Dear Editor,
I used to read Mr. Ralph Ramkarran’s column, Conversation Tree, in the Sunday Stabroek without question because in the vein of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, ‘For Ramkarran is an honourable man’.
In his most recent column, “Dim political fortunes await Guyana” (March 10, 2019) the now leader of the political party ‘A New and United Guyana’ (ANUG) states among, other things, “CARICOM may be forced to take a stand against an unlawful Government having failed to do so between the 1970s and 1980s against the PNC and then eagerly doing so against a then lawful Janet Jagan Government in 1999.”
On a cursory read of Ramkarran’s statement it might appear innocuous. His Trumpian assault on CARICOM might even be forgiven as we would the US President’s diatribes on NATO.
But the statement’s deficit of facts, especially that last bit “lawful Janet Jagan Government in 1999”, in this era’s fake news proliferation it has dire implications for the masses from someone who recently launched his party’s bid for public office. What Mr. Ramkarran omitted to state is that he was the lead counsel when the validity of the Janet Jagan presidency and administration was litigated in the Elections Petition/Esther Perreira Case. A case he lost. In January 2001 Chief Justice Claudette Singh voided the 1997 General and Regional Elections hence the Janet Jagan government became illegal and thus unconstitutional. By this time Mrs. Jagan had resigned for health reasons and Bharrat Jagdeo was President.
However, Chief Justice Singh began the delivery of her ruling by stating explicitly, “I have no jurisdiction to order the President or the government to demit office.”
Mr. Ramkarran had made a proposal for the court to rule that:
“(1) All acts and things done by the National Assembly, the Court and all state agencies, bodies and institutions from December 15, 1997 are valid, lawful and binding.
(2) The National Assembly, the Government, and all state agencies, bodies and institutions shall remain in existence and shall continue functioning until the president is sworn in and are valid, lawful and binding.
(3) And all acts and things done by the above until the president is sworn in are valid, lawful and binding.”
What is even more grave is that Mr. Ramkarran also fails to state that even with the greatest constitutional crisis in our nation’s history thus created by Singh’s vitiating of the 1997 Election and thus the Janet Jagan government, in the Chief Justice’s definitive ruling she advised:
‘because of the consequence of the invalidity on the executive, parliament and all laws passed since 1997, in an act of necessity, to uphold the rule of law and to avoid a constitutional vacuum, the government is to remain in office and the National Assembly is still in session but with some noted restrictions until elections were held.’
To their credit amid their “dim political fortunes” at the time the PPP/C still managed to pull off three electoral successes in the polls on 2001, 2006 and 2011 and I have absolutely no doubt the APNU+AFC Government will likewise be victorious again when elections are called.
Yours faithfully,
Sherod Avery Duncan
Editor’s note: The 1997 election result was vitiated on the grounds of a mere technicality – the use of voter ID cards which all parties had agreed to. The vitiation had nothing to do with the actual results of the election.
