The cause of the political crisis in Guyana today is the determination of the executive to dominate the legislative branch of government. Sir Michael Davies, the Commonwealth adviser, whose Report – entitled Needs Assessment of the Guyana National Assembly – presented a sober, structured and serious indictment on the manner in which the Assembly was being managed.
The Davies Report exposed the methods devised by the executive which had the effect of thwarting democracy and undermining the Assembly’s independence. Davies concluded, in brief, that the National Assembly’s weaknesses were the result of the administration’s attempts to run the legislature like a government department rather than to allow it to function as an independent institution. The Report’s recommendations to enhance the National Assembly’s effectiveness, accordingly, were perceived as threatening to erode the very mechanisms that the executive branch put in place to fortify its control over the functioning of the legislative branch.
The Report drew attention to the fact that “meetings of the [National] Assembly are entirely at the whim of the Executive;” that both the staffing and the budget of the National Assembly are controlled by the Administration and that the work of the committees “is subject to frustration by the Executive.” It criticised the practice of submitting parliamentary Order Papers for sittings of the National Assembly to the Office of the President which, it said, “can and does
