Shared Governance 
 
I.    BACKGROUND
  1. In recent months there has been much discussion on the issue of shared governance. The public debate has been given considerable impetus as a result of the Leader’s Address to the party’s congress. The statement that “adjusted governance is an idea whose time has come” has made it necessary for the party to develop firm positions on the principles of the new governance arrangements.

II.      PRINCIPLES UNDERPINNING SHARED GOVERNANCE

  1. The new system of governance must facilitate national development, the enrichment of the nation and the involvement and security of all Guyanese by instituting appropriate provisions to address the political, economic and social concerns and aspirations of all groups.
  1. All significant political groups of society must be represented in the national executive decision-making process. Proportional representation (as determined by periodic national election) should be used to fix each party’s level of involvement in the national government. 
  1. Measures must be put in place to enable appropriate representation of special groups (e.g., women, Amerindians, youths) in the national decision-making process.
  1. Predetermined structures and procedures must be enshrined in the constitution or in any multiparty agreement to facilitate decision-making by consensus and to resolve disputes in the national executive.  
  1. The larger the margin of victory of the winning party, the fewer should be the inhibitions to the exercise of its powers in the multi-party executive.
  1. The executive and legislative decision-making processes must be designed to discourage foot-dragging and undue delays by setting decision deadlines beyond which special mechanisms would be triggered.
  1. The parliamentary committee on constitution reform must keep the new political arrangement under constant review through its own research and analysis, and by encouraging and examining submissions from the public.
  1. The inclusionary democracy approach should infuse all aspects of national decision-making that have to do with resource allocation (tender boards, state boards, land selection committees, etc).
  1. The new government must be subject to independent, powerful and effective mechanisms of oversight and scrutiny. 
  1. The new system of governance must mandate the participation of the public and civic society in national decision-making.
  1. The new system must expressly provide mechanisms for the economic empowerment of the disadvantaged.  
  1. There must be broad agreement on a national developmental programme.
 
III.      FACILITATIVE CONDITIONS FOR SHARED GOVERNANCE IN GUYANA
 

  1. Several conditions promote the potential for success of multiparty governance in Guyana:

  • The ability of the major parties to sit and discuss rationally (the Constitutional review process),

  • the presence of strong partiocracy (the situation when parties can control or manage the actions of their supporters, thereby maximising the chances that agreements struck among party leaders will be respected by most party members). This factor is advanced as one of the main reasons for the success of Belgian’s power sharing government,

  • the interests of international stakeholders (financial institutions) in preventing failure,

  • convergence of ideologies among the main parties (a point in case: both major parties have publicly endorsed free enterprise).

IV. NON-EXECUTIVE HEAD OF STATE

  1. We recommend the establishment of a non-executive President as Head of State. The presidency will constitute a moral, symbolic and, in a few cases, statutory authority standing over and above the dynamics of party politics. The nature and extent of the statutory authority is to be agreed on.

16.    Specific functions will include:

  • Assenting to bills,
  • Acting as Commander-in-chief of the arm forces (see para. 54),
  • Acting as a mediator in unresolved political disputes (see para. 36-37),
  • Appointing presidential commissions of inquiry into suspected government misconduct.

  1. Appointment. The president will be appointed for a seven-year renewable term on a multi-party vote in parliament. A seven-year term ensures the presidency straddles the holding of national elections and reduces the pressure on the officeholder to pander to the parties in hopes of re-appointment.

  2. Removal. During his/her term of office, the president could be removed only on specified grounds by a weighted parliamentary vote.

 

V.   EXECUTIVE DECISION-MAKING STRUCTURES AND PROCEDURES IN THE MULTI-PARTY GOVERNMENT

  1. The make-or-break point in shared-governance arrangements is the decision-making process in the multiparty executive. Based on research of coalition (power sharing) governments of several countries (New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Iceland, Belgium, and Ireland), the committee considers the following ideas best suited to Guyana’s conditions.
  1. Adopting the practice of most coalition governments, the partners in the government must first work out and sign a Coalition Agreement. The agreement must encompass:  

  • a policy platform (based on the national development program and a merger of ideas from party manifestoes),

  • portfolio allocation and party responsibilities, and

  • the decision-making structures and procedures within the executive.

  1. The agreement must be publicised, as the public then can monitor the process and assess the compliance of coalition partners with the spirit and provisions of the agreement and the constitution.  

  2. The primary objective of the coalition decision-making process must be to facilitate consensus and to avoid surprises (significant unannounced unilateral action) by setting up rigid mechanisms for communication, consultation and dispute resolution within the executive itself.

  3. Decision-making in the governing executive will be a mixture of collective responsibility (where consensus has been reached) and single-party responsibility (where no consensus has been reached or where unilateral actions are allowed).

 
Council of Ministers (Cabinet)
  1. The Council of Ministers will be the highest executive decision-making body. It will comprise all ministers of government, parliamentary secretaries and (probably) government advisors. The Council is the point through which all cabinet matters must be channeled for discussion and approval. These matters are:

  • all policy issues,

  • proposals that will affect government’s financial position or commitments,

  • matters concerning the machinery of government,

  • decisions and actions, allowed under the statutory powers granted to Ministers, that would affect the collective interest of government,  

  • proposals involving new legislation or regulations,

  • government responses to select committee recommendations,

  • controversial matters,

  • all but the most minor public appointments,

  • the release of important government documents, papers and reports,

  • matters affecting the interests of a number of ministries.

  1. The Council will be chaired by the Prime Minister and will meet at stipulated times. A quorum will be two-thirds of the members of each of the major parties.  
  1. Decisions will be by consensus, failing which the matter is sent for resolution to the Standing Coalition Management Committee.
 
Standing Coalition Management Committee
 
  1. The Coalition Management Committee comprises the leaders (and possibly also senior party members) of the political parties in the Council. It is therefore a forum of summiteers (similar to the current inter-party dialogue), with two important roles: overall management of the coalition arrangement and to serve as the highest forum for dispute resolution.  
  1. The management committee will meet as often as necessary, and could be summoned at the request of any party leader in the coalition. The Prime minister will chair meetings. To form a quorum, all the major parties must be represented.
 
Ministerial Working Groups
 
  1. The main arenas for consultation, coordination and negotiation among parties will be the standing Ministerial Working Groups. These are sub-committees of the Council of Ministers, comprising, at minimum, key ministers from the coalition groups, selected MPs, civil service heads and government advisers. Mandates of sub-committees should be broad enough to facilitate coordination among related government ministries. Suggested fields include foreign affairs, economic policy, and social policy.  
  1. From the experience of other countries, working groups are most effective as informal decision-making forums (referred to in Finland as “government evening classes”). Their fundamental objective is to process issues so that they need only be formally dealt with at full meetings of the Council of Ministers.  
  1. All initiatives (whether bills, policies, etc) from the various Ministries therefore must be first sent to the relevant subcommittee, as the first point of inter-party discussion and bargaining, before being forwarded to the Council of Ministers.

32.    Notwithstanding, the Council may delegate authority to a subcommittee to make final decisions.

 
Procedures for Unresolved Issues
 
  1. Preparations have to be made for those occasions when internal mechanisms for achieving consensus fail. These so-called “agree to disagree” situations, hopefully, should be rare, but have to be managed to avoid destabilising the coalition.   
  1. The basic requirement is for unresolved issues to be in relation to different party positions, and not in relation to difference in opinions of individual Ministers. In fact, dissociation of individual Ministers from Council decisions outside the agreed coalition processes should be discouraged.  
  1. Unresolved issues are treated differently depending in which of the two categories they fall:
  • those a coalition party identifies as inimical to race relations in the country, and
  • those that are identified as issues of “party distinction”.

Matters harmful to race relations

  1. Any initiative put forward by a party in the coalition that any of its major partners declares to be potentially harmful to race relations can pass only on a vote of a majority of members of each party in the Council or in the parliament (in Belgium, a party can exercise a suspensive veto to temporary stop the measure). If all attempts at internal dispute resolution fail, the matter is sent to the State President for a judgement. However, he/she must first seek advice, and any guidelines for correction, from the Ethnic Relations Commission, which must hold a public hearing on the matter.  
  1. If the Head of State, acting in accordance with the ERC, rules that the measure is indeed harmful to race relations, the coalition partner must withdraw and amend the measure along the proposed guidelines before resubmitting it to the Ministerial working group. If the Head of State rules that the measure is not harmful to race relations, the matter could be implemented and is considered a collective decision of the Council.

Matters of “Party Distinction”

  1. Unresolved matters identified by a coalition partner, other than the proposing party, as an issue that fundamentally separates the parties are sent to the parliament. There, the appropriate parliamentary sectoral committee must discuss the matter in a public session, before submitting its recommendations to the full House. Parties are allowed in speech and in vote to differentiate on the issue. The matter requires a simple majority to pass, and dissenting parties are no longer under any obligation of collective responsibility for that particular issue.
 
VI.      ALLOCATION OF MINISTERIAL PORTFOLIOS  
  1. The number of portfolios each qualified party is entitled to will be determined by the election results. Parties have to garner above a minimum threshold of votes (5%) to qualify to join the governing coalition.  

  2. The Prime Ministership goes to the party that garnered the largest national support.  

  3. Distribution of portfolios will be as follows:

  • The number of Ministries and their responsibilities would be fixed by Acts of Parliament.

  • Stage 1: the parties attempt to decide on allocation through discussion within a specified timeframe (a week?).

  • Stage 2: if no agreement is reached in the first stage, the selection process is done by an alternating pick system based on the principle of largest remainder, with the party with the largest number of votes in the polls being granted the first pick.

 

VII.   PARLIAMENT IN THE NEW ENVIRONMENT    

  1. In the shared-governance constitution, the executive government will still be accountable to Parliament. However, because of the nature of the decision-making process within the executive (especially its consensus-driven relations), the dynamics of parliament inevitably will change.

  2. The parliament will still be required to perform three functions:    
  • pass legislation and grant statutory powers,
  • appropriate and empower government to use public funds, and
  • srutinise and conduct inquiries into the policy, administration and expenditure of government.  
  1. In Guyana, the same parties that will dominate the government will also dominate the parliament. Given also the existence of strong party control over MPS (partiocracy), the parliament will likely endorse and support the joint decisions of the coalition government. This situation becomes acceptable, as these decisions would have already been processed by inter-party negotiations in the Council of Ministers and in Select Committee where MP’s can make their imput. However, there should be provision for MP’s (especially regional MP’s) not involved in the NEC to dissent.

 

  1. Nevertheless, the structure and functions of parliament should not in any way be weakened or diluted, as it is the only forum for citizens, interest groups, independent MPs, non-government parties and other stakeholders to influence the actions of government. Parliament is also the largest window through which the public can see into the operations of government. In view of this, the following features should supplement the recent constitutional amendments affecting parliament:  

46.    Law-making

All government bills, after their first reading, must be sent to the appropriate select committee for public “hearing of evidence” sessions. Allowances are made for exceptions if:  

  • the House adopts a motion of the subject Minister that the bill should not go to select committee because it is uncontroversial and no individual or group has formally indicated its intention to give evidence on the bill before the select committee.  

  • the House adopts a motion of the subject Minister that the bill should not go to select committee because it is urgent.  

  • the House adopts a motion of the subject Minister that the bill should not go to select committee because prior consultations were held with all interested groups and individuals in drafting the bill, and no other individual or group has formally indicated its intention to give evidence on the bill before the select committee.

47.    Parliamentary debates

Provisions should be made in the Standing Orders for periodic General Debates in parliament during which MPs could speak on any issue of their own choice.

48.    Public petitions

The practice of public petitions should be reactivated in Guyana politics. Citizens should be encouraged to submit petitions to parliament on matters affecting them. Select committees would be the forum for processing these petitions and will make recommendations to the full House.

49.    Unresolved coalition matters

Matters of policy, which the coalition partners are unable to resolve within the Council of Ministers, should be channeled to select committees for public hearings. The committees would then be responsible to seek expert and other opinion on the issue, before making its recommendations to parliament. As discussed above, the matter could be passed by a majority vote of the full House, but would not obligate dissenting parties to shoulder any collective responsibility in that instance.

50.    Select committees

As envisaged by the recent constitutional amendments, government accountability to the parliament would be mainly actualised through the select committees. In the new environment, it becomes critical that the chairmanship of these committees be opposite to the parties holding responsibility for the corresponding ministries.

 

VIII.    REDEFINITION OF OPPOSITION POLITICS  

  1. Inevitably, the multiparty government system will redefine opposition politics in Guyana. The political parties, which traditionally would be identified as the opposition, will now be partners in the governing executive. The interparty political debate and discussion, therefore, would no longer be conducted in the public domain but behind the closed doors of the Council of Ministers. The committee recognises that this is an undesirable eventuality, and have proposed steps to, one, open the government decision-making process to public and civic society participation as well as scrutiny.

IX.    MECHANISMS TO INCREASE PUBLIC AND CIVIC SOCIETY INVOLVEMENT IN NATIONAL DECISION-MAKING

  1. To reduce the likelihood of the emergence of executive dictatorship in the new multiparty government, the committee recommends the following ideas:
  • Select committee meetings should be in the form of public hearings, bar exceptional circumstances,
  • Consultation with stipulated interest groups (regional MPs, trade unions, private sector, municipalities, etc) on major government policies and measures must be mandatory.  

X.      MEASURES TO INCREASE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY    

  1. As in any democracy, the government must be held accountable to the people. Given the fact that the traditional opposition parties will be in the coalition, the committee recommends the following special provisions to supplement those already enshrined in the constitution. 
  • Publication of the minutes of meetings of the full cabinet, bar sensitive issues of national security, foreign affairs and trade,
  • Enactment of Freedom of Information legislation,
  • Granting of powers to the president to commission inquiries into government misconduct, and
  • More effective and robust government oversight authorities, such as the Auditor General and the constitution commissions, and the redefinition of the scope and powers of the Ombudsman.  

XI.  CONTROL OF THE MILITARY FORCES

  1. The proposed non-executive president will be the Commander-in-Chief of the military. He/she will, however, only act on the advice of the Defence Board, which must include in its composition the leaders of the main political parties in the government.

XII. UNCHANGED PROVISIONS IN THE CONSTITUTION  

  1. The following constitutional provisions would remain essentially unchanged.
  • Provisions for local government,
  • Provisions for the establishment of all constitution commissions,
  • Provisions governing individual rights and freedoms,
  • Provisions for the independence of the Judiciary and the Auditor General.

XIII.   REFERENDUM

56. After a period of ten years, a referendum will be held to determine whether the shared governance arrangement should be continued.  

People's National Congress Reform
December 5, 2002