In a statement last week, the PPP/C inveighed against comments made by Attorney General Basil Williams during a panel discussion at the Marriott Hotel organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Guyana. He threatened “dire consequences”, if house-to-house registration was not allowed to continue. The release quoted him as saying: “They are willing to go to the Election with an anyhow list. They are ready for their properties, and all these things, to be subjected to those same post-election type of violence that we had in the past. I don’t want to say well y’all go, go to the Election, because the consequences would be dire.” We reported that more than five minutes of remarks falling between the first and penultimate sentences quoted above, had not been included.
The AG went on to say in answer to a question, that during elections, “tensions are exacerbated”, and blamed Mr Charrandass Persaud’s defection during the no-confidence vote last December as having primed and motivated the bases. “It might be difficult for us to calm them in a short space of time,” he was quoted as saying; “Everybody is ready. The worst thing you could do is have them turn up to vote and their name not be on the [voters’] list…is that what you want in this country? We always have to have in the back of our head how fragile our elections are… you know our deep-seated issues. For the last elections we’ve been moving towards inclusivity. You had no violence in 2011, in 2015 or even 2006. We owe Guyanese another peaceful election. You think the coalition supporters are happy about the act of treachery which has truncated the five years of development they were promised?”
The PPP/C stated that this was not the first time the AG had expressed himself in such language, since in May he had spoken about “unrest” if the CCJ ruled against the government. All that can be said is that the CCJ has since ruled against the government, and the party’s supporters have demonstrated more sense than Mr Williams gave them credit for.
The paradoxical element in the PPP/C’s own statement is that it too warns of “spontaneous and regrettable violence” if the house-to-house registration process continues, and there is mass de-registration. “This is an outcome that must be avoided by ensuring that there is constitutional compliance,” the party said. While berating Mr Williams for his intemperate mode of speech, therefore, they themselves demonstrated the capacity for utterances of a like character. It makes little difference that they have constitutional right on their side; violence is violence, and the dissensions which divide Guyana cannot be settled on the streets.
It might be added that there is no politician in this country in recent times who has been as inflammatory on the hustings and at Babu John as Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo. It is not, therefore, that the opposition party is wrong to deplore the AG’s statements, it is simply that where their own leader is concerned, that denunciation emanates from a tainted source.
In relation to the AG, there are two issues involved: one is his wild talk, and the other is the substantive issues that talk is designed to defend. On this occasion, it was the matter of the house-to-house registration, which, if allowed to continue, would take us well beyond the constitutionally required date of an election by September 18. As has been pointed out many times, not just by this newspaper, but also by any number of persons with expertise in and knowledge of the subject, the exercise is quite unnecessary to secure an acceptable voters’ list. Defects in the current list, which technically expired on April 30, could be addressed during the Claims and Objection period, and in any case, the coalition did not object to its use before, most recently for the purposes of the local government elections in November last year.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is all especially designed to postpone the election well past September 18. This finds reinforcement from the AG’s perverse reading of the judgment from the CCJ, and by extension, the Constitution. The Justices of the Caribbean court were unambiguous that the Constitution should be followed, and where that particular document is concerned, the average layperson, never mind the judges, does not require an interpreter to make sense of it. It mandates the holding of a general election within three months of the passage of a no-confidence vote unless two-thirds of Parliament agrees to an extension, the dissolution of Parliament and the resignation of the Cabinet including the President.
Yet the members of government, or some of them at least, seem challenged where the Constitution is concerned. The President’s apprehension of this document in the past has been idiosyncratic at a minimum, and now he is exhibiting that same quirk in relation to the rulings of what is Guyana’s highest court. If the Head of State’s understanding is idiosyncratic, that of the AG is incomprehensible. After all, he is a trained lawyer. That notwithstanding, as the government’s legal advisor, the position he has adopted is that the CCJ did not issue orders that the National Assembly should be dissolved, a date for Regional and General Elections fixed, or that the President should resign. This was all put into an August 5th letter from President Granger to Mr Jagdeo on Mr Williams’ recommendation, although the Opposition Leader had never asked that he resign the presidency, merely that he resign as a member of Cabinet, in consonance with the Constitution.
Since as said above, the Constitution is perfectly explicit on these matters, it did not require the CCJ to rule on them specifically, so the President is conveying the unfortunate impression that he is hiding behind his AG’s flawed advice for his own ends. In addition, in order to defend the indefensible, Mr Williams is using language which is confrontational and unprofessional, and the President as far as is known, has made no move to rein him in.
There may be two tiny slivers of hope on the horizon in that firstly, the President on meeting GECOM last week, appeared not to take such a hard-line stance on the house-to-house registration as he had done previously. Secondly, despite what her boss had earlier said, Ms Gail Teixeira, in a letter to this newspaper published on Friday, opened the possibility that if the house-to-house exercise were halted either through the action of the court, or as a consequence of GECOM’s own decision, elections could be held as soon “as early mid-October.” While this was beyond the deadline, she wrote, it was not too far removed from it. All of that appears to allow a little wiggle room for compromise, an elusive quality in our neck of the woods.
In the meantime, given the inevitable stress and tension the current situation is causing, all politicians, but particularly the AG, should refrain from the kind of language which their supporters could construe as creating a climate where anti-social behaviour will be tolerated, if not expected.
