The Social Partners see the joint consultation process they have started with political parties and other groups as a national “sounding board” or deliberative forum where a variety of issues can be discussed.
Issues for the forum can emanate from the government, political parties or civil society organisations and the social partners say that a small secretariat should be established to service the joint consultations and deal with matters such as implementation.
In a recent paper, the Social Partners were responding to the task they were set at the Joint Consultation on September 11, requiring them to expand on their proposal for a consultative mechanism that would allow the participation of citizens and their organisations in the decision-making processes of the State.
Article 13 of the Constitution provides for such participation and the Social Partners want the parliamentary parties to take the steps necessary to activate it. The Social Partners comprise the Private Sector Commission, the Trades Union Congress and the Guyana Bar Association. They were present along with President Bharrat Jagdeo, Opposition leader Desmond Hoyte and representatives of the People’s Progressive Party, the People’s National Congress Reform, the Working People’s Alliance (partnered with the Guyana Action Party in the National Assembly), Rise, Organise and Rebuild Guyana and The United Force.
The paper put up by the Social Partners will be considered when they convene another joint consultation sometime this week. The timing of the meeting is dependent on the Social Partners getting broad agreement on the draft communiqué on crime that they expect the political parties, President Jagdeo and Opposition Leader, Hoyte to endorse at the meeting. The original paper on Shared Governance lists crime as an issue requiring an immediate and collaborative response.
Stabroek News understands that the Social Partners paper suggests that the political parties could define their positions on the various issues raised in the context of shared governance as set out by the Social Partners. This, the paper says, would assist the formulation of a framework for the joint consultation process and the establishment of a structure within which the collaborative efforts would take place.
The consultation process as Stabroek News understands it would be a forum for exploring the benefits and consequences of the solutions proposed to address the various issues raised either by the Government, the parliamentary political parties or a civil society organisation.
The paper also suggests that a small secretariat staffed with competent professionals should be set up to monitor the various plans of action agreed in the consultation process.
It proposed that one of the first tasks the Secretariat should undertake would be to formulate a work programme. This would include the timely implementation of the remaining agreed constitutional reforms.
The secretariat would pay particular attention to implementation of decisions in light of the experience with stalled constitutional reforms and concerns about the “chronic lack of capacity” to execute decisions. It was pointed out in the paper that the fully participatory constitutional reform process culminated with unanimous legislative agreements on 167 recommendations that could be given effect without a referendum. The paper noted that only those related to general and regional elections were put in place.
To determine why, the social partners said they canvassed the opinions of several knowledgeables and they highlighted that implementation involved undertaking interlinked tasks which needed careful sequencing, required a focused oversight group and that it was counterproductive to try to apportion blame to any single agent or circumstance as implementation required close collaboration among the government, opposition and civil society. The persons canvassed also stressed the need for adequate financial resources to speed implementation along.
Among the reforms remaining to be completed are the establishment of the Ethnic Relations Commissions, the Procurement Com-mission, the Commissions on Indigenous Peoples, Women and Children, and Human Rights, the parliamentary sector committees and the parliamentary management committee that the Jagdeo/Hoyte dialogue process said should be set up.
The secretariat’s monitoring functions would include paying attention to the timely execution of the various components of the agreed plans of action by the agencies tasked with their execution.
Other tasks it wants the secretariat to carry out include the preparation and timely dispatch of papers and other administrative functions in support of the consultation process. It will also be expected to develop approaches and other programmes of action agreed by the consultation process through interaction with government agencies, private sector organisations, community leaders and elders and leaders, non-governmental organisations such as trade unions, service clubs and other interest groups.
Stabroek News understands that the Social Partners are suggesting that funding for the work of the secretariat should be mobilised from the public and private sector, non-governmental organisations and bilateral and multilateral donors.
The Social Partners prefaced the paper by referring to the fear that now overshadows the lives of citizens because of the crime wave and noted that if the second joint consultation was held this week it would be nearly sixty days since the first. “We are constrained to state the obvious. Time is fast slipping underneath our feet. We believe that partners at the Second Joint Consultation might usefully discuss imaginative ways of reducing the time horizon for deliberating issues of grave and pressing national and domestic importance”.