Since the no-confidence motion (NCM) last December, the quarrel about what is and is not legal has been building in the public mind a healthy scepticism about the law. Such uncertainty is useful as it guards against the excessive dogmatism inherent in the quasi-religious nature of this type of discussion, which usually boils down to which side (usually of lawyers) one believes, and given the nature of Guyana, this heavy reliance on faith only helps to strengthen the ethnic divide.
Fortunately, the aspect of the quarrel having to do with whether the government has breached the constitution and is illegal is amenable to a more objective approach that is not heavily dependent upon what a specific law states or upon what the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) may or may not have intended. The record shows what the court actually did, and we can conduct a simple analysis of the process it ordered to demonstrate that it logically leads to the following conclusions. The passing of 18 September without an extension of parliament does not mean that the present government is illegal. However, the logical operation of that very process suggests that it is close to becoming so.
