Interview with Gail Teixeira, Minister Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Guyana

30 Jun Interview with Gail Teixeira, Minister Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Guyana

Your ministry was created in 2020 to ensure honesty, accuracy and transparency in public life, a tacit reference perhaps to the fact that this hasn’t always been the case in Guyana. Can you introduce the ministry and its specific purpose to our readers?

The ministry was created in September 2020. It’s a small ministry, but we do a lot of work. The principles we are based on are inclusion, participation, accountability and transparency. We have the National Stakeholders Forum with over a hundred NGOs, whom we bring together to discuss policy, the national budget and initiatives like the Low Carbon Development Strategy during consultation processes. We have a national mechanism for reporting and follow-up on our human rights treaty obligations. Additionally, we have the National Coordinating Committee on Anti-Corruption, which addresses our commitments under the UN Convention against Corruption and the Inter-American Convention against Corruption. The Committee also looks at how to build collaboration between sectors, understand corruption and build capacity to deal with it. We also follow up on human rights recommendations and advise the Cabinet or ministers where we see gaps or issues to address.

Even though the Constitutional Reform Commissions look at the rights of ethnic groups, women, children and indigenous people, we as a government have a responsibility to look at the human rights architecture of Guyana. We are very fortunate because Guyana’s constitution went through a major reform process in 1991 and 2001. It was a big effort across the whole country and involved people sharing what they felt should be changed. At that time, most people didn’t know what the constitution included. It’s still one of the most progressive constitutions in the entire Latin American or Caribbean in terms of what it enshrines. The human rights section was never enshrined before; it is now since the 2001 reforms. You can go to court on a human rights violation as an individual or an organization. The leading opposition has a veto vote on the president regarding appointments for certain constitutional posts and other constitutional bodies. Some of these are handled through a parliamentary process, where a parliamentary committee makes recommendations and there’s a consensual mechanism involving civil society to submit nominations. It’s a different architecture than the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America.

We’ve started the second round of constitutional reform. We will get into that more in 2026 in terms of the community consultations. The commission is made up of 21 people representing various bodies. There are 10 representatives from political parties in parliament and 10 from civil society, covering sectors like indigenous people, women, youth, legal professionals and more.

We’re unique in having introduced an online international human rights law certificate program. We received over a thousand applicants but could only accept 200. It became an annual feature last year and we’ll continue it this year. We’re the only country in the region offering it and it takes place on December 9th and 10th, which are Anti-Corruption Day and Human Rights Day. We have a huge exhibition with all the organizations involved in anti-corruption and human rights which is open to the public and free.

How do you measure the achievements that you’ve gotten so far?

Since 1993, the auditor general’s office has never missed a year in presenting its annual report on public expenditure. The report goes directly from the auditor general to the Speaker of the House and does not require clearance from the Ministry of Finance before being brought to Parliament. In many countries in the region, it goes through the minister of finance. Once it is laid in-house, it’s a public document and it’s put up on websites and the Public Accounts committee will then start going through it. In Guyana, the Public Accounts Committee is chaired by the opposition. The committee includes five members from the government and four from the opposition. It has been meeting and reviewing regularly. We submit our report to parliament and by law, within 90 days of its adoption, the minister of finance must provide a treasury memorandum to say, what are you going to do with the recommendations?

We are assessed by the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), which is the regional arm of the Financial Action Task Force. We recently completed a two-year review at the end of last year and made a lot of progress.

On the judicial side, we are enhancing infrastructure, with more magistrates’ courts being built across the country. Additional judges have already been appointed and we plan to further increase the number of judges and magistrates to ensure timely decisions and improve access to and administration of justice. These efforts fall within our broader advocacy to strengthen the country’s democratic architecture. We are the only Caribbean country that has had a very conflicting political history and nothing has been easy for us, unlike our neighboring Caribbean countries where Independence was handed on a platter. Since we’ve got independence, this is the first time my country is trying and we have hope. In terms of democracy, we’ve had to rebuild the infrastructure and our constitutional framework. It takes time to build and implement many of them. We are now encouraging Guyanese professionals to return because there’s hope.

Additionally, we developed the first Low Carbon Development Strategy in 2010, followed by an advanced version for 2030. Both strategies were approved by the National Assembly and underwent extensive consultations, including with indigenous and coastal communities across the country. This forms part of our national strategy. We have guarded our rainforest and if there’s mining we manage how to reforest. We are working to ensure that our economy is not dependent on oil and that it is both diversified and low-carbon in terms of its inputs. We didn’t have connectivity to the whole country. Many of the interior villages, particularly those who are indigenous people, didn’t know what was going on in town. So, we are working hard to try to connect the country and it has now helped in terms of skills training. Over 30,000 people have completed various online training programs, including certificates, diplomas, degrees and skills upgrading. So, we can prepare for the new Guyana by understanding both the demands that are already here and those that are coming.

Ministries now have websites where they put up policies, connections and, in certain agencies, people can write in their comments and we’ve seen greater involvement from people. The government also uses social media. In terms of inclusion and participation, we are the only country in the region where, almost every day, a minister is out in the field meeting people, listening to their concerns and addressing the issues they face. We have a system introduced by the president where, during community meetings, names and phone numbers are collected for follow-up. People are then informed that their concerns have been reviewed and what can be done to address them. We are the only country in the region that has a public Procurement Commission which monitors procurement.

We introduced the Procurement Act in 2003, which remains the most modern and progressive procurement legislation in the entire English-speaking Caribbean. Several countries have copied us afterward. Our systems are working better. The oversight mechanisms, both within the government, cabinet and other institutional oversight mechanisms can pick up problems and try to rectify them. There is a mechanism. One example is the citizen observer system, which uses Facebook to highlight issues. For instance, a post might say, ‘This minister awarded the contract, but it hasn’t started after six months.’ This allows government agencies to investigate the matter and respond accordingly. That area of responsive government is also a very important component of democracy. We have the rights commissions and several mechanisms where people can make complaints. The president has introduced several mechanisms that are in progress. We have the Police Task Force and the Police Complaints Authority, but this is an additional measure.

How is your ministry leveraging ever increasing technological advances?

The use of technology is going to be a powerful tool. For example, we have the Single Window and Development Act, which we passed. To acquire land in Guyana whether it’s farmland, lease land, or housing land you had to go through about 13 agencies. Along the way, there are opportunities for corruption and people are often left waiting for months. We created a platform where your application is dealt with electronically and the law says how much time for each stage you can make complaints. It’s now working and it removes whatever opportunities were there and it’s putting pressure on the ministers as well.

We have the Natural Resource Fund and the Local Content Act which a number of local companies are benefiting from even at the community level, regional level and for small contracts. After five years, a number of them are beginning to go into middle areas for medium contractors. There are special programs for single mothers and one that’s very popular right now is the $100,000 grant for every newborn baby. A lot of people are planning to make sure that they’re able to benefit.

Our infrastructure is now wonderful. We now have women’s incubators where a group of five or six craft women rent one place, take a table and therefore they don’t have to pay all the overheads by one person. In the new agricultural areas that are opening up, we now have for the first time over 40 percent of women involved in agriculture owning land and property. For me, the housing program is the jewel in the crown because, in 1994, no houses were built for 20 years. But we now have professional schemes, low-income houses that are built and our commercial rates have the lowest interest rate for low-income people. We also have private developer schemes that are much more expensive houses. The scheme gave people a clean environment and single-parent women property for the first time. In Guyana, we have one of the highest numbers of women-owned properties in Latin America and the Caribbean.

How do you foster governance that genuinely reflects the multi-ethnic composition of Guyanese society?

We continue to advocate for this and that’s why we have the ‘One Guyana’ initiative to show that this is for all of us, regardless of our ethnicity. Although we are minorities in Guyana, the constitution prohibits discrimination based on ethnicity, among other factors. This prohibition applies not just at the individual level, but also holds the state, including the executive, legislature, judiciary and administration, accountable to this rule of non-discrimination. People are tired of the old politics in terms of calling race all the time. People will vote according to the program and the manifesto of the party. Today if there is a farming issue, which is mostly dominated by men, women come out of all the meetings and they have a voice. For example, the cash care program for children has no discrimination.

What is your overall message about transparency and fairness in both the public and private sectors in Guyana?

There is a deliberate and committed political effort to strengthen transparency and accountability. When issues are exposed, they’re addressed through investigation, prosecution and appropriate action. Our reviews under the Inter-American Convention against Corruption and the UN Convention against Corruption have focused not just on punishing individuals but also on strengthening systems codes of conduct, manuals, safeguards and firewalls to ensure they work effectively and can expose wrongdoing. Significant work has been done in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to support these efforts.

I do not give credence to Transparency International. As a country, we are a ratifier of international conventions against corruption and we are fully prepared to be measured by them. We are also prepared to be assessed by the CFATF and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. The non-empirical approach does not interest me, particularly when a number of the countries that are ranked high haven’t ratified some of these conventions. In Guyana, we have oversight mechanisms in place, something that many countries still lack. I’m not concerned about whether we’re ranked 90 out of 100, or whatever the number may be. What truly matters to me is whether we’ve made real progress over the past few years, especially now that we have more resources at our disposal.

What’s your final message to the readers of the Miami Herald?

Guyana is on the move as never before. It’s had a long and quite tortuous history. We deserve it. But there are challenges along the way. Some are exogenous and internal. But we’re on the right path.