While contending that it is impossible for government to function properly without a Cabinet, recently-elected Alliance for Change (AFC) leader Khemraj Ramjattan on Friday insisted that there is no definitive ruling by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) that prevents the president and his ministers from continuing to meet.
“It is important to understand that you cannot have a vacuum government. Governance does not allow that because there is too much on the plate,” Ramjattan, who is Public Security Minister, said on Friday on the sidelines of a ceremony for the presentation of tablet computers and robotic kits to the Guyana Council of Organisations for People with Disabilities (GOCPD).
The CCJ on June 18th found that the December 21st no-confidence motion was validly passed with the votes of 33 members of the 65-member National Assembly, thereby compelling the resignation of Cabinet and the holding of general elections. The Cabinet met last Tuesday and dealt with several matters, including taking note of more than a dozen multi-million dollar contracts.
Ramjattan’s comments follow those of government spokeman Joseph Harmon, who had said on Friday that the David Granger-led administration has seen nothing in the court’s ruling that says it should not meet.
“How will public servants be paid each month if we do not sign on. How would certain security issues be dealt with? Every month you get a set of parolees that must go and as minister I must sign out on them. So many things have to happen at a ministerial level and so it is going to create a vacuum and I’m going to say that even though a no confidence motion has passed, it’s only when Parliament has dissolved that you can have certain stringent regulations coming in…,” he said.
Ramjattan made reference to Article 106 (7), which he said provided for a consequential order. “It says…that the government and the president shall remain in office until the swearing in of the next president. So whenever the next election is held the coalition government will remain in office and in power and conducting the business of the state and that is the legal position and it could be no other because you cannot have a vacuum in government nor in governance,” he said.
In further explaining his party’s position on this matter, he expressed belief that the interpretations of the provisions outlined in the Constitution are being “skewed somewhat and that is probably by some members of the chatterati out there and also members of the opposition.”
He rubbished the claim that because of the ruling there is no Cabinet, while noting that though Article 106 (6) says a certain thing, Article 106 (7) has to be looked at. He recalled that when the position was about to be put before the court’s president Justice Adrian Saunders, as to what happens to the Cabinet and consequential orders to that effect, he indicated quite clearly that he is not going to go there at this stage. He said that the judge indicated that he would first like to hear what the submissions would be and these were handed in to the court on July 1st.
“They would have a read of it and they’ll make their decisions,” he said before stating that even the Chief Justice in deliberating on the matters indicated that the Cabinet can sit.
However, CJ (ag) Roxane George SC in her January 31st ruling had said that the 33 votes in its favour constituted the needed majority of the 65-member National Assembly and that this should have triggered the immediate resignation of the Cabinet, including the President.
Justice George had further said there is a clear distinction between the Cabinet and the government and explained that even where the former resigns, there would still be a government, made up of the president and ministers, who are to perform their duties and functions until elections are held and a new government is sworn in.
Following that ruling, Harmon himself announced in February that Cabinet would not be meeting.
“It is noted that there is a judgment of the Court that was made with respect to the Cabinet and that judgment is appealed but we do not have a stay of the judgment as yet and, therefore, we have not held Cabinet meetings as such…,” Harmon had told a press conference in February.
Up until the Court of Appeal overturned the High Court’s decision, ministerial plenaries, chaired by the President and comprising all of the ministers, met. Harmon had maintained then that the plenaries had all of the powers that a Cabinet could have.
When the lower court’s ruling was overturned in March, government announced that it cleared the way for Cabinet to resume meeting.
Harmon, the Director General of the Ministry of the Presidency at a post-Cabinet press briefing on Thursday, stressed that Cabinet will continue to meet as it awaits clarification from the court on the way forward.
“We have seen nothing in the ruling of the CCJ that says that Cabinet should not meet and in fact Article [106 (6) and 106 (7)] speaks to the president and the government remaining in office and so this question of clarification, whether the Cabinet meets or not, is in fact one of the submissions made to the CCJ for them to give clarity (on July 12). So, we will await the clarification,” he said.
Article 106 (6) of the constitution requires that “The Cabinet including the President shall resign if the Government is defeated by the vote of a majority of all the elected members of the National Assembly on a vote of confidence.”
Article 106 (7) adds, “Notwithstanding its defeat, the Government shall remain in office and shall hold an election within three months, or such longer period as the National Assembly shall by resolution supported by not less than two-thirds of the votes of all the elected members of the National Assembly determine, and shall resign after the President takes the oath of office following the election.”
Justice Saunders during the reading of the decision had adverted to direction given in the Constitution on what is to happen if government is defeated on a confidence vote brought against it.
On Friday, the court will reconvene to issue consequential orders in relation to the upholding of the motion of no confidence and the finding that the appointment of the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission, Justice James Patterson was unconstitutional.
