Dear Editor,
The current state of politics in Guyana seems to suggest that the November 2011 national and regional elections have produced a situation of the executive versus the legislature. Those historic elections resulted, for the first time, in the government’s status reduced to a minority in the National Assembly. This unorthodox situation sees the minority PPP/C government reacting in a way which intimates that they are either unaware of their relegated status or refuse to accept the will of the Guyanese people, who through their ballots rejected that party.
Others might argue that the PPP/C’s reactions towards the people after those elections conform to the attitudes and actions of an undemocratic regime, consumed by an obsession for power.
Whichever of the rationales is accurate the fact is the PPP/C has decided that it will have its way and will not relinquish its obsession with absolute power, even if it has to disregard the will of the people. So the PPP/C attempts to stall the work of Parliament, the supreme law-making body, and rushes to the courts. They simultaneously attack the people by using state resources, such as NCN and the Guyana Chronicle, to unleash their vile propaganda against the very people whose tax dollars upkeep those media entities.
Like a tyrant and a bully, which could not care less about the alarming backlog in the court system, the PPP/C ratchets up its rhetoric and appears to engage in actions intended to influence the courts to rule in their favour. We have witnessed the judicial charade with respect to the budget cuts, among other cases; we are now at the stage of the ‘Rohee gag‘ saga, and the court case against the Speaker of the National Assembly. When will this assault on the people of Guyana cease? In a country which professes to be democratic, which is supposed to uphold the rule of law and be guided by the principle of the separation of powers inherent in the constitution, the executive refuses to abide by the rulings of the Parliament. Yes, in this same Guyana, the executive President, Mr Donald Ramotar, made a bold announcement that he, as president, would not sign any bill into law which is passed by the majority combined opposition, once that bill has not had an input from his government.
These are serious pronouncements which will continue to form the basis of interaction among the three branches of the state and which will also determine the level of parliamentary progress and the overall progress of the nation. It appears that the PPP/C is prepared to forgo any development in the name of projecting its obsession with political power.
Yours faithfully,
Lurlene Nestor
