11 Apr Interview with Gail Teixeira, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Guyana
BF: What’s your role under the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance and what achievements are you most proud of for Guyana?
Gail Teixeira: I’ve been active in politics for over 50 years and in the leadership level of my party for 40 years. I’ve been in the Parliament since 1992 and I’m one of the longest serving members. I’ve never lost my position and have held different ministerial portfolios. My current ministry is the newest under President Irfaan’s government. The focus of the ministry is to deal with government business in the parliament and look at really having parliament be deliberative in areas; I can’t interfere with parliament because it’s a constitutional body. My role as a government minister is to make sure we’re effectively using parliament to inform people, pass legislation, make changes and so forth. I’m also in charge of making sure the draft bills and everything we’ve approved gets into the system and moves through with consultations into the parliament, are passed and enacted.
The governance side deals with all the areas of human rights and anti-corruption. I don’t deal with all the treaties that we’ve signed as a country aside from the human rights and the anti-corruption treaties. We’ve ratified eight of the nine UN treaty conventions. My responsibilities are to inform the public to help them understand what the treaties are about and to work with civil society and the ministries to understand the role they play with the treaties. I also deal with reporting and make sure it’s up to date. I have a National Stakeholders Forum that was created in August 2020 that’s small, with over eight organizations of civil society that we consult on bills, the budget, treaties and human rights issues. I’m also the geographic member of parliament for Region 7, which is the second largest region in Guyana in the interior though with a small population. It’s a beautiful but challenging geography that’s very ethnically mixed with a large Amerindian population as well as other ethnic groups. It’s a good place to work and one that I enjoy. I’m also the chief whip for the government in parliament.
BF: Are international perceptions on human rights issues and anti-corruption conventions aligned with your current activities?
Gail Teixeira: No. However, we do have a very strong framework legislative wise and constitutionally. There are challenges with a small population in relatively large country that’s the size of the UK. It’s also a country where the development of skills and technical capacities is one that’s ongoing and constant. We’ve done things in statutory reforms. It’s only in the last year we had a framework. The simple booklet we put out is just to tell people about what the framework is, the challenges that we face, what we’re doing in terms of training and developing capacity and looking at where laws may have to be amended. We feel the anti-corruption framework is robust. We have to keep building on and strengthening areas of capacity, enforcement, prosecution and investigation. There are several cases in the court that deal with corruption of former ministers and senior officials of the former government to do with the sale of our national assets and other activities. These matters take a long time in our court. The Democracy Index is completely flawed, and when we look at the Transparency International Index, it’s completely non-empirical, but that’s what’s popular and gets news in the world. We have to be able to say it’s unacceptable both publicly and internationally. For example, in the Democracy Index, we went up two points on political participation, but went down on political culture. They don’t give you the evidence or provide the empirical data. When they don’t have the data, they then go to non-empirical opinions. They go to other countries that they think are similar and take similar opinions as with your own country. This isn’t transparent and it’s unfair.
Guyana has 10 administrative regions and I’m in Region 7, which is Cuyuni Mazaruni. Guyana means ‘’Land of many Waters.’’ We have the Essequibo River that’s 29 miles across its mouth. The Cuyuni Mazaruni meets with the Essequibo and they flow out. These are long rivers that go through our entire country. It is a country that’s prone to floods because we’re below sea level. We have the most diverse ethnic groups in the whole of Latin America, South America and the Caribbean. Aside from our indigenous people that came here over 10,000 years ago, Africans, Indians, Portuguese and Chinese have all come here through slavery and indentured labour. We also have new populations coming in from other countries such as Haiti, Nigeria and Venezuela. We’re very diverse, so we don’t have one culture. It’s a whole concept of unity and one Guyana, and we’re trying to treat ourselves as one, distinct people. We want people to feel this is where they belong. Guyana has received some negative recognition in the world over the years. We were the country that had the most rigged elections from 1968, and the country to have the largest number of civilian deaths, after 900 people died in a non-war situation with the Jonestown Massacre. The country’s last elections took five months for the results, and we had to have a recount, but democracy prevailed.
One the other hand, we’re one of the top countries in the world recognized for our biodiversity and our carbon sink. We have now a national agenda the Low Carbon Development Strategy 2030, set in the frame of carbon diversity and developing a diverse and resilient economy. We were always the poor relations of the Caribbean. We were one of the third fastest growing countries in the region in 1964, but we became one of the poorest countries in the region in 1992, along with Haiti and Bolivia. This whole change has taken place after the 2020 elections and the leadership of President Ali and the young cabinet. There’s a certain level of confidence and cautious optimism that we’re moving forward. We’re seeing roads being done and the housing program going forward, hospitals improving, and new ones being built. The energy in the country has changed dramatically. We had the no-confidence motion in December 2018, where the government refused to obey the constitution and call elections as required. We went through one court case after another, going to the Caribbean Court of Justice, our apex court, repeatedly. This continued until July 2020. People felt we were never going to get out of this morass. However, democracy prevailed in our country and that was to the credit of our people, leadership and institutions. The judiciary and the Caribbean Court of Justice worked. We knew that if we had civil unrest that would be an excuse for the former government to declare a state of emergency and that would be trouble. We were able to manage that as political leaders and tell people we needed to overcome this and just be patient.
From the time of the inauguration of the president and the new cabinet, we’ve committed to running with the ball and going at a speed that we’ve never seen before in our country. The whole concept of the transformation, the suspension bridge, the oil and gas, new hotels, and thousands of houses being built on the national housing program has been uplifting, and this society is on the move. There are political weaknesses and an opposition that refuses to engage and talk about “apartheid´´ and racial discrimination, but the majority of people in this country want access to goods and services. We have a series of programs for unskilled people. We have the Guyana Online Academy where people can apply for certificates, bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD programs with universities in Germany and the University of West Indies. They pay nothing and they’re not bonded afterwards. They’re asked to do two weeks of community work when they graduate. We have the Get Ready for Opportunities for Work Program, which is an online program for those who never finished high school to try to get people up to a certain level. There are also scholarship programs for regional and foreign universities. We’re building on those programs to give our people a strong skillset, so they don’t feel left behind with foreigners coming in. We want to reduce that disparity between the expats and the locals. We’re trying to develop that for people to have a more equitable situation where our people can compete, gain jobs, and have businesses.
We’ve also taken back the leadership on food security in CARICOM. We had that years ago, but the government changed, and they weren’t interested in agriculture. The whole food security issue is enormous and there are programs happening in different parts of the country, especially areas that didn’t pay much attention to agriculture. Guyana has incredible natural assets. There are two ironies of Guyana’s geographic location. One is thatwe’ve been formed by the delta of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, so the soil on the coast is very fertile. We’re living in areas that are prone to flooding. The other irony is the Dutch came to occupy us first and they started the whole irrigation systems with the dykes and the canal systems. Some are being expanded and new ones are being put in after 200 years because we need to expand and open new land to do farming and development for housing. These are ideas that were talked about in the 1960s and are now beginning to reach fruition. That’s having a tremendous impact on our people because they’re seeing opportunities.
We started the hydro falls in 2010. There was a time in 2012-2015 when the two opposition parties had one seat more than the government and they killed the Amalia Falls Hydropower Project that was being supported with the revenue we made from carbon credits with the Norwegian agreement. We’re trying to resuscitate that because we still need to keep expanding other areas of the country.
Neighbouring countries like Brazil are interested in buying energy from us as well. Guyana holds a very interesting geographical position. We have excellent relations with Brazil. We have a road link through Northern Brazil that will come to a deepwater harbour here and whenever Venezuela gets itself back in order, they’ll be included too. At the last CARICOM meeting, we discussed topics that were talked about many years ago, but countries didn’t have the money then. Guyana talked about the issue of an oil refinery forever. We can now talk to Trinidad to find a way to work together on oil refineries. Guyana is on the mainland, but we don’t isolate ourselves from the rest of South America. We’re part of Mercosur, the Andean PAC and the Amazon Corporation Treaty. We’re part of different bilateral relations and we see our destiny not just in CARICOM or North America, but on this continent as well. We see ourselves as the gateway to Latin and South America. We speak English, we’re hospitable and we’re open for business.
BF: What will be pivotal in changing the world’s misperceptions about Guyana seven years from now?
Gail Teixeira: We’re working toward making Guyana a model and democratic country. We want to show that we can sustainably develop our country to use our resources in a creative and inclusive manner. Guyana has always been a bit unusual. For example, when we were still a colony in the 1960s, we talked about protecting the environment. In the 1970s, we talked about a national unity government in the midst of rigged elections, and we came up with our constitutional reforms, which was homegrown. We had no consultants or staff, and we went around the country talking with people. We went through a process to make our constitution one of the more progressive constitutions in the region.
We had a low carbon development strategy in 2010 that was driven by our people. We went to communities and talked about climate change, how to deal with it and how to protect our environment. We’re one of the first countries to come up with a low carbon development strategy that was adopted by parliament. We had about 60% poverty in 1994 and people were 20 in a house with one outside toilet. President Cheddi Jagan insisted we needed to have a housing program. We went to the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank asking to borrow money for this national housing program to provide a safe and secure environment. They asked if we planned to sell the land at market value. We said no, we had no money, but we had abandoned plantations. We started filling in the land, surveying and started out with low-income house lots. All house lots were between 18 and 50 feet and subsidized by the government. That program started in 1996 and has gone on until today.
We have several systems running in the national housing program. One is for nearly destitute people, so the government builds those houses and gives them to help. The second group is low-income. People can apply and get a house lot or decide to take a house lot with a house built by the government. Once they get approved, they can go to the bank and receive a loan at the lowest interest rate, which the government guarantees for the bank. There are also the middle-income schemes, which are the higher level. These include schemes for young professionals and private developers. It has radically changed society in the sense that people who rented never had collateral. It’s also had a positive impact on women, where 40% of households in the National Housing program are women. The fact that women are getting house lots in their name is powerful. They have collateral and can use that to borrow or buy a car. The housing programs across different parts of the country have made a major social impact on our society. It has empowered people who never could have imagined owning a home or land. This continues to be subsidized by the government. We’re not charging market value besides the private developers here and the middle and upper middle-income schemes, which we run. People have been able to buy or build small houses or add on and develop, getting more money or borrowing.
It’s led to a level of stability and familial stability. It’s also led to safer, cleaner communities. The housing programs are more ethnically mixed and brand-new communities are being formed. There will be new towns where there weren’t before over the next five years. Some areas are ready to be towns. They have hospitals, health centres, fire stations, police, schools, and fast-food places. This is a movement, but it has a radical effect. One of the IFC reports on gender equality in 2014 showed that a higher percentage of Guyanese women owned property compared to the rest of Latin America. All the land in Guyana is state land. We’re have one of the lower levels of disparity between poor and rich. The largest landowner is the state, and the second-largest landowner are indigenous people. They have community by titled land absolute grants and own over 14% of the land in Guyana. There are over 200 communities. The Amerindian population has grown from 5% in 1992 to about 11%. They’re the fastest growing ethnic group in our country, partly because of the improvement in health and education. They used to die from gastroenteritis, malaria, tuberculosis or measles. Every Amerindian village now has a nursery school, a primary school and a healthcare centre. Secondary schools have been built. They can also continue into high school and go to university.
BF: What main challenges is Guyana trying to overcome?
Gail Teixeira: One is ensuring energy that’s affordable, reliable, and dependable, so we don’t have so many blackouts and factories can work at optimum levels. Many in the private sector have invested in their own generators to be able to keep their businesses going. It’s also critical in other areas of the country. That will coincide with the upgrading of the transmission network. In the LCDs we talk about an energy mix system, which would be hydro falls, solar and fossilized gas with a slow decrease over time. In certain parts of the country, especially in Amerindian indigenous households, we’ve already equipped 13,000 households with solar panels. It has made a big difference for children to be able to study at night in those areas because there aren’t any lights. We can’t run transmission lines into all our interior villages because they’re not traditional townships. The energy issue is critical for development in the Amerindian communities as well as our whole society, allowing our business, manufacturing, and entrepreneurial areas to grow.
The second challenge is connectivity. We’ve fought for years to connect our country. Our geography and lack of resources hindered our ability. The smart technologies that have come in are allowing us to connect the entire country with new fibre cables. People living in remote or far away areas don’t have to come all the way to Georgetown to do their business. It’s a major intervention to do with access to goods and services. It’s also a whole means of communication and public participation that is critical. We could have been ahead on the connectivity issue, but the last five years of the previous government slowed everything down. We’ve now liberalized the telecommunications sector and that’s creating new competition. This will allow us to work more efficiently and reduce the cost of information-based technology because we have call centres here. The information-based technology is a relatively new sector that was introduced around seven or eight years ago. The speed at which they can go on depends on connectivity and rates that are reasonable. Our rates for connectivity have been higher than in a number of the Caribbean countries. Access and reducing the cost will allow people to communicate. It’s important in terms of a range of areas, including security, defence, investment and for our government to be able to have access to people. We’re now seeing schools in many indigenous areas with smart classrooms or connections, so they can access The Learning Channel when there may not be enough teachers. Technology is also critical in this area: to help us fill the gaps with technical skills we may not have easily available throughout the country. We’re making continuous efforts to overcome these issues and it’s making a big difference.