Dear Editor,
In your editorial which is entitled ‘The politics of no,’ and which appeared in the Sunday issue of June 17 your writer displayed some of the writing and analytical qualities which have distinguished the paper locally and in the region. I agreed with much of it in broad terms. However, as you might expect, I would still wish to take issue with some aspects of the editorial.
I have taken the trouble to write on the latter areas because four of the issues in question are critical and some of the assumptions underlying your editorial are not only flawed but the information on which they are based should have been known to the paper and writer.
First, as regards the motion on the financial autonomy of the Auditor General’s Office, the writer made the following claim:
“It transpired last week that the governing party in Parliament had pre-empted a motion by Carl Greenidge to take the Audit Office off the list of budget agencies and make it autonomous by having it draw its finances directly from the Consolidated Fund. On Wednesday the opposition discovered that Minister Ashni Singh had recently signed an order to that effect already, obliging Mr Greenidge then to withdraw his motion to loud heckling from the government benches…”
The facts are very different. These could have been ascertained from my statement to Parliament, if the writer chose not to consult Clerk of the National Assembly. The motion was not laid in error; it was laid before Minister Singh signed the order conferring autonomy on the Audit Office as he should have since 2003.
The Minister signed the Order on March 30 whilst the motion was submitted to the Clark on March 12. We chose not to withdraw the motion at that time because we wanted the public to know that the order was a response to the motion and that the Government of Guyana (GOG) had sought to sneak it in amidst the confusion of the budget debate. Indeed, the fact that the editorial is claiming, like the Guyana Times and others despite my statement, that the GOG had already fixed the matter is misleading and wrong. This shows how little attention and memory are devoted to our political critiques. The Guyana Times, that “beacon of truth,” even suggested that the Minister’s order was laid since 2006!
Secondly, you have incorrectly said that the APNU has no legislative agenda but rather an agenda of motions. Our main goal in the legislative agenda is to keep the government’s ‘feet to the fire’ on issues such as the autonomy of constitutional agencies, ensuring that their actions are within the ambit of the law and constitution, and to deal with the most egregious actions such as the payment of excessive benefits to former 0-presidents. The motions passed so far will be followed by amendments to the relevant acts. Some of these require orders and these have to be laid by ministers. We will invite the government to have ministers to the necessary action, as required by the majority. One outstanding motion and the related act have been deferred at the request of the PPP.
The ‘Former Presidents’ Benefits’ is a major legislative item. It will be laid shortly by the APNU notwithstanding the stated refusal of the President to give his assent. The resolution of this type of impasse does not lie entirely in the hands of the opposition. You have alluded to the implications of this threat by President Ramotar, which is, in any case, ill-informed and potentially dangerous.
The lack of debate or questions on Financial Paper (FP 9) was a result of the complete contempt exhibited by the PPP and its Minister of Finance. Actually, FPs 7 & 8 were laid under the aegis of Bill #1 of 2012. The Speaker, in his wisdom, deemed that the Standing Orders on bills did not apply to FPs, ie, a bill is only a bill if it is not a financial paper! The assumed intention of the Speaker was to facilitate a discussion and allow the PPP to present the papers again, taking account of the criticisms and the law. In most jurisdictions that opportunity to compromise would have been seized by the government. No so in Guyana. Instead, the PPP resubmitted a paper that explained nothing of why an advance for ‘mobilization’ (for construction) could be hidden in a vote called ‘Study and design of a hospital,’ and how the Minister approved the payment of $29M to someone for land when that land had already been acquired compulsorily by the state. The law also requires that the name of the payee to whom the mobilization was to be paid, be stated. It was not. The comments apply to the other items on the paper.
When a government reveals such contempt for the law and the Parliament, what does one do? A monologue is neither a debate nor consultation. For the opposition to have spoken further on the matter during the laying of FP 9 would have given legitimacy to the reprehensible behaviour of the PPP. The opposition parties treated that behaviour with the contempt it deserved. We struck it down. The public knows why, so should the government! We have to move on. Enough is enough.
Finally, the treatment of FP 9 in June was somewhat different from that of FP 8 in February, yet the editorial claims that the opposition does:
“…not have some kind of regular encounter in place, whereby a senior member of APNU meets with a senior member of the AFC to co-ordinate their legislative agenda and, most importantly, their strategy. What is happening at the moment is completely ad hoc, and leaves room for misunderstandings of one variety or another, and the kind of fiasco which occurred at the beginning of the year.
“The reality is that the one-seat majority is only possible when the two of them vote in concert, and this being so, they have to operate in concert, but for some reason or other, that is not happening. As the larger party which has the leadership of the opposition, it is for APNU to make the first move, and the fact that it has not done so suggests a measure of disorganization and perhaps a lack of a centralized perspective within the party.”
In actuality, the assumption of no regular meetings is completely erroneous. The APNU has been meeting with both the PPP/C and the AFC, together and separately, on the very issues mentioned. The fact that two parties meet does not mean that they will always or usually agree, and that is the lesson coming out of “the beginning of the year.” There was no failure to meet. The parties behaved differently inside and outside of the meetings. In this context, whilst I agree with the logic of the role the writer prescribes for the APNU, it is in keeping with the traditional position of the Stabroek News to come down on the side of the AFC and to lay all blame and lack of competence at the door of the APNU.
Yours faithfully,
Carl B Greenidge
