THIS presentation here is a continuation of my column yesterday (Monday), on the reaction of the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) on my piece last Thursday that looked at what the impending legislation on NGOs should include. The GHRA took umbrage to commonsense in my article and the purpose here today is to argue that we are living at a time in Guyana when people with nihilistic instincts are clothing themselves in democratic garb.
The GHRA denounced the column as a form of advocacy of control of NGOs and civil society organisations, and went on to add that it is my contribution to a grand control strategy of the government of organisations it wants to muzzle. I penned the analysis after reading that the state intends to introduce legislation in relation to the functionalism of NGOs.

I suggested some areas of inclusion and those ideas come from my long experience with paper organisations and the arrogance of a tiny, elite group of three or four persons making demands on elected office-holders and speaking on behalf of the Guyanese nation that do not know these people or want to know them.
The GHRA’s press release that denounced my column was carried in the Sunday edition of the Stabroek News, the very issue that published the organisations and their heads that have formed the executive of APNU. Paper organisations are placed before the very eyes of the nation. None of the groups that make up the new leadership of APNU has any physiology. None of those organisations has anyone in its membership except the person who started it.

This is the identical reality of the GHRA. There is no information in this country and to who sits on the executive of the GHRA, who is the deputy head after Mr. Mike Mc Cormack, who is the spokesperson and how many members it has and its demographic representation. There is no annual report of its accomplishments and its human rights representations on behalf of complainants. I would immediately close my chapter of criticism of the GHRA after I see that report, because it is evidence that it functions according to its mandate.
This state of affairs has been going on for decades. The trouble with the GHRA is that it demands accountability in state behaviour and refuses to practise accountability of its own. I will now outline my position on civil society groups and NGOs. I have no theoretical or moral objection to three persons from their workplace that have formed an organisation and comment on social, sociological, cultural and political happenings in the society.

That is one’s fundamental right, the denial of which threatens freedom, justice, and the rule of law. It is for that reason we have had guests of all types of political stripes on the Freddie Kissoon Show. People must be allowed to ventilate their opinions and be allowed to criticise others.
But you cannot be a three-person entity that carries the word transparency in your name and advocate for the rights of citizens, when you are not transparent and you do not represent the people of Guyana. In my long decades in political activism, two situations stand out as disgraceful, repugnant and downright indecent; and I am going so far as to say that anyone who could justify what these two organisations did is unfit to be part of the modern, civilised world.
This country went through a crisis that lasted for five months, in which a national election was assaulted and trampled upon in the most criminal manner. In those five months, the Chief Election Officer nullified 112, 000 legal votes. During the five months, energetic attempts bordering on insane actions were made to remove the transparency of the election results.

Yet we had a group in this country that has the word transparency in its name – Transparency Institute – Guyana Chapter – that remained completely silent during five months of danger that could have jeopardised the very existence of Guyana. Another group that has the words “human rights” in its name was invisible for those five months. This is the state of NGOs and civil society groups. As someone who took to political activism since I was 16 and has chalked up more than five decades of human rights activism, I could never forgive those two groups and I don’t think you who are reading this column should.

I repeat what I said in my Thursday last column. The impending legislation should include requirements of NGOs to show their membership, ensure their leaders are elected with terms limits and have annual reports whose contents can be verified. The masquerade of one-man shows must end. All decent Guyanese must demand that.