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Guyana Constitution of 1980
![[PDF]](http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/pdf.gif)
Figure 6. Guyana: Organization of the Government, 1991
As Burnham consolidated his control over Guyanese politics
throughout the 1970s, he began to push for changes in the
constitution that would muffle opposition. He and his colleagues
argued that the changes were necessary to govern in the best
interest of the people, free of opposition interference. By the
late 1970s, the government and the legislature were PNC-dominated,
and the party had declared its hegemony over the civil service, the
military, the judiciary, the economic sector, and all other
segments of Guyanese society. Burnham called the 1966 constitution
inadequate and the product of British conservatism. Nationalization
of private enterprise was to be the first step in revamping a
system that Burnham felt had been designed to protect private
property at the expense of the masses.
Two of the principal architects of the new constitution were
the minister of justice and attorney general, Mohammed
Shahabbuddeen, and Hugh Desmond Hoyte, the minister of economic
planning. Attorney General Shahabbuddeen was given the task of
selling the new constitution to the National Assembly and the
people. He decried the 1966 constitution as a capitalist document
that supported a national economy based on exports and the laws of
supply and demand. He argued that the constitution safeguarded the
acquisitions of the rich and privileged and did not significantly
advance the role of the people in the political process.
The constitution of 1980, promulgated in October of that year,
reaffirmed Guyana's status as a cooperative republic within the
Commonwealth. It defines a cooperative republic as having the
following attributes: political and economic independence, state
ownership of the means of production, a citizenry organized into
groups such as cooperatives and trade unions, and an economy run on
the basis of national economic planning. The constitution states
that the country is a democratic and secular state in transition
from capitalism to socialism and that the constitution is the
highest law in the country, with precedence over all other laws.
The constitution guarantees freedom of religion, speech,
association, and movement, and prohibits discrimination. It also
grants every Guyanese citizen the right to work, to obtain a free
education and free medical care, and to own personal property; it
also guarantees equal pay for women. However, freedom of expression
and other political rights are limited by national interests and
the state's duty to ensure fairness in the dissemination of
information to the public. Power is distributed among five "Supreme
Organs of Democratic Power": the executive president, the cabinet,
the National Assembly, the National Congress of Local Democratic
Organs, and the Supreme Congress of the People, a special
deliberative body consisting of the National Assembly in joint
session with the National Congress of Local Democratic Organs. Of
these five divisions of government, the executive president in
practice has almost unlimited powers
(see
fig. 6).
The important constitutional changes brought about by the 1980
document were mostly political: the concentration of power in the
position of executive president and the creation of local party
organizations to ensure Burnham's control over the PNC and, in
turn, the party's control over the people. The constitution's
economic goals were more posture than substance. The call for
nationalization of major industries with just compensation was a
moot point, given that 80 percent of the economy was already in the
government's hands by 1976. The remaining 20 percent was owned by
Guyanese entrepreneurs.
Data as of January 1992
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