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III. State Control and Supervision
There are no specific laws that govern the control by the State of the resources of non-profit organizations. They are free to access funds from any legal quarter, within or without the country. The only controls are those that are part of the general laws of the land (such as exchange control laws which require the reporting of foreign exchange received) or laws governing companies generally.
Section 108 of the Companies Act states that the Supreme Court may appoint one or more competent inspectors to investigate the affairs of any company and to report thereon in such manner as the Court directs. In the case of a company not having a share capital, on the application of not less than one-fifth in number of the persons on the company's register of members, the Court may appoint such inspectors, who are empowered to inspect all books, examine officers and agents on oath, and then present their report to the Court.
Section 111 requires every company to appoint an auditor or auditors at each annual general meeting to hold office until the next annual general meeting. If it does not do so, the Court on the application of any member may appoint such auditors. Auditors have a right of access to all the books of the company and to get information from officers of the company as they deem necessary.
The State does not directly exercise any control over the actions of NGOs, although if it adopts a posture of hostility or non-cooperation toward particular NGOs this makes their work all the more difficult.
In the first half decade after independence a number of NGOs emerged and some already existing ones became active in a new way. This can be explained, on the one hand, by the need felt by certain sections of the population which these agencies sought to meet and on the other hand by new opportunities for funding that emerged after independence.
At the time of Belize's independence in 1981, one political party, the PUP, had won all previous elections. The PUP lost the 1984 elections, and when the UDP took the reins of power after being out in the cold for decades, it felt the need to assert its power. This was the very time that the new NGOs were beginning to flex their own muscles, so that a feeling of distrust and even hostility on the part of government was to be expected. This was especially evidenced against SPEAR, which was the most vocal on questions of human rights and public policy issues generally. It was something new for NGOs to be demanding a political voice, and the new government saw this as a phenomenon that was targeting the party in government. It had created a "Security Intelligence Service" heavily influenced by US cold war and national security ideologies, and it targeted SPEAR and other NGOs for surveillance and harassment. These NGOs, meanwhile, were very careful to insist on their non-partisan position, and to target especially structural and endemic problems which it insisted were not the sole responsibility of any one political party. Still, it was very difficult to win the acceptance or even the tolerance, let alone the cooperation, of the government during this period.
In 1989 when the PUP took office once more, the situation changed dramatically. The government prevailed on UNHCR to have SPEAR carry out educational work with refugees, and it also utilized the services and encouraged the participation of other NGOs with the work with immigrants, notably BEST and Help For Progress, and began to appoint the members of various NGOs to government boards on social and economic issues. This set a pattern which the next succeeding government was to follow.
The work done by the several NGOs during that period was generally considered to be useful and responsible, and this was important for establishing the norm that NGOs were not only important bearers of services to the community, but that it was possible and productive for government to collaborate with them.
In 1990, for example, SPEAR organized a National Education Symposium which had the full support of government. Two years later SPEAR organized another symposium, this one on the refugee and immigration issues, which also had government support, and which for the first time allowed refugees and immigrants themselves to express their concerns at such a forum. In November 1994, an agreement was signed by SPEAR and UNDP/PRODERE for SPEAR to organize and facilitate a workshop for NGOs on the National Development Plan on behalf of the Ministry of Economic Development.
One of the issues tackled in that workshop was relations between the government and NGOs. The point was made that the changing role of the State and the resizing of government meant that people in civil society must be given more power over their own destiny, and NGOs as intermediary organizations need to be consulted and their role as development agents recognized. There should be a close and collaborative relationship between GOB and NGOs, but not one of dependency. NGOs need to exercise a constructively critical function with regard to government policies and practices, and government should encourage the capacity of the NGOs to critique its policies, since this could help to recognize drawbacks and correct errors. NGOs, on the other hand, have a duty to expose and seek to correct all examples of hypocrisy and of inconsistencies between declared policy and expressed practice.
NGOs should not be viewed merely as good implementors of policy but as vital agents in defining policy and participating in planning. NGOs fully recognized that their claims to speak on national issues and to participate in national decision-making must be balanced by an acceptance of regulation, in particular with regard to transparency and accountability. They accepted the need for legislation to regulate the registration and recognition of NGOs and agreed to take the initiative in proposing such a law to the lawmakers. NGOs also recognized their shortcomings and in particular their need to be better prepared to take up opportunities offered by GOB and other agencies. Greater collaboration between themselves would greatly aid this effort, and the need for more effective networking was acknowledged.
As far as other types of political control are concerned, the matter is often quite subtle. Until quite recently, the political culture held that it was only political parties that had the right to voice and advocate political opinions, this in spite of the fact that our Constitution makes it quite clear that political parties are only one form of political association: article 13 quoted above refers to the right of people "to form or belong to political parties or other political associations" (emphasis added).
Part of the problem is that the political atmosphere is so polarized that whenever any organization takes a political position the first question people ask is which party is it fronting for? Still, the activity of development-oriented NGOs spans barely a decade in Belize, and bearing in mind that traditionally there has not been a strong popular organization sector, the advances made have been quite considerable. Starting from a point where governments and the society in general did not conceive of, much less accept, non-party entities demanding an organized political voice, a recognized space has now been carved out which is up to the civil society organizations to exploit.
The greatest contribution of these NGOs has been that government now recognizes that there is more than just a public and a private sector that must be taken into account, but also a community sector or civil society. This has of course also been aided by the fact that international agencies have become more sensitive to the demands of civil society organizations, and have not only themselves set up mechanisms to provide them with a forum but are also insisting that governments take their views into account.
But while governments are more open to such consultation, it is an entirely different matter to actually influence policy and cause changes in economic and social laws and practices as well as in political behaviour. There is still too much deference paid to the fear of government's reaction on the part of many NGOs which impedes them from taking more affirmative action against harmful government policies and practices. In some cases, this is also attributable to political bias on the part of the NGOs themselves.
There is, however, a new-found confidence with which these bodies articulate their right to have an effective public policy input, overcoming, to some extent, the general attitude that only political parties have a right to an opinion, let alone to have a determining influence, on public policy. And governments have not closed their ears to these demands.
There is some acceptance by governments of the principle that civil society has the right to investigate government even on the most sensitive issues, the right to the government's full disclosure and cooperation, and the right to make its conclusions public. This is an important gain, but like all such advances it must be constructively and effectively used in the future; like so many things having to do with the build-up of a democratic practice, if you don't use it you lose it. In this process, NGOs must take special care not to be, or appear to be, in favour of one political party or another - that surely would deal a fatal blow to the credibility of their work and render it useless.
Nor is there any room for complacency on even the basic issue of the right of civil society organizations to have a political voice. In February 1998, for example, after civil society organizations had prepared and launched a People's Manifesto stating the policies it wanted embraced by political parties in the upcoming elections, the Cabinet Secretary stormed into SPEAR's office and declaimed that these organizations had no right to issue such a manifesto, since they were not a political party!
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