The Social Partners have put on hold efforts to have the political parties reach agreement on the crime communiqué following concerns that monitoring of various measures and the broadening of the mandate of the talks may prove difficult.
After only ninety minutes, the third session of the discussions at the Supreme Court Library was adjourned to allow the Social Partners to consult among themselves and with the members of its Security Advisory Committee (SAC).
Stabroek News understands that the next meeting is unlikely to be held before next week and the parties have in the meantime been requested to consider how the SAC should be composed. Two previous sessions on November 25 and 28, lasted six and seven hours respectively without reaching agreement on the document.
A joint statement agreed to by the parties, which should have been issued by chairman of the meeting, Private Sector Commission Chairman and Social Partners spokesperson Dr Peter deGroot was still unavailable up to press time.
Before the start of yesterday's meeting deGroot had told Stabroek News the meeting had to address the issue as to "where we carry the document because when the document was first conceptualised it was an emergency document."
He explained, "Because it has taken two months to reach near finalisation of the documents, we are encountering problems as far as what we have inside the document."
He says one problem is, "the ability of the Security Advisory Committee (SAC) as it is presently constituted to carry out the mandate that it would appear...the political parties would like to give to them."
He says "that mandate is getting bigger and bigger and the guys can't handle it. So we have to decide how we go with the process", recalling that when the document was first formulated the crime was concentrated on the East Coast Demerara and now it has a different spin to it. The members of the SAC are retired Maj Generals Joe Singh and Norman McLean, former Chiefs of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force and Laurie Lewis, a retired Commissioner of Police.
The constitution of the SAC was brought into focus as a result of a letter from Maj Gen Singh indicating his desire not to be part of whatever institutional arrangement is likely to be put in place to report on the implementation of the agreed measures.
The former Chief of Staff explained that the operational measures he, McLean and Lewis had included in their original proposal have been overtaken by events and the additional concerns being raised are outside of his capacity and competence. He offered the view that the Social Partners seem to be in danger of being saddled with responsibilities, which are the remit of the political parties and State institutions.
A number of new faces were at yesterday's session. Chris Fernandes and Anande Trotman joined the Social Partners team. Fernandes told Stabroek News he was "invited" and Trotman stood in for Guyana Bar Association vice-president, Lillian Crawford-Abbensetts. Absent were Dr Roger Luncheon, who had headed the government delegation, The United Force's leader and Tourism Minister Manzoor Nadir and Aubrey Collins. Also not present was ROAR's Baldeo Chaitram who was killed in an accident on Friday.
The Social Partners convened the sessions at the Supreme Court Library after the parties' comments on what the Social Partners described as their best effort at formulating a draft indicated that it would require a face-to-face meeting of the various parties to bridge the gap.
After the first session on November 25, which ran for six hours, Dr deGroot said that some 70 per cent of the document was agreed and what was left were a group of measures whose wording needed to be worked out.
The meeting on Thursday lasted seven hours but very little progress was made, and this was attributed to the new circumstances for which the document was being formulated. However Stabroek News understands that the one contributing factor to the lack of progress was the failure of the parties to agree on the summary prepared by Dr deGroot. The PPP/C tabled its comments on the summary at that meeting. As a result Stabroek News understands that the PNCR also tabled its comments after Dr deGroot accepted responsibility for not laying down the ground rules that decisions arrived at were not open for discussion at subsequent meetings. Stabroek News also understands that Dr deGroot was persuaded that though the representatives were required to have plenipotentiary powers, President Bharrat Jagdeo and Opposition Leader Desmond Hoyte could request that changes be made. The meeting has now reportedly adopted "Rohee's Rule" that until the final document is agreed upon any issue could be reopened by any party.