President David Granger, who made the route to an election following the vote of no confidence last December an obstacle course of Herculean proportions, tossed yet another potential hurdle onto the electoral track on Wednesday. After the Chair of Gecom last week announced the commission would be ready to mount a poll at the end of February – never mind that this was outside the constitutional frame – the entire electorate heaved a collective, if resigned, sigh of relief. All that was required now was for the President to name a date. What could be simpler?
If that is what most voters thought, then they reckoned without their Head of State’s seemingly infinite capacity for labyrinthine reasoning. Never mind what the constitution says, never mind what the CCJ says, AG Basil Williams will advise Mr Granger on a way around the law, and along with the latter’s predilection for misconstruing some of this country’s constitutional provisions, a blockage will be created.
The President did announce the “earliest” date for the general election, namely, March 2, 2020, but the problem was that he did not issue a proclamation to give it effect. As such, therefore, it has all the legal force of a conversational chat with the public. The reason apparently for the absence of a proclamation was that Parliament must first meet to grant an extension to the three-month period for the holding of polls in the wake of the no confidence vote.
Mr Granger told the citizenry that following the communication received from Justice Claudette Singh about the readiness of Gecom, he had met with the Cabinet on two occasions when all the members had accepted her advice. Furthermore, they had also benefited from the advice of the AG and had been “guided by the need to adhere scrupulously to the advice of the Elections Commission.”
This is all somewhat odd since it is Ms Singh’s place to inform the government of when the commission would be ready (and it was required under the constitution to be and should have been ready before September 18), not advise the government about an election date. The decision relative to a date is the prerogative of the President alone.
Even more problematically, however, he went on to claim that, “The extension of a period beyond three months for the holding of an election is related to the Elections Commission’s readiness to hold the elections. The Government of Guyana must, as a consequence, return to the National Assembly to request an extension.” The date he cited for this was October 10. Quoting verbatim from Article 61 of the Constitution, President Granger went on to say, “An election of members of the National Assembly under Article 60 (2) shall be held on such day within three months after every dissolution of Parliament as the President shall appoint by proclamation.”
It hardly needs pointing out that there is no connection between the readiness of Gecom and the request for a three-month extension, and there is certainly nothing in the constitutional section quoted by Mr Granger to suggest otherwise. It is just another of the President’s creative misreadings. In addition, of course, it is not at all clear that an extension can even be granted by Parliament at this late stage. As we reported, with the ruling by the CCJ on June 18 this year that the December 21, 2018 motion of no confidence against the government was valid, general elections should have been held by March 21, 2019. The appeals to the CCJ, however, put the timetable on hold, so in its consequential orders on July 12 it indicated that a new three-month period had begun on June 18. This period expired on September 18 without the government seeking an extension.
It seems that by yesterday morning the President and his advisors had been prevailed upon to adopt a sensible position. Under questioning by the media at the Cyril Potter College of Education, the President made it clear that March 2nd 2020 was the date for general and regional elections and this was not conditional on the PPP/C returning to Parliament and providing its support for an extension.
As it is the government does not even need to go back to Parliament for this purpose. Under the constitution, if for some reason the National Assembly does not pass a resolution for an extension, or does not secure the required majority (two-thirds) for it, the President can still dissolve Parliament and fix an election date. And at the time he gave his address, Mr Granger knew very well that the opposition on several occasions had let it be known that it ruled out any return to Parliament to grant an extension. In fact in its initial response to the presidential announcement, the PPP said that nothing short of a signed proclamation “would be credible.”
In the view of the party, “[the] call for a return to the National Assembly is an attempt to blackmail the Parliamentary Opposition into extending the life of [the President’s] illegal government, so that he can secure some legal cover for the many illegal acts, including the approval of billions in contracts, which have been committed since the passage of the no-confidence motion on December 21, 2018.”
Be that as it may, the question still has to be asked as to why President Granger did not seek to issue a proclamation on the election date in the first instance. One can only hope that it is not a hint that he and his most senior legal advisor might toy with the possibility of seeking further delays, although given the pressure they are under, not just locally but also internationally, one would like to think that is unlikely.
Last week, the US, EU and the UK issued a joint statement saying that the administration was operating unconstitutionally by not holding general elections by September 18 this year.
More ominous from Mr Granger’s point of view, was the statement a few days ago from Baroness Patricia Scotland, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth. She urged him along with “all relevant stakeholders and institutions” to restore constitutional rule in Guyana by immediately setting an early election date in accordance with the constitution. The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group could potentially apply sanctions following a referral in the case of a lack of compliance. If Guyana were to be investigated, it would be nothing short of a humiliation for President Granger, and a demonstration to the world of how far we have retreated from the rule of law.
If what the Commonwealth had to say unsettled him, President Granger gave no indication of it in his address to the nation. True to form he persisted in the pretence that the government had respected the decisions of the courts and had upheld the constitution. One cannot help but feel, however, that even he knows that anyone with a modicum of common sense is aware that his position is nonsensical. At this point his recommended move to salvage whatever he can, is to issue a proclamation on March 2nd 2020 as the date for the General and Regional Elections.
