Dear Editor,
“According to the CJ’s ruling as reported, under Article 219 it is open to us to conclude that the whole budget debate and the days and process of Committee of Supply are high farce.” All the Minister has to do is to see that the estimates “are prepared and laid before the National Assembly” (from my letter in SN, February 1).
The Attorney General of Guyana, Mr Nandlall, has thrown his heavy weight as the titular head of the Guyana Bar and as adviser to the government into the discussion of the CJ’s ruling on the powers of the National Assembly versus the privilege of the executive as he sees the issue (‘The Standing Orders must be construed to conform to the constitution,’ Sunday Stabroek, February 16).
Mr Nandlall had to set aside his dislike for exchanges in the press with non-lawyers like the thousands who voted for him and this writer. His letter attracted several comments. True, I hold that a Committee of Supply with elaborate procedures and no power is a farce, but clearly only if its customary powers are finally declared non-existent as the court has ruled so far.
The Attorney General should really not exchange with non-lawyers if he will insist that I claimed for the Standing Orders supremacy over the supreme law. He puts a false claim in my mouth and then spends his time arguing to prove his false rendering a huge abysmal mistake. If I am caught doing that to anyone, let me have 60 months in jail like the now famous babysitter.
His reliance on the referendum of 1978 allows me to understand why he should agree to subvert the Standing Orders and especially the Committee of Supply.
He is not arguing law. He is arguing authority, and going as far as to say that the 1980 Constitution “was born out of a referendum” and is “the supreme voice of the people,” just because he wants to give it a popular origin. It is like using false evidence to impress a jury. Even the authors of the 1980 Constitution have not claimed for it a popular origin. He finds my failure to grasp constitutional concepts abysmal. I will not apply such dismal terms to the Attorney General’s sense of our constitutional history. Let his helpers remind him of the comments on the 1980 process by a very loyal member of the then ruling party, Mr JH Pollydore, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress. I am not unreasonable with my learned mentor. Let him simply state how the 1980 constitution is the “voice of the people.” I find it is a document in which “the people” have done this and this and done that to be sheer flowery constitutional fiction.
A High Court judge found the 1997 elections on the pleadings before her to be null and void, conducted in violation of the constitution. She did not find fraud but illegality. In such a case the government has the right to bring a Bill to legalise past illegality. The PPP never brought such a Bill. It may be may argued that everything done by that parliament was illegal. There is not a serious insistence on legality in the political culture.
Let me avoid his evasions and bring us to the point. The Attorney General believes that the Standing Orders are inconsistent with the Budget provisions of the constitution. He believes – and I do not – that the constitution prohibits cuts by the Committee of Supply, that is the whole Assembly sitting in committee for attention to details of expenditure proposed by the Finance Czar.
Standing Order 76 says what amendments may be moved and may not be moved. Amendments to increase a head may be moved only by a minister who must signify the consent of the cabinet. Amendments to reduce an item, head or subhead may be moved by any member. The form of the amendment is provided. Does SO 76 seem to be absent-minded? Does it not accord special rights to the executive while permitting “any member” to propose reductions?
The question is whether the government’s Attorney General in 2011 was at the time unaware of the absolute executive privilege claimed to exist in the constitution. When did he or she become aware of the violation of the executive privilege? How did he or she vote, and what did he or she do about this serious invasion of the constitutional rights of the executive?
The Standing Orders can be read online. They were amended and updated some three years ago. When they were last considered Mr Nandlall’s party had a majority. What has not been said so far is that the British Guiana Combined Court and the Jamaica legislature both colonial in the 19th century rang with rejections of the Governor’s budget because of differences over policy, In Jamaica the Governor’s salary was cut out along with those of others. Between 1947 and 1953 Cheddi Jagan used this right to move in Committee of Supply the reduction of heads by one dollar in order to indict the administration.
Our trouble is not the Standing Orders. It is the political culture. In Germany and in the UK election results producing a winning minority, “enemies” get together as nationals and form a government. They place country before party. It is not so in Guyana. Our problem is not the Standing Orders but the social order.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
