President Bharrat Jagdeo and Leader of the Opposition, Robert Corbin, are to continue discussions which they began yesterday, at the Office of the President on Monday.
Their meeting yesterday ran for almost four hours and was their first following the May 5 engagement at which they hammered out a series of agreements, the implementation of which was among the items on yesterday’s agenda.
Other issues on the agenda included the appointment of the five-member Disciplined Forces Commission, the chairman for which the President is to appoint after consultation with Corbin.
Their parties are each to nominate two members and yesterday the two leaders exchanged ideas on the persons their parties would nominate to sit on the commission.
Last month the National Assembly unanimously approved an amendment to the constitution to enable the commission to carry out inquiries into the operations of the disciplined services with priority being given to the operations of the Police Force.
The other agenda items include discussions of the National Development Strategy which was deferred from the May 5 meeting and is one of the issues President Jagdeo placed on the agenda for their constructive engagement.
The communiqué issued on May 6 called for a number of parliamentary reforms including the establishment of seven parliamentary standing committees.
The parliamentary committees have all been constituted, with the four parliamentary sector committees meeting yesterday to elect their chairperson and deputy chairperson under the chairmanship of the Speaker of the National Assembly.
Other agreements which have been implemented include the tabling of the government’s policy on land and house lot distribution and the edited report of the joint committee on border and national security appointed during the Jagdeo/Hoyte dialogue process.
Also in train is the work of the joint task force on local government reform which has a three-month timeframe to continue its work on recommendations for an electoral system to be used at future local government elections.
The task force is also entrusted with developing appropriate and transparent procedures and systems for annual transfers from the central government to the local government bodies and developing terms of reference for an independent, constitutional local government commission.