Dear Editor,
Last Sunday, I posted on my Facebook page that the APNU+AFC in their 2015 Manifesto, promised wide-ranging constitutional reforms within 100 days of winning the Government but that five years hence, not a single piece of reform was even drafted, let alone implemented.
I identified Moses Nagamootoo and Basil Williams who were assigned the responsibility for these reforms but who abysmally failed to discharge same.
This very short post agitated quite a stir on social media based upon the comments it attracted. Stabroek News was kind enough to reproduce it as a ‘letter of the editor’ on 2020/02/17. Thus far, it has yielded two letters in the press in response. One by Ruel Johnson and the other, by Sherwood Lowe. Unfortunately, the simple point enunciated in my post with uncharacteristic brevity eluded them both.
In a long epistle, Mr. Johnson resorted to that worn out device of blaming “both sides” when there is a lack of courage and fortitude to place blame deservedly on one. So he essayed that hackneyed story that both the Government and the Opposition were part of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Constitutional Reform, which did not meet as frequently as it should.
To Mr. Johnson I say:
1.) The PPP did not promise constitutional reform within 100 days as a major platform promise, the APNU+AFC did;
2.) The APNU+AFC Government drove the agenda of the 11th Parliament, not the Opposition;
3.) The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Constitutional Reform was chaired by Basil Williams and it is the chairman who determines frequency of sittings and in any event, the Government has a majority on the Committee.
In the circumstances, even if the PPP boycotted the process completely, there was nothing that stopped the Coalition Government from at least drafting a single piece of reform.
Mr. Lowe was a tad more ingenious. In his defence of this violation of a campaign promise, he argued that the APNU+AFC Government implemented some of the 1999-2000 constitutional reforms. A total non-sequitur, indeed. The promise was “constitutional reforms” not “implementation of 1999-2000 reforms”!!
The incorruptible truth is, that constitutional reform was promised but never delivered. It boggles the mind why Johnson and Lowe are burdening themselves with attempting to defend the indefensible, but the two who are culpable, Nagamootoo and Williams, choose to stay silent.
Yours faithfully,
Mohabir Anil Nandlall
