The Sunday papers (June 26) carried a notice issued by the Registrar of the Supreme Court requesting that all attorneys-at-law attend an orientation session on the new High Court Rules at the Georgetown Club. The notice states that the session will be conducted by one Mr Anthony Ross QC, and Ms Katrina Marciniak, both of the Canadian Bar and consultants to the Supreme Court of Guyana on the High Court Rules Revision.
We certainly have many brilliant legal minds right here in Guyana capable of carrying out such a revision, so why bring in foreign legal consultants? My guess is that the funding for this review of our High Court Rules came from a foreign government or funding agency such as the World Bank, and herein lies the root of the problem. This type of funding comes with conditions, one condition is that we use foreign consultants appointed by the funding agency. The same thing is going to happen when the World Bank funds a review of our education curriculum. This is all designed to keep us in check – to make sure we toe the line ‒ it is how neo-colonialism works. It is no wonder that recently a youngster told me all about Christopher Columbus and “what a patient man he was”, but had never heard of the outstanding Guyanese scholars Ivan Van Sertima, who wrote the seminal work, They Came Before Columbus: the African Presence in Ancient America, or George G M James, who wrote the groundbreaking book Stolen Legacy, now considered to be a classic.
This state of affairs will persist as long as successive governments continue to pursue the neo-liberal capitalist agenda. This economic model prevents the state from intervening meaningfully in the economy in order to generate the wealth necessary to fund the kind of reconstruction and nation building Guyana so desperately needs. Instead, government is reduced to raising revenue from taxes, parking meter schemes and relying on the private sector as the so-called engine of growth. After decades of neo-liberal ideology it should be clear to everyone that the private sector is not in the business of nation building and that we cannot raise sufficient revenue from taxation alone to carry out the kind of radical transformation required by our society, including the eradication of poverty. There are numerous examples worldwide which show that despite stringent measures put in place to force the wealthy (the 1%) to pay their taxes, they inevitably find loopholes, leaving the tax burden to be carried predominantly by the middle and working classes, who are already struggling to make ends meet.
Under these circumstances the government remains short of revenue, and in order to fund social programmes is forced to seek grants with conditions designed to keep us right where we are: in a state of dependency. That is why Forbes Burnham said that if such conditions are tied to the funding Guyana is offered let the foreign donors keep their money. Many moons ago he quite rightly knew that the only way for Guyana to emerge from the dependency syndrome and what respected Caribbean economist, George Beckford referred to as our “persistent poverty”, was to pursue a path of economic independence and self-reliance. Who controls the purse strings controls everything.
Arch imperialist Benjamin Disraeli knew what he was saying when he stated: “Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they’re independent”.
Gerald A. Perreira
Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP)