Dear Editor,
I was in the High Court on Tue 20th March to witness the proceedings in the case where the Attorney General Anil Nandlall is trying to get the Chief Justice to reverse a parliamentary vote on the composition of the Select Committee. Mr Nandlall at one point raised a copy of the constitution and proclaimed that we had a “constitutional democracy” in Guyana.
I found that quite amusing because if that was so he would not have been trying to get the court to alter the composition of the Parliamentary Select Committee. In fact he might have been sitting on the opposition benches because in a “constitutional democracy” the APNU and AFC could have entered into a post-election coalition and form the government.
Instead we have a constitution that disallows post -election coalitions and so we have a minority government and a majority opposition.
Had the PPP been weaned in a culture of democratic values it would have sought to build an alliance with the other parties, or at least one of them, in an effort to have a government by the majority but that would have meant contravening its Stalinist values and sharing power and that is something the regime is allergic to.
So in an effort to continue its dictatorship the PPP’s Nandlall is seeking the intervention of the courts to subvert the majority decision of the parliament.
Yours faithfully,
Malcolm Harripaul
