THE CIVIC IS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

Sep 06, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Since 1992, Guyana has had a parliamentary democracy. We have also had free and fair elections in this country and thus we have a representative parliament.
This parliament is supreme, even though there are persons such as Freddie Kissoon who would want to deny the democratic nature of the assembly by pointing to the fiction that the will of parliament can be overturned by an executive veto.
There is no such thing in Guyana. And the President of Guyana never vetoed any Bills sent to him. The Bills may not have been signed, but this does not amount to a veto.
Under our revised constitution, our President does not have a veto power. Under our constitution, the parliament passes legislative Bills. These Bills, as is the practice in parliamentary democracies, become law when they gain the assent of the Head of State.
In countries in which there is a titular President, this is often a mere formality since the President does not have the powers to veto and by convention is expected to give his or her imprimatur.
In Guyana we have a slightly different situation since we have a Head of State who is also the Head of Government. The framers of the revisions of our constitution wanted to preclude a situation whereby the will of parliament could be frustrated without compromising the right of the President to have certain laws reviewed or without entrusting to the President, Veto powers. As such it came up with the formula that if there is reason for the President not to give assent to a Bill, he has to send these Bills back to the National Assembly and once they are again passed by a prescribed majority, he is obligated to give his imprimatur.
I do not know why those Bills were never signed. I have never seen any objection being offered as to the reasons. I have seen no divisions between the ruling PPP/Civic alliance and the government over any contentious aspects of any of the pieces of legislation. In fact as far as I am aware, it was the government that introduced these Bills in the National Assembly.
It can therefore only be assumed that there was some administrative mix-up that caused these Bills not to gain assent. No one should however fall under the illusion that the reasons for the Bills not gaining assent was because they were vetoed. There are no such powers under the Constitution of Guyana. Sometimes even university lecturers need some education on this point.
The second irrefutable fact is that Guyana is indeed governed by a coalition between the People’s Progressive Party and its civic component. This coalition had a joint slate for the 2006 elections from which the government emerged. The PPP/C was the winning ticket and it is the PPP/C that is represented in parliament.
In substance of course, it can be argued that the Civic is a marginal grouping with little influence on what takes place in parliament and within the government. However legally there is a civic component which is represented in both the parliament and the government.
It was presumed by many political observers that the Civic component would come to an end in the 2006 elections. It did not, perhaps because the PPP felt more comfortable with a PPP/C brand rather than simply reverting back to the PPP and stirring all kinds of unnecessary debates.
When Dr. Cheddi Jagan conceived of the Civic component it was a genuine attempt by him to reach out to a wider range of forces so as to have a more presentable image to the electorate in the 1992 elections. He may have grossly exaggerated the influence of the civic faction since it is generally accepted, I believe, that they did not really bring large constituencies into the PPP but rather brought certain faces which have added some merit to the alliance.
The PPP will have a hard time dumping its civic component. It will, if it does this, have a hard time in explaining why it did so if this was indeed a genuine alliance between the PPP, business and the professional class. But in the end, I believe that the Civic will fade away.
The PPP had an opportunity at its last congress to make a spirited decision to incorporate elements of the business and professional class into the ranks of the party. It did not move in this direction. But it is clear that the civic component will in the future either have to become PPP or face extinction.

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THE CIVIC IS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

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