‘A HOWLING PACK OF LEGISLATIVE HOSTILES’ IN ‘A BRAWLING PARLIAMENTARY SLUM’


A scathing editorial in the Kaieteur News last Friday shockingly castigated Members of Parliament in most unparliamentary language, from which the headline is taken. Here is another sample: “In some respects what Guyana has is not a legislative body, but a Roach Motel overflowing with a cast of creepy characters, a real life Bates Motel horror of shocks that frightens the public. It is obvious that the great majority of members have little by way of shame or nonnegotiable moral imperatives. This is a set of people paid well to perform and deliver the crass and the cheap. They like being the way they are. They do not prepare, do no research, have no pride. They falsify, they exaggerate, they dissemble and all the while revel with their fellows in what has been reduced to a brawling parliamentary slum. They care neither about the image projected nor the impressions left.”

Some time ago I explored in an article the issue of brawling in parliaments around the world during which, invariably, members are injured by fists, objects and missiles, including furniture, hurled from one side to the other. I discovered that misbehavior, especially by the opposition, plays well back home. Supporters of opposition parties who do not normally get their way, either become angry or frustrated, or both, and explode in apparent rage. Sometimes the reverse occurs where government members are the primary offenders.

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PASSING THE BUCK


Why has the Government failed to proceed with constitutional reform to implement the proposals contained in its manifesto for the 2015 general elections? According to Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, the blame for the delay lies at the feet of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Constitutional Reform. He said that a draft Constitution Reform Bill has been before the Committee but that the Committee has yet to consider it. As if in answer, a news item appeared on Friday stating that the Standing Committee will be meeting. The results of the meeting are not known at the time of writing.

Readers will recall that the coalition’s core manifesto proposals for constitutional reform for the 2015 elections include separate presidential elections, the person gaining the second highest votes becoming the prime minister and any party gaining 15 percent or more of the votes being entitled to a share in the government.

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WHICH FORK IN THE ROAD WILL THE AFC TAKE?


At the Georgetown mayoral elections on November 30, AFC Councillor Michael Leonard was nominated by his lone colleague. Having only two members, no one seconded the nomination and it was declared to be invalid. This event, embarrassing for the AFC, symbolizes the declining from its heyday in 2005 when Raphael Trotman, Khemraj Ramjattan and Sheila Holder, all MPs representing the three parties represented in the National Assembly – the PNCR, the PPP and the WPA – decided to establish the AFC. There was great anticipation by many who had become jaded with the main political parties, the PPP and the PNCR. Adding to the expectation was the fact that the landscape was arid. The WPA, the last party of significance that had attracted a degree of popular support, had been established in 1974. However, by the time free and fair elections returned in 1992, it had lost traction and failed to achieve significant electoral support. It obtained 2.4 percent in 2001, which it contested with the Guyana Action Party. The TUF, which was established in 1960, obtained 16 percent support at the 1961 elections. Returning at the 1980, after an absence during the 1970s, it could only persuade 2.9 percent of the electorate to support it. At the local government elections recently held, the AFC secured only 3.9 percent support, after having obtained 10 percent in the 2011 general elections.

The AFC is at a fork in the road. Logic would suggest that it should take the bend leading to independence. Necessity for survival, as the AFC would perceive it, would force it to take the bend leading to further subservience to APNU. At the time when the AFC was established, the nature of the Guyanese electorate was changing. The decrease in the Indian population and the growth of the Amerindian and Mixed populations, together with the dominance of ethnic considerations in politics, were having an impact on voting patterns. Most important, the middle class which had been decimated by impoverishment and migration in the 1970s and 1980s had grown again and was impatient with ethnic politics and insufficiently robust economic growth, which was possible as the latter Hoyte and early Jagan years had shown. The economic benefits which were later available to business did not reach the rungs of emerging entrepreneurs, while they saw favoured ones benefiting handsomely from ‘connections.’

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GUYANA STANDS BEHIND CCJ, SAYS V.P. GREENIDGE


The PNCR appears to have had no difficulty in accepting the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in its appellate jurisdiction. The CCJ was established in 2005. As a court of original jurisdiction its function is to interpret and apply the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas which established the Carribean Community. Hoping that it would replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) as the final court for most of the region, the Heads of Government agreed to clothe the CCJ with an appellate jurisdiction to determine appeals in civil and criminal matters for member states which cease to allow appeals to the JCPC and accede to the jurisdiction of the CCJ. In 1999-2000 the PNCR agreed, without having to be persuaded, to a recommendation by the Constitutional Reform Commission that the Constitution be amended to provide for Guyana’s accession to the CCJ when it was established.

In a statement published last Friday, Vice President Carl Greenidge reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to the CCJ. Notwithstanding adverse decisions and that only four Caricom countries so far have joined the Court’s appellate jurisdiction, the Government was satisfied with its competence and quality. The CCJ was in the news recently when it held that a law which provided that cross dressing for an “improper purpose” was unconstitutional. Also, the electorates of Grenada and Antigua, like St. Vincent a while back, rejected the CCJ as their final court in place of the JCPC. The steadfast support of the CCJ by the Government of Guyana is welcome to all lawyers and should be to all politicians.

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THIEVING AND CORRUPTION ARE NOW PART OF THE NATIONAL CULTURE


Firemen are first responders who are required to help and protect victims and their property. While purporting to do so, many fireman seize the opportunity to steal from victims. The stealing of property by firemen from the Fly Jamaica aircraft which had mechanical problems and landed with some difficulty at the CJIA, is a shameless and sickening disgrace. It was far more extensive than has been reported.

In the past, burglars invaded my late parents’ home and stole a number of items. Four or five policemen came to investigate and as they were leaving, one of them swiped my father’s wristwatch from a table. Some years later, firemen entered the Cameron & Shepherd building in Avenue of the Republic, where I then worked and sill do. The top floor was on fire. After they left, all movable objects of value that could be fetched out had vanished. Long before then, criminal activity by members of the disciplined forces and corruption in the society had been simmering and growing. Corruption by prison officers has reached alarming proportions. Little of consequence was done by successive governments to stop the slide. The result is that it has now escalated by leaps and bounds throughout the country. Thieving and corruption are now part of the national culture. It includes murder in the course of robbery and paid killings, including by members of the disciplined forces.

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