ChrisRam.net

Dear Editor,

The appearance in the press on August 15 of a notice dated June 23, 2026, signed by Attorney-at-Law Javed Shadick, Secretary to the Constitution Reform Commission, is the first public indication in some time that the Carl Singh-led Commission is still alive and, after more than two years in office, has finally reached the first stage of public consultation.

The notice invites written proposals until December 31, after which comes the second stage – public engagements. More remarkable than the timetable is that the matters on which submissions are invited are substantially a wholesale transposition of the mandate Parliament gave the Commission in Act No. 16 of 2022. This means that nearly four years after the Act and more than two years after the Commission was sworn in, it has arrived at the starting point Parliament prescribed for it.

This is not a snail’s pace. The snail, at least, keeps moving towards its destination.

There is a ready benchmark for judging this performance, and it is one which the present Commission itself invited. Ms. Gail Teixeira, now Vice-Chair of the Commission, told the National Assembly in 2022 that “repeating what happened in 1999 is the model that has been most progressive and most innovative not only in Guyana but in the entire region.” Very well. Let us make the comparison.

The 1999 Constitution Reform Commission was born out of the political crisis following the 1997 elections and the Herdmanston Accord. Its circumstances were difficult: it was the first wholesale examination of the justifiably derided 1980 Constitution; its issues were contentious; and its timetable demanding. Yet, sworn in in January 1999, the Commission considered some 4,600 proposals drawn from oral and written submissions, public hearings, organisations and individuals across the country, including substantial proposals from the PPP/C and PNCR. It drew on Guyanese and international expert advice, deliberated and reported by July, making 171 recommendations.

In roughly six months, under far greater political pressure and under the chairmanship of Mr. Ralph Ramkarran, S.C., the 1999 Commission substantially completed an exercise which the Carl Singh-led Commission, after more than two years, has barely begun.

Attorney General Anil Nandlall – never short of words – was emphatic during the debate on the legislation. He described the Commission as “time-bound and assignment-bound” and said it would have the institutional support to operate “effectively and efficiently”. Most appropriately, he told the National Assembly that the people must hold accountable those who make promises and do not deliver.

Let us apply his test.

This is not a resource-starved exercise. Hundreds of millions of public funds have been allocated to constitutional reform and its supporting machinery. I understand that the monthly payment to the Chairman is $1.3 million, the Vice Chair $500,000, each Commissioner $200,000, and the Secretary $600,000. Farcically, egregiously and unconscionably, Commission members accepted payment for each of the four months that the Commission went into recess for the 2025 elections campaign. And when it was meeting, things were hardly better: Chairman Singh himself acknowledged publicly in September 2025 that attendance by Commissioners had been a problem. Knowingly accepting public money for work one does not perform strikes me as conduct of an altogether different order from mere absenteeism.

Incredibly, the Commission and its members are entitled to the same privileges and immunities as the National Assembly and its members. Is this Government serious, or has the entire National Assembly taken leave of its senses? In any case, these privileges cannot convert non-performance into public service or unearned remuneration into value for money.

The Commission is expressly charged with considering the safeguarding of public funds and integrity in public life. It can start with itself. Every member should therefore have no difficulty confirming that the appropriate taxes have been paid on the remuneration received.

Nor is the Commission short of personnel, experience or political clout. Its twenty-one members include five Government nominees, all Ministers when appointed and already remunerated from the public purse, among them Vice-Chair Gail Teixeira and Attorney General Anil Nandlall, S.C.; four Opposition nominees; attorneys Timothy Jonas, S.C. and Kamal Ramkarran; and private-sector representative Ramesh Persaud. 

Responsibility for the Commission’s dismal performance is therefore collective. It is inconceivable that these politicians, professionals and businesspeople would tolerate such delay, cost and paucity of output if their money was being spent. 

There is an even more fundamental problem with the Commission’s composition. The 2025 elections swept away the political configuration on which it was constituted. Nigel Hughes, to his credit, resigned when the AFC disappeared from Parliament. Yet, the representative from the Joinder parties – ANUG, Liberty Justice Party and The New Movement – none of which is represented in the National Assembly post – 2025 remains on the Commission while WIN, with sixteen seats and now the principal Opposition party, has no representative at all.

The Attorney General himself recognised the problem. In October 2025, Mr. Nandlall acknowledged that the Act had been drafted for the previous parliamentary configuration and said that amendments had already been made to a draft Bill to reflect the new Opposition arrangement. Yet the Commission is now proceeding with public consultation without that acknowledged defect having been corrected.

The absurdity does not end there. Whatever recommendations the Commission eventually produces must enter the parliamentary process. WIN now holds sixteen of the twenty-nine Opposition seats. The Commission is therefore attempting to devise constitutional reform without the principal Opposition party, only eventually to send its proposals to a National Assembly in which that party’s support may be indispensable.

Measured against the time, resources and output, this performance amounts to gross incompetence.

While the Commission sits and waits more than four months for submissions – perhaps expecting the public to function at a pace similar to that of the Commission – the Attorney General and the Minister responsible for Finance should produce and publish a full accounting of expenditure and remuneration, while the Commission publishes its meetings and attendance, research undertaken and substantive work produced.

This Commission has had ample time to carry out a detailed assessment of the 1999 Report – including the submissions, the action taken on its recommendations, and the issues arising from their implementation or non-implementation. Where is its assessment of what was implemented, what was not, what worked, what failed and why? That should have been both its starting point and part of its invitation to the public.

Those who still hope for something useful from this exercise should remember that two genuine heavyweights – Haslyn Parris and Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine – were centrally involved in preparing the 1999 Report. But that was not all – and here I stand guilty of omissions. The Commission drew on constitutional experts including Justice Albert Sachs of South Africa, Professor Kathleen Mahoney of Canada, Anund Hylland of Norway, and our own Professor Keith Massiah, Professor Harold Lutchman and Professor Rudolph James. The question is what comparable intellectual firepower has the present Commission assembled?

Twenty-five years of experience have meanwhile supplied important issues requiring examination: the concentration of presidential power and presidential immunity; the failure to give meaningful effect to Article 13 and inclusionary democracy; constitutional appointment deadlocks, including at the apex of the judiciary; GECOM’s partisan architecture; parliamentary oversight; and genuine local government autonomy.

Guyana in 2026 is not Guyana in 1999. Petroleum wealth now raises fundamental constitutional questions about stewardship of natural resources, intergenerational equity and accountability for national wealth. Above all, constitutional reform must distinguish constitutional deficiency from constitutional non-compliance. There is little point endlessly rewriting the Constitution if governments and constitutional actors fail to observe the provisions already there.

Mr. Shadick’s advertisement has therefore performed one useful public service. It has told the country where the Commission stands in August 2026. Unfortunately, after more than two years, continuous remuneration and substantial public expenditure, it is scarcely beyond where Parliament placed it in November 2022.

Mr. Shadick himself also has some accounting to do. How does he discharge this important function as Secretary to the Commission alongside his appointment as Secretary to the presidential Commission of Inquiry into the MV Barima disaster?

And Mr. Nandlall needs no reminding. He himself told Parliament that those who make promises and do not deliver must be held accountable. That Guyanese may have forgotten the existence of the Commission about which he spoke so confidently is no excuse for its failure to account.

I am not usually a pessimist, but on the application of any reasonable test – including the Attorney General’s own metric – the Carl Singh-led Constitution Reform Commission is already a colossal failure. Nothing in its record so far suggests to me any reasonable prospect of redemption.

The question therefore is no longer whether this Commission needs more time. It is whether it should be permitted to continue in its present form. In my view, it should not. The present exercise should be ended and the task returned immediately to the constitutional Parliamentary Standing Committee for Constitutional Reform, where the political representation reflects the present National Assembly. That Committee can determine, transparently and with appropriate expert and civil-society participation, the arrangements for taking constitutional reform forward within a firm timetable and with proper accountability for public expenditure.

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Ram