Speeches in the National Assembly

Deputy Speaker [Mrs. Backer]:  Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the Hon. Minister up front that A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) has absolutely no hesitation in supporting this motion. But I must disappoint my friend, the Hon. Attorney General, who would want me to sit having said that, and to detain you if I will for a few minutes.
Even as I rise to support the motion I just want to make a few points, some are outside of the motion proper but we think they are very relevant and worth mentioning . The first thing is that as stated during the budget debate APNU  believes very passionately that on large national issues there should be consultation more or less from the inception, or closely following the inception of major economic decisions that will affect all our peoples. While we accept that there was some amount of consultation by the Government prior to the Government of Guyana signing onto the agreements on 20th October, 2008, we believe that those consultations were neither early enough, were not deep enough, nor were they wide enough. One has to only pause very briefly to recall that on Friday 5th September just perhaps six weeks before the EPA was signed, Guyana had national consultation at the Convention Centre. At that meeting the then President of Guyana was in fact making statements that led many people to believe, indeed, he himself said that he was not sure, that Guyana was going to sign. There was this mad flurry, so to speak, about whether to sign or not to sign.
While in the same way we believe consultation is necessary, we also do not believe there is much merit in going back into the past as some would want to do - in fact sometimes going back decades. We think it is not insignificant to remind Guyanese that in 2008 in Jamaica, our then President was making statements like the agreement is anti-development; he was unhappy; he was only going to sign because he was being compelled to sign what is regarded as a bad agreement to save our agriculture products. [Interruption] No it was not amended to save our agriculture products. We are saying, Sir, that we need to remember that. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that one person who was then a Minister of the Government is no longer a Minister. That may have been because he took different positions to what the President was saying. So much so that on 15th October, 2008 when 13 CARIFORUM members signed the agreement in Barbados Guyana did not sign. Guyana signed after all the flurry of, “we are not going to sign because it is a bad agreement”, “we are being held hostage...” In fact, the Hon. Minister Rodrigues-Birkett was in Accra in Ghana on 2nd October, 2008 where she read a message – I do not know how readily she read it, but as a very good and loyal soldier – from our then President which spoke about the anti- developmental character and propensity to be inimical to Caribbean integration. On 15th October, 2008 when 13 CARIFORUM members signed in Barbados Guyana was conspicuously absent, and five days after we took the trouble to sign the same agreement all the way in Brussels. But as I said we do not want to dwell in the past.               [Mr. Neendkumar: It was amended.]      I do not know if my friend even knows what an agreement means. But I have already said that we will support the motion. The reality is that we have signed as the Hon. Minister said, very graciously, and we agree with her completely that having signed we need to maximize the advantages contain therein. We were particularly happy during the Minister’s brief presentation to hear her speak about Government taking agreements very seriously and by implication also their obligations. So we are very lucky that we have here as a Member in the National Assembly Mr. Carl Greenidge who was involved in the mechanics and actual preparation of EPA which was eventually signed by everyone including this Government.
But I want to mention another aspect. Before I go to that I did start by stating why we feel consultation from a very early stage is necessary both wide and deep. At the meeting in October, 2007 in Jamaica the lead minister was then the Hon. Prime of Barbados, Mr. Owen Arthur, and there were a number of Heads of State including our own then Head of State, President Jagdeo. Why consultation is so necessary is that from October 2007 to now the then Hon. Prime Minister of Jamaica, Mr. Bruce Golding, has been replaced by the Hon. Portia Simpson Miller; the Barbados Prime Minister, who as I have already said was the lead Minister for CARICOM and CARIFORUM, the Hon. Owen Arthur, has since been replaced by the Hon. Freundel Stuart; Guyana’s own President, Mr. Jagdeo, has been replaced by President Ramotar; Dr. Henry Jeffrey has been replaced. I do not know fortuitously or what, but he was not a head of state. The Belizean Prime Minister who was then the Hon. Said Musa has been replaced by Prime Minister Dean Barrow; and I could go on. But the point that I am making is that EPA has no expiry date; it may outlive us all. That is why it is so necessary when any country, whoever is in government, is about to enter these livelong agreements, if you will, it is absolutely necessary for continuity that all are involved. So when at the next elections APNU is over there and the PPP/C is over here - I am not sure where the AFC will be - but I do not want to move them out… [Government Member: Throw them out.]       I will never throw them out.        [Mr. Nandlall: They are not at GECOM.]        They are not at GECOM but they are in the National Assembly. The point is that we all want to be involved so there is a buy-in as I like to call it. Like I said governments may change but our major economic planks and pillars, our major foreign policies, our major agriculture policies, whatever it is, will remain consistent because there is ownership of these major developmental planks.
Going back very briefly to the governments, their undertakings, and commitments, Articles 165 to 182 of EPA – and I am very happy that the Government has, let me be gracious, everyone now has copies of EPA. I think that is very, very good. I do not know if it is the little tooth fairy that put it, but Articles 165 to 182 deals with public procurement. In those articles there is a call for the establishment of public procurement so there can be transparency, and people will know what is going on in terms of government contracts and so forth.
This matter, as we know, is in our own Constitution which preceded the EPA and can be found in Article 211W and onward. I just want very briefly to remind everyone in the House that the APNU is very happy to hear the Hon. Minister, who is a person of high integrity, say that her Government takes their agreement seriously. As such, we think that we can be very confident that very soon we will see the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission, not merely because EPA said so but because our own Constitution, which is the supreme law, says so. I just want to read Article 212 W(1)1 of the Constitution:
“There shall be a Public Procurement Commission (this is the Constitution) the purpose of which is to monitor public procurement and the procedure therefore in order to ensure that the procurement of goods, services and execution of works, are conducted in a fair, equitable, transparent, competitive, and cost effective manner, according to law and such policy guidelines as may be determined by the National Assembly.
We support the motion. My colleague, Mr. Greendige, will speak a bit more on EPA. I just want to say, in closing, that we want to encourage very much that we ensure that EPA becomes a living agreement and one, as the Hon. Minister said, that we can benefit from.
I notice from the Kaieteur Newspapers today that there is a meeting to be convened tomorrow in Dominica where senior members of the EU and senior members of CARIFORUM will be meeting to move EPA forward. We wish them success because their success is our success. With those few words, I reiterate APNU’s support for this timely motion.
Thank you. [Applause]