine and on the programme, Ms. Radzik-Veira was the only speaker not to have institutional representation. On behalf of whom was she speaking?

At the Guyana Prize ceremony, Ms. Radzik-Veira appeared as a judge in the category of young poets. There was no listing of occupation or institutional affiliation. So how did she get there? The answer is the shape of NGOs in Guyana. Anybody can form an NGO, get publicity from the Stabroek News and Kaieteur News and get money from Western embassies.

These NGOs and civil society groups are relentless in their criticism of the government in relation to transparency and accountability, but they have no moral high ground from which they can chastise the government. They do not have an ounce of transparency or accountability in their organisations because they have no functionalism.

With the legislation in place, is it possible that the Western embassies will ask to see their membership roll and audited financial statements? That is up to the embassies, but the Guyanese people should demand that before these NGOs criticise anyone, they should stop living in glass houses.