Dear Editor,
I am responding to a letter from Mahendra Hariraj in response to a letter I wrote which stated that I agreed with the cuts to NCN and GINA. I am not going to deal with the cuts to NCN and GINA. It’s part of the PPP’s agenda from day one to exclude the opposition from any participation in the state-owned media. In Trinidad, where the rule of law still exists, I wish to refer your readers to case number 4789 of 1982 in the Trinidad and Tobago High Court of Justice in which Mr Surujrattan Rambachan, then an MP for the UNC, alleged that on Tuesday December 21st 1982 the monopoly state-owned television station wholly owned by the state, refused to play a pre-recorded speech by Rambachan and in doing so they violated his constitutional rights to freedom of thought and expression.
At the end of the trial Justice Lennox Deyelsingh in his summation on 17 January 1985 said this ‒ and I quote him directly from the transcript I have on the matter, “it is therefore ordered:
1. That Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) by its board of directors and general manager prepare a statement of policy regarding political broadcasting which affords all recognised political parties broadcasting time reasonable both as to number of broadcasts and duration of each broadcast.
2. That TTT file the said document in this court for its approval on or before the 28th February 1985.”
In other words, at the end of the case, political parties were allotted time on the state-owned media in keeping with their seats in Parliament. And they can answer anything said by the government ‒ for example, the PPP has 32 seats in parliament in Guyana and the opposition had 33 seats, so if the government gets 32 minutes to massage their incompetence in the media to make it look good, then the combined opposition must be given 33 minutes to repudiate any spurious claims or outright lies that were made by the ruling party. Since state-owned does not mean party-in-power owned, it means owned by all of the people, denying Rambachand time on TTT violated his fundamental right to free speech. I also hold the view that the boards of both NCN and GINA should reflect this same 33 opposition, 32 government seats split in Parliament.
Editor this was 1985 when the court of Trinidad and Tobago ruled in such an enlightened manner!
In 2013 we have Hariraj telling us that “the incumbent government should be allowed precedence in these media outlets,” when in Trinidad and most other civilised democracies it would be illegal after the Rambachan case in Trinidad.
I especially abhor this ultimate foolishness contained in his letter: “I strongly agree that taxpayers’ revenues should be utilised for the national wellbeing but not to sanction unlegislated cuts on taxpayers monies.” Editor the legislature has to pass the budget to make it legal; the opposition has more seats in the legislature than the PPP so what are these “unlegislated cuts” he is speaking about?
Because of a flaw in the Burnham constitution a political party which does not enjoy the majority of the seats in the parliament and therefore the majority of the voters in this country in the 2011 election, is allowed to form the government and has no feelings of obligation to cooperate and empower the opposition, even as they set about to continue raiding the treasury in this country without allowing proper oversight by the opposition parties which did in fact win the 2011 elections. It hardly happens anywhere else in the world that uses the Westminster system, where a minority party can form the government. After an election parties or a group of parties must form coalitions which control the majority of the seats in parliament, before they can form the government. So due to lack of foresight, since less than 12 years after it was written (1980-1992) this flawed 1980 socialist constitution fell into the hands of the PPP and they have abused every section of it since then. Especially Bharrat Jagdeo.
As far as the sections of the media which are against the government because of its oppressive/illegal/lawless actions are concerned, Hariraj must learn to live with freedom of expression; it’s in the constitution at article 146 which he likes to quote. And thanks to the same media which are antagonistic to the government, I see in today’s Kaieteur News that Dr Luncheon is reported as saying that revelations of irregularities by this same antagonistic media have forced the government to abandon the ghost company MOU, which was supposed to build a waste disposal facility.
There is only one other part of the letter which I would like to comment on, and it has to do with the cutting of the budget. I don’t agree with the strategy of sniping at the budget, I never have and I have expressed this opinion often enough. It is not that I think the cuts illegal, I just think that it’s too small a plaster for too large a sore.
The opposition have been unable to budge the government, which does not have the mandate of the majority of our people, to cooperate with them and allow them the oversight and the participation in the decision-making process they are entitled to, since they have more seats in the Parliament. The government has fought tooth and nail to exclude the opposition from the decision-making process or oversight at every turn. Politics is not for men of faint heart; you have to have guts to be a great politician if the government is unprepared to give concessions to the opposition. For example, in his letter he tells us that Chief Justice Chang had pronounced on a certain matter on the cutting of the budget. However, my legal advisors tell me that this ruling was at least obscure, and the opposition should have appealed it and taken it to the CCJ. This is a matter of national importance, so it should have gone further; we need a clear decision since this country has enough problems without adding this to it. Hariraj points me to article 218 of the constitution paragraphs 1 and 2 which read as follows:
“(1) The Prime Minister or any other Minister designated by the President shall cause to be prepared and laid before the National Assembly before or within ninety days after the commencement of each financial year estimates of the revenues and expenditure of Guyana for that year.
“(2) When the estimates of expenditure (other than expenditure charged upon the Consolidated Fund by this Constitution or any Act of Parliament) have been approved by the Assembly a Bill, to be known as an Appropriation Bill, shall be introduced in the Assembly, providing for the issue from the Consolidated Fund of the sums necessary to meet that expenditure and the appropriation of those sums for the purposes specified therein.”
All I see here is that the budget must be approved by the National Assembly, and if the majority of the assembly does not approve the budget, it cannot become legal. If the PPP does not have the votes to approve the budget it cannot become legal. Everybody must accept this! The PPP like Hariraj wants to make a rubber stamp of our opposition. He calls that democratic!
Since the government is turning a blind eye to the precarious situation they find themselves in and are doing everything in their power to diminish the fact that the opposition controls the National Assembly, they have set about to mutilate their powers even more, I really feel that if the opposition does not have the resources to take their complaints to the CCJ then the budget should at least contain a war chest for them to finance their legal and other challenges to the party in power to get them to understand the precarious situation in which they find themselves. After all, we are dealing with a constitution which originated from a referendum in 1978 which if the government in power at the time were called upon to show how they got a 2/3 majority of the vote to do it, would have a hard time doing so. Since Dr Jagan never challenged it after coming to power in ’92, he accepted it, thereby entrenching it in our laws. But even after the constitutional reform process, it is still seriously flawed and it should be revisited since it is not serving the majority of the people in this country.
The opposition should take the bull by the horns and hold the entire budget, which cannot pass through the House unless they support it, and force the PPP to comply with their demands, just as they have done with the money laundering legislation. It’s their obligation to hold the government to ransom for concessions which would give them the rightful place in our society that their 33 seats entitles them to, and which is being wrongly and probably illegally denied them by the PPP.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira
