THE RETURN OF THE PARKING METERS


The Mayor and Councillors of the City of Georgetown (the City Council) have voted overwhelmingly to support a renegotiated contract for the establishment of parking meters in certain parts of the City. The major change is that the hourly rate has been reduced from $200 to $150 while an eight-hour day would cost $800. There were other minor revisions and concessions. The effect of the reduction by $50 an hour is like throwing a crumb to the citizenry.

The popular upsurge during last year against the imposition of parking meters was as a result of the high and unaffordable charges. It was pointed out that they were proportionately higher than parking meter charges in New York, a city that was 500 plus times wealthier than Georgetown where the charges for parking is US$1 an hour, the same as was proposed for Georgetown. While the protests were successful in derailing the plans of the City Council, with little or no help from the Government, there was also a legal element. Two cases were filed. One has been heard in which the Court ruled that the bylaws were not lawfully promulgated by the Minister. This means that before the parking meter system can be reintroduced and fees charged, the bylaws have to be lawfully put in place by the Minister.

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GUYANA NEEDS A NEW POLITICAL PARTY


There are frequent, frustrated, refrains from observers that it is Guyana’s political parties that are mainly responsible for promoting the culture of ethnic dominance and without it, Guyana’s politics would not be dominated by race and instability. This is not true. Guyana’s main political parties reflect the social, economic and political aspirations of the people of Guyana. The fundamental feature of Guyana which determines these aspirations is its ethnic composition and history. This has been characterized mainly by separate struggles against employers and the colonial state for survival. The lesson that has been learnt is that whoever controls the state controls the distribution of its limited resources. The struggle for control of the state was a natural outcome of the nature of our main political parties and their fundamental, though unspoken political objective – ethno-political dominance.

By the time the first popular political party, the Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP), emerged, it was recognized that ethno-political dominance, which had already reared its head after the second world war, was a negative phenomenon that will hinder Guyana’s political development and its main objective of Independence from Britain. The PPP was therefore organized with a multi-ethnic, multi-class, leadership. It attracted widespread support. However, as is well known, colonialist intrigues and internal opportunism led to what was in effect a departure of the “moderate” faction of the PPP. That faction later became the African led Peoples’ National Congress (PNC) which got its support mainly from the African Guyanese workers and farmers. Its merger shortly after with the United Democratic Party (UDP) brought support from mixed Guyanese and African middle class. Indian Guyanese gave their support to the PPP.

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ENDING THE POLITICS OF ETHNO-POLITICAL DOMINATION


The spectacular discoveries of oil in offshore Guyana, with promises of a glowing future, must be tempered with what that future really means and with the realities of today. It appears that Guyana stands to receive $US300 million a year for the first five years after production commences and a little over that sum for the twenty years thereafter. The size of Guyana’s economy is $US1.2 billion. This means that Guyana’s economy will increase by one-fifth as a result of oil revenue. This will be a significant boost but by no means a spectacular transformation. This figure is probably based on production of 100,000 barrels a day. It may well be that Exxon will produce far more than that amount for various economic reasons. While all of this is in the future, Guyana has pressing economic and political problems that require immediate solutions.

The dismissal of thousands of sugar workers will intensify poverty and crime across Guyana, particularly in the areas affected by the closures. Communities will deteriorate, drug taking and alcohol abuse will intensify and the economy will suffer from reduced spending. All of this will impact negatively on economic growth for 2018. By the time divestment concludes and some job opportunities emerge, the damage to the communities and their inhabitants would already have occurred. There is no immediate potential investment in Guyana’s economy on a scale large enough to absorb the dismissed sugar workers, or even a portion of them, that will make a difference to their dire situation. Any impact that a new oil industry may have is at least ten years away. By this time, an entire generation of workers and their children will be lost to productive labour by a decade of deprivation.

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SUSTAINING AND ADVANCING DEMOCRACY FOR THE NEW YEAR


In the critical years of the 1970s and 1980s, three major issues engaged the attention of my political colleagues – restore democracy, advance social progress and avoid civil strife. We firmly believed that Guyana could make no progress unless full democracy through free and fair elections were restored. Our analysis was that it was the lack of internal democracy that was responsible for what we then saw as the failure of the economic reforms in the 1970s and 1980s to lead to economic and social progress. The PPP saw this and gave a lifeline to the PNC more than once. The most notable was the National Patriotic Front under which, after free and fair elections, the largest political party would take the prime ministership and the second largest the executive presidency. The PNC would not hear of it. Even if democracy had not been restored in 1992, developments in the world would have ensured that by today we would have been living in a democratic Guyana.

The victory of democracy in 1992 has resulted in substantial economic and social progress for Guyana. But this progress gave rise to other problems. The incipient problems of corruption and lack of transparency and accountability exploded, with little effort to resolve them. Also, the intractable issue of ethno-political domination was put aside because of the unremitting, and sometimes violent opposition of the PNC, as well as some degree of triumphalism within the PPP. Attempts to work through and resolve differences between the PPP government and Desmond Hoyte and later Robert Corbin failed. The PPP government was mainly responsible. When the real opportunity of embracing unity presented itself in 2011, the PPP did not even consider forming a coalition with APNU. The reticence today of both parties in embracing constitutional reform which would diminish the impact of ethno-politics is the next hurdle the Guyanese people have to overcome.

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THE APPOINTMENT OF CHANCELLOR AND CHIEF JUSTICE


Since the retirement of Chancellor (ag) Carl Singh and Chief Justice (ag) Ian Chang, the issue of their replacement has been at the forefront of discourse, at least privately, in legal circles, but occasionally in the media. I myself have written about the issue once when I called on President Granger to appoint persons to fill the posts which had become vacant and had remained so for several months. I was quite pleased when the President made acting appointments of Chief Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards as Chancellor (ag) and of Justice George-Wiltshire S.C. as Chief Justice (ag). Justice George-Wiltshire S.C. who was also subsequently appointed as an Appeal Court Judge.

These two acting appointments, which only required consultation with the Leader of the Opposition, were enormously popular in the legal profession. After some months as acting appointees, I can say with certainty that the anticipated performances of the Chancellor (ag) and Chief Justice (ag) have exceeded expectations amidst enormous challenges, which had commenced under the chancellorship of Carl Singh, not least among which are the implementation of the new Civil Procedure Rules, the establishment of courts with new jurisdictions for family and sexual offences, the appointment of additional judges and a building programme to house courts, magistrates and judges.  I believe that this opinion is shared by the legal profession.

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