With the year still young it is an appropriate time to address how the constructive engagement launched by President Jagdeo and Mr Corbin last year might yield useful agreements which are actually implemented.
It has not been a promising start to 2004. Experience has shown that when opportunities arise for the ruling PPP/C and the PNCR to return to the trenches and take aim at each other they never fail to grasp the opportunity. And so it is with the scandal over the alleged death squad. The PNCR has gone into overdrive and has withdrawn from participating in any event that the Home Affairs Minister attends. Daily, acrimonious protests have been convened by the PNCR on Brickdam outside the minister's office and in response the state-owned Chronicle and the Mirror have been flooded with letters and commentary on the PNC's failings going all the way back to the X-13 and everything in between. It is not a restorative atmosphere and could only destabilise the dialogue. Wasn't the dialogue robust enough to allow the two leaders to speak to each other on this matter as a means of obviating the resort to protests and invective?
Hopefully, a meeting will be convened quickly between the two principals to discuss how to reinvigorate the process and to insulate it from flashpoints like the death squad allegations.
After nearly a year of the constructive engagement it is safe to say that while it created much initial optimism it has fallen far short of expectations and needs to be re-engineered to produce results. It is afflicted by many of the same problems that led to the demise of the talks that preceded it between President Jagdeo and Mr Hoyte: there is a lack of trust and goodwill between the sides, decisions have not been followed up, execution of basic tasks is poor and quite a number of the persons entrusted with various responsibilities by the leaders should be instantly relieved of their positions for poor performance and an inability to avoid playing politics.
Who the culprits are is not known directly to the public because they are given cover in the haze of the bureaucracy which again points to the need for an expediter to whom monitoring of the dialogue process is entrusted by the leaders. There has been enough drift. Can't President Jagdeo and Mr Corbin find one efficient, trustworthy person: local, foreign, extra-terrestrial, vegan or whoever else to undertake this crucial task? It is an elementary tool as it allows the tracking down of decisions and holds the various officials accountable. Notwithstanding the episodic reporting of progress to the local and international stakeholders in the talks, it is clear that to achieve tangible and sustained results the implementation of the constructive engagement decisions cannot be left to the people or process that President Jagdeo and Mr Corbin have identified. It hasn't worked up to now and should be abandoned. An expediter with the relevant authorisation, resources and one or two assistants can do wonders for the process.
Another debilitating characteristic of the engagement so far is the lack of structure. The meetings between the two leaders have been few and far between and this infrequency has been replicated in the sprawl of committees and sub-committees. A big part of the problem is that the leaders' dialogue and the constitutional and parliamentary reforms have promulgated dozens of commissions, committees and other gatherings which have their own schedule of meetings so that it is nigh impossible for dates to be kept by the limited circle of people appointed to these bodies. This has been compounded by the President's heavy travel schedule and Mr Corbin himself has also had a few overseas appointments.
There is no way that dialogue of this type can be kept alive if meetings are occasional and frequently deferred because of other commitments. It requires a dedicated timetable with stringent adherence to deadlines. They should meet at least fortnightly setting specific tasks to be undertaken in the intervening period during which the expediter would get to work. Those government and PNCR officials who would be assigned important tasks should then have their workload lightened so that they could perform.
It is important that this be done because a spectacular list of unfinished matters is awaiting the leaders. Their sole tangible success recently was the constituting of two of the service commissions which took a painfully long time to be established precisely because of the dialogue imperfections. The list of unresolved matters encompass crucial legislation such as the Procurement Act, the broadcast bill, strengthening the parliament office, agreeing on new depressed areas to be tackled, the tribunal for the ethnic relations commission, setting up the women, children and human rights commissions, house lot distribution, local government reform, a development programme for Region 10 and a host of other areas.
The public wants to see a steady stream of achievements but instead grows disconsolate at the stop-go quality of the talks and the frequent hiatuses and mini-crises. President Jagdeo and Mr Corbin must respond to this sentiment. The ordinary person would like to see the two leaders work on areas of great concern to them such as forging a common position on fighting crime and creating a vibrant investment climate which could lead to more jobs.
The constructive engagement faces other pitfalls. Despite the implicit acceptance that the dialogue is a joint undertaking and requires some modification in the traditional practise of politics between the two major parties, the PPP/C and the PNCR have not sheathed their swords and remain wary and untrusting of each other. The PNCR's weekly press conferences and Dr Luncheon's briefings spiced by the occasional PPP/C missive are littered with all the bywords that reflect a reality quite different from the constructive engagement. This constant carping undermines trust and goodwill. It will be further exacerbated by the election season. The first event on that calendar will be the long-delayed local government elections. With Georgetown being the key prize and new players likely to emerge on the scene, it can be a bruising battle. And then the issue of a verifiable voters' database will roll around followed sharply by the lengthy and acid campaign for general elections which is just two years away. How will the dialogue fare in these highly partisan affairs when the negative campaigning and the finger pointing begins? The leaders clearly have their work cut out for them.