Guyana's Alternative to Socialist and Capitalist Legal Models

Abstract

We are building a vigorous economic democracy which is not a copy of either Eastern communism or Western capitalism. With these words Guyana's Prime Minister, L. F. S. Burnham, introduced his government's first economic plan to his complex multi-racial community of some 680,000 people in February 1966.' He spoke on the eve of independence from Great Britain, following a period of experimentation with autonomy under the supervision of the Colonial Office and the British Governor.2 Burnham chose the opportunity to declare his government's intention to introduce to South America a unique program for development. Guyana excites attention throughout the common law world because of its attempt to erect a new edifice upon a legal tradition stemming from England, although still influenced also by the Dutch colonists who brought with them to the new world in the seventeenth century the customs of Holland formulated in Roman-Dutch law.' Because of the English influence Guyana is governed today quite differently from the other states of South America where the Romanist systems of Spain and Portugal prevail. Many of Guyana's leaders have eaten their dinners at London's Inns of Court where they absorbed the traditions of the common law. They declare themselves currently determined to retain the humanistic values and forms of the English common law while creating a new society. The aim, so the Prime Minister says in conversation, is to imbue old institutions with new content rather than to revolutionize familiar forms.'