Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 10, 2010 Letters
Dear Editor,
Prem Misir needs to be given an Academy Award or an Oscar. His daily propagandistic ranting and meticulous works of fiction are unsurpassed by any other university Chancellor worldwide. His is a ‘special talent’. He has always written in 3D…..deception, distastefulness and demonic verses.
Over the Easter holidays, he has commenced work on the final segment of his “Unholy Trinity”. His first work in his unholy trinity was on marginalisation. This was a masterpiece of deception and denial, par excellence. His second work in the trinity, co-authored with Vishnu Bisram, was that Guyana is blessed with good governance and indentureship and slavery are the same.
His final work now in progress, a masterpiece of delusion and dishonesty, is called “shared governance is bad”. Having written two letters on this final work in his unholy trinity, his passionate embrace of intellectual mendicancy is almost complete. He should be given the unenviable title of “Dr. D” or Dr. Deception. His liberties with the truth have made barefaced lying and data manipulation, not fraudulent, but a new art form. Truth for Dr. D is an artificial construct. Maybe he’ll receive an Honorary Degree from some University in Moscow or Iran.
But let us decipher his recent attacks and premeditated fiction on shared governance.
Dr. D’s basic premise is that shared governance has failed globally and Guyana needs to stay on course as it is one of the greatest democracies in the modern era. He has conveniently left out the shared governance successes in Chile (the Chilean model, South Africa and the Scandinavian countries
Dr. D also is quite racist in his ideology. He ignores Guyana is a family of six sons. Why isn’t equal sharing the assets of the family a problem for Dr. D’s righteous government, especially when one of the family members (African Guyanese) did all of the dying during slavery for this asset to have value. Isn’t this the essence of shared governance? That he failed or refused to shed light on shared governance approaches in Chile, South Africa, post Bia-African war Nigeria, and any number of Scandinavian societies?
But what are the facts on Guyana’s democracy?
Every thinking and feeling person living in and out of the country knows Guyana is a modern day political, social, ethical and economic tragedy because it is a “constitutional monarchy” masquerading as a democracy.
An analysis of Guyana’s so-called most progressive Constitution in the World is given below. The fundamental essence of Guyana’s Constitution is that it is immoral and authoritarian. Here are some of its better elements.
1. While there are two main types of democratic governance in the world, either the Parliamentary system or the Presidential system, Guyana is a hybrid system sharing dominant features of both. (In essence, it is a donkey with a Lion’s head…my comment).
2. The Parliament is elected by a Proportional representative system while the President, who is not elected by a direct vote of citizens, is elected on a first past the post system due to a Party List process which is undemocratic.
3. The unelected President is the Head of State, Head of Government, Head of the Armed Forces and Head of the National Assembly.
4. This President who was not directly elected by the People of Guyana is immune from criminal and civil law. He is therefore all powerful and beyond the Law.
5. The President is the sole repository of all executive and ministerial powers in Guyana.
6. Although Parliament has some limited oversight over government in the form of a Westminster style National Assembly, the President can withdraw this oversight by removing critical areas from Parliament’s purview. The Guyana Geology & Mines Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Guyana Forestry Commission, the Guyana Revenue Authority and the Guyana Power & Light are all out of the direct purview of Parliament. (Note also, these are all linked to LCDS.)
7. The Speaker is elected by a majority of the House, is Head of the Legislature and normally a Government sympathizer.
8. The President also has the right to become any minister he chooses to be and to take his immunity to that portfolio. In Guyana, currently, the President is currently the Minster of Communications, the Minster of the Environment, the Minister of Energy, the Minister of Forestry and the Minister of the Treasury (Lotto Funds/Consolidated Funds). In many activities, the President functions as the Minister of Finance at World Bank events.)
9. Cabinet Members serve at the pleasure of the President and so do all MPs of his Party.
10. By this Constitution, the President is so powerful that his Party from whose List he was elected cannot control or even recall him. (What a democratic absurdity).
11. The common man in Guyana has absolutely no authority over who is made President or the President himself once in power. The common man has no control over who is a Cabinet minister or Member of Parliament.
12. The cumulative effect of the Party List system is that it has led to a dilution of the calibre of persons who are Parliamentarians as Party leaders maximize their own personal interest without regard to the National interest in their selection process. (Witness the intellectual tragedy we have in Parliament today.)
13. The electoral system itself has created a type of political environment which seeks and sustains itself on ethnic polarization resulting in deprivation of political representation and marginalisation of the electorate. This marginalisation is felt by the entire society but has a significantly greater effect on smaller ethnic or racial groups.
Dr D should know the Westminster/Executive Presidency system that operates in Guyana is unique in the world. No other country has it. This explains why Guyana has a fatal attraction to poverty, pain, moral decay and racism. Placed in the context of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Guyana’s political system is anti-human rights. In short, our authoritarian constitution is unconstitutional within the context of Human Rights Laws. How can a country have a President with God like powers, immune from both civil and criminal law, and claim the principle of one man, one vote? Or that all men are born equal.
How can a country claim to have a Constitution that upholds the law when the Chief Officer or President is above the Law?
How can you have a Constitution that is the highest law of the land when it protects drug lords and a government that is complicit in extra-judicial killings?
How can a member of the Opposition recently claim over $4 billion has been siphoned off, but there is no constitutional, legal or political process to prosecute this grand larceny.
In reality, Guyana’s Executive Presidency/Westminster model is a grotesque constitutional abnormality. It has made Guyana a modern day political, social, economic, ethical and economic tragedy – a democratic comedy. This authoritarian and pernicious Constitution has turned Guyana into a tragic distortion of economic, social, political and cultural life for many of its citizens.
Guyana’s economy is a criminal economy which is still dependent on foreign loans, grants, foreign remittances and money laundered into the underground economy.
Dear Dr. Prem Misir, if our Constitution is such a great one, how is it possible that the economy is based on such vibrant and incessant criminality?
Dear Dr. Prem Misir, there was another Dr. D in South Africa. He kept telling indigenous Black South Africans that his lethal injections were good for them.
Like this Dr. Death, our Dr. D is telling Africans in Guyana that the current Constitution, which is electoral Apartheid, is good for them.
Guyana’s greatest threat to its security, racial harmony and economic growth is its Constitution. To give a mere mortal God Like powers is a central part of this constitutional tragedy.
I hope Dr. D soon collects his Oscar. Tek half, leave three quarters.
Eric Phillips
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
Apr 19, 2024
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