By Diana Abraham, Andaiye, Arif Bulkan, Janette Bulkan, Ronald Burch-Smith, Mellissa Ifill, Leila Jagdeo, Jean La Rose, Joy Marcus, Christopher Ram, Fr Malcolm Rodrigues, Iana Seales, Alissa Trotz
On Monday November 10, 2014, President Donald Ramotar prorogued the 10th Parliament of Guyana by proclamation. In an address to the nation, President Ramotar explained that this step had been taken by his administration in order “to ensure that the life of the 10th Parliament was preserved.” In fact, the effect of this proclamation is to send Parliament into an enforced recess, with no date fixed for resumption, so its real purpose seems aimed at preserving, not the life of Parliament, but rather that of the ruling minority government. The President has effectively taken away the constitutional right of the people’s elected representatives to debate and pass a verdict on the performance of the Government. This has left the country in a complete state of uncertainty as to when parliamentary democracy, the edifice of the Constitution, will be restored.
The preamble to the Constitution of Guyana begins with the words, ‘We, the Guyanese People.” In keeping with the spirit of the preamble, which emphasises “our collective quest for a perfect nation” in adopting the Constitution, and in response to this fundamentally undemocratic act, concerned citizens of Guyana as well as their regional and international supporters came together and signed an internet petition with twelve words, containing one simple message:
PRESIDENT DONALD RAMOTAR: RE-CONVENE PARLIAMENT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN TO THE PATH OF DEMOCRACY.
That petition has also been downloaded by other persons and is being signed by citizens resident in Guyana. This petition did not come from any political party but from concerned Guyanese at home and abroad. We do not care about each other’s political affiliations. Nor are we an organization. What we do know, and what we believe is important, is that reconvening Parliament and implementing urgent constitutional reform are matters that concern all Guyanese, whatever our political persuasion, whatever the political party we belong to or support. Prorogation affects the right of all Guyanese to democratic representation through Parliament.
As of Sunday November 16th at 4pm, this call to the President had already garnered more than 650 signatures. In the course of the following week, these twelve words and a list of signatories will be delivered to the President. We also intend to bring our concerns to the attention of the regional and international community, including the government of Norway and other major donors of this minority administration. Others must be made aware, before engaging or continuing to engage with them, that this move by the President is unprecedented in the Commonwealth Caribbean. It subjects Guyanese to government by a single political party, facilitated by the suppression of an integral component of any democracy, namely a legislative body containing the people’s elected representatives.
Why do we feel so strongly about the prorogation of Parliament? It is because this act is fundamentally undemocratic and cannot be defended on any ground – not constitutionally, not historically, not politically, not even on practical grounds.
First of all, it may seem to some that the act of prorogation was lawfully made since it is supposedly authorised by article 70(2) of the Constitution. Indeed, the President has continued to insist publicly that he acted “well within the constitution”. We disagree with this interpretation. No constitutional provision can be read in isolation, nor can any single provision be plucked out and construed literally, without regard to the Constitution’s overriding purpose and intent. In discerning that intent, it is legitimate, essential even, to have regard to other provisions, the preamble, and even history and tradition. It is only by this holistic approach that a constitution can be interpreted true to its meaning and as a coherent whole.
Article 9, which is the foundation of the Constitution, states: “Sovereignty belongs to the people, who exercise it through their representatives and the democratic organs established by and under this Constitution.” By contrast, the power to prorogue is a reserve personal power of a sovereign, common to monarchical Parliamentary systems. As columnist Henry Jeffrey pointed out in his Stabroek News Column last week, its original purpose was simply to allow for the adjournment of parliamentary sittings during one session, and not to suspend the entire Assembly indefinitely as the President has done.
Further, this power is out of place in a Presidential system like Guyana’s, where there is no neutral arbiter (such as a ceremonial Head of State as in Canada and Australia) who must ultimately decide whether to accede to the request of the political executive. Thus the power to prorogue, in the context of a Presidential system, effectively places an executive President and his cabinet above every other organ of government. However, once a holistic approach to interpretation is taken and the significance of Article 9 is fully understood, it becomes less apparent that Article 70(2) authorises prorogation for the purpose for which it has been proclaimed by President Ramotar. Indeed, as invoked by President Ramotar, prorogation has converted our system of parliamentary democracy to one of paramountcy of the party, a situation with which we are sadly all too familiar. This undemocratic act is also no different from the suspension of the colonial Constitution in 1953 when the first government led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan elected under universal adult suffrage was fired, which led to outrage in and out of then British Guiana.
When regard is had to our recent history, it becomes even clearer that by using the power to prorogue in order to suspend Parliament indefinitely, the spirit, intent, and ideals of the Constitution have been violated. It was only in 2000 that the no-confidence procedure was included in the Constitution. It formed part of a package of constitutional reforms, which had been mandated by the Herdmanston Accord of 1998 as negotiated by CARICOM in order to quell the severe public disaffection and tragic violence occasioned by the flawed elections of 1997.
The reform process itself lasted for more than a year, involving the participation of both major political parties and buttressed by a nationwide process of consultation. The end-product (the Constitutional Amendment Bill 2000) was passed unanimously by the National Assembly. The Hansard of December 15, 2000 records then PPP Leader of the House Reepu Daman Persaud describing the amendments as “broaden[ing] the scope of democracy and remove[ing] certain powers that were considered dictatorial.” Specifically dealing with the new clause to allow for a vote of no confidence Pandit Persaud rightfully described it as “an important amendment” and “an important step.”
In light of this history, to invoke the power to prorogue in 2014 – a leftover from the rigged 1980 constitution which the PPP vigorously challenged while in opposition – in order to thwart a planned no-confidence motion against the government, is to now undermine and render nugatory those reforms of 2000 that Pandit Persaud described as important. This present act of prorogation therefore leads one to question whether the current PPP is reneging on its previous unanimous vote in 2000.
Aside from the questionable legality of the prorogation of Parliament on November 10, the tensions occasioned by this Proclamation are better appreciated in the context of our fraught history. It was only in 1992 that the PPP administration ascended to office in what was widely heralded as a ‘return to democracy’. Yet, successive PPP administrations under former President Bharrat Jagdeo and now President Donald Ramotar have been marked by serial infractions of key institutions of democracy, including:
- No local government elections since 1994, in violation of the Constitution;
- Failure to establish the Human Rights Commission;
- Failure to establish the Public Procurement Commission;
- Failure to assent to Bills passed by the National Assembly;
- Failure to observe Articles 13 and 149 C of the Constitution that require the participation of citizens and their organisations in the decision- making process of the State.
- Extensive allegations of endemic corruption, which have consistently led to Guyana’s ranking as the most corrupt country in the Anglophone Caribbean and one of the most corrupt in the world, according to data compiled by Transparency International;
- A breakdown of the institutions of law and order, involving unsolved criminal activity, torture of suspects as a part of criminal investigation, and an unacceptable level of extra-judicial killings;
- Multiple infractions of the Constitution by PPP Ministers and other high-ranking officials in government, such as, for example:
○ Unauthorised expenditure by the Minister of Finance, who was discovered to have spent money from the Consolidated Fund without Parliamentary approval as required by the Constitution; and
○ The release of a recorded telephone conversation in which the Attorney General hinted at possible extra-judicial sanction against a prominent newspaper critical of the government, in the process advising his friend to ‘read between the lines’ and ‘move out of there it is a dangerous [expletive deleted] place to work’; and in which the AG also suggested that the President was in touch with a private citizen about a pending criminal charge in order to ‘work out an arrangement’ for their mutual benefit.
These instances represent only a sample of the abuses of power and violations of the rule of law committed by the PPP administration over its uninterrupted period of 22 years in power. This latest act of proroguing Parliament – without even giving Guyanese people a set date for reconvening and leaving the country in a complete state of limbo – is particularly disturbing since it is the public abandonment of one of the last vestiges of democratic rule. By silencing the most prominent forum for the expression of the people’s will, the PPP minority government has shown its contempt for the people and democratic institutions of Guyana.
In 2001 the national and collaborative reform process inserted in the Constitution a Preamble that trumpets a desire for a form of governance promoting ‘broad-based participation in national decision-making’ so as to develop ‘a harmonious community based on democratic values, social justice, fundamental rights, and the rule of law’. We, the authors of this column, urge the President and his administration not to ignore these aspirations as meaningless rhetoric, but to respect and uphold them in the quest for constitutional and democratic governance. To this end, and along with the more than 650 other signatories of the online petition, we repeat our call to President Ramotar to act in the interests of all Guyanese by re-convening Parliament immediately and returning to the path of democracy.
To sign the petition, you can send an e-mail to
concernedguyanese2014@gmail.com or visit the petition online
