In the end, or at least for this particular ending, there was a historic joint press conference, with the two leaders President Bharrat Jagdeo and Leader of the Opposition Desmond Hoyte speaking to the press "with one voice" as a section of the press remarked. The occasion was the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding embodying the recommendations of the joint committee dealing among other things with wireless telegraphy regulations. The committee is one of several appointed in the context of the dialogue process. This outcome was welcome as just before there had been recriminations, charge and counter charge about the dialogue process itself. Mr Hoyte, noting that there were some who were opposed to the process, had warned that there could be grave consequences if the process collapsed.

It is certain that the process and in particular the joint committees have attracted misgivings, if not hostility, there are those who would see their work as infringing on cherished ministerial responsibilities while there are other diehards who see the process as hindering the only way forward namely the resort to pressure, if not violence.

Even though these committees are informal in status, power must

inhere in them appointed as they are by the main holders of power. However, the committees are outside the constitutional structures, likewise they do not derive from civil society. The ambiguities are manifest. In the instant case, a committee outside the institutional structure has made recommendations to appoint an Advisory Committee whose views in real terms while advisory will constrain the Prime Minister in the exercise of his assigned ministerial responsibility in the specific field of the making of telegraphy regulations.

Indeed the political scientist Dr David Hinds has drawn attention to such ambiguities. Writing in Stabroek News on October l0, in asserting that there is a crisis of governance in the region he referred to "the political impasse in Guyana that has left the country with two parallel centers of governance the "elected government and the Committees"."

Yet there is an intrinsic validity to the dialogue process and the committees. They have provided an important measure of political peace and the promise of widening areas of agreement.

To understand the vital relevance of the process one must back up over familiar ground. Recent elections in Guyana, even when adjudged efficient and honest, have been able to provide legitimacy but not nationwide acceptance. There has been the now familiar Guyana pattern of elections plus riots. While the hostility and non-acceptance by a major part of the community has focused on the mechanics of the electoral system, one feels that the hostility derives from the realisation that given the well established pattern of ethnic voting, one party, one group will always win. At an earlier phase, the same realisation had led to the resort to various forms of rigging.

Accordingly, earlier this year, there were the expected disorders in which the community was being torn apart. Personal security and property were under threat and parts of Georgetown looked like a war torn city. There was the widespread call for a meeting of the leaders and when this happened there was a national sigh of relief as the violence almost at once subsided.

The dialogue process has worked but it is not without challenge and the threat of breakdown. Can it be justified in terms of the constitutional order?

Is there a model or a map which can provide signposts for the way forward? Certain western thinkers in the eighteenth century at a crucial juncture in their societies had advanced the theory that members of a human community made a contract among themselves to hand over their individual power to a ruler or the ultimate authority or form of government which would ensure good order and fairness in the application of rules/laws. Otherwise, Hobbes and other thinkers argued that there would be, endless conflict as each man pursued his sole advantage and life would be, to quote the famous words, "nasty, brutish and short".

The idea of contract was of course not an anthropological fact but a convenient shorthand to explain the need for ultimate authority and the need for citizens obedience and the limits of such political obligation. But the model is useful because it clarifies the citizens right, (if the existing system fails to meet expectation, if in short the contract is not being fulfilled) to devise new forms of governance whose findings might then conceivably be passed into the formal system for implementation - action which must be seen as the preferred option to withdrawal and disorder.

In short in the dialogue process, Guyana is feeling its way forward to a new and important dimension of governance. But this new form has already encountered difficulties and will be beset by more.

The work of the committees could be hindered, and has apparently been hindered, by previous public commitments of some of their members. A more serious difficulty could be the lack of up to date information, information more readily available to a government, especially when international transactions or foreign policy are involved, as is the case with the bauxite resuscitation joint committee and that on the territorial controversies. The focus of the committees should be on the building of consensus in which the differing viewpoints are incorporated. Some joint committees will finish their work and go out of existence. Others, as for example the Local Government Reform Committee, may have permanent relevance. And new committees could be appointed to deal with emerging conflictual areas.

As the work of these committees is of such high importance, immediate consideration should be given to the appointment of a facilitator who should ensure that the committees get the support they require and that their work is expedited.

In fact the dialogue process and the establishment of the joint committees are reflective of the need to keep to the fore in policy discussions the emerging wider concept of governance rather than government. The concept of governance recognises that there are large areas of contemporary circumstances where the writ of government cannot run; that at the international level there are areas which are increasingly beyond control, for example the electronic media and the monetary system, while at the national level, at the other end of the scale there are areas of human welfare which are better left with appropriate support, to the

family or the NGO or the village. Hence the need for a concept which recognises that equitable distribution and fairness in the application of rules and laws should be entrusted not only to government and public administration but to civil society as a partner in governance.

Everywhere the existing situation is leading to the search for new forms which advance human welfare and lessen conflict. These forms may fit into no accepted grouping and may include national, overseas, local government, NGOs and individual elements. The Guyana Dialogue process and its instrumental committees are an important step in this direction.