What I want APNU and the AFC to immediately do for me

Jan 27, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The consensus among political thinkers is that a country’s existence rests on the judiciary therefore the judiciary is the most sacred institution in the land. Unless the constitution specifically bars the judiciary from acting in particular area of action, the judiciary can stop any human being doing what he/she wants to do.
All laws passed in Parliament can be rendered null and void by the judiciary if the judges feel that these laws violate the constitution or natural law. We have in Guyana the famous case of the Labour Amendment Act which the courts struck down under President Burnham as being unconstitutional. Recently the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruled that the Guyanese Attorney-General was in contempt of court when it did not implement a decision of the CCJ in relation to a judgement given to a Trinidadian cement company.
There is hardly any disagreement that the judiciary is the fountainhead of justice.
Next is the Legislature. Both the US and India have very democratic constitutions that draw heavily on the philosophical writings of the British thinker, John Locke. Locke in his book, “Two Treatises of Government” adumbrated the guiding principle of power in a country. It is called the separation of powers in which he elevated the role of the Legislature as the supreme power of the land.
Nowhere in his work does Locke assign any greater power to the Executive over the Legislature. He made it quite clear that the Legislature is supreme. There is nowhere to be found a constitution, including Cuba, where the Legislature is subordinate to the Executive. That just does not occur in a constitution because in the separation of powers in democratic countries, the ranking will always remain Judiciary, Legislature and the Executive in that order.
Interesting to note, in the US that after the Republican Party became the majority party in both Houses (Senate and House of Representatives), it promised to use the Legislature to annul President Obama’s historic health care bill. In no other country is Locke’s superior role of the Legislature over the Executive more pronounced than in the US.
When an American President faces a Legislature where his party is the minority, he faces the ghost of “tacking.” All minority presidents in the US fear “tacking.”
Tacking is when an American President gives his budget to the Legislature, where he lacks majority support, the majority party tacks onto the Bill, legal things it wants. In order to get his budget passed, he signs a Bill that has some additions that he and the minority party did not put there.
An example is when a restriction was put in the spending Bill in the case of not offering aid to countries that legalized abortion under President Clinton.
In Guyana since the general elections, the pronouncements of the PPP Government would make it appear that the Executive is superior to the Legislature. President Ramotar said that it is his government’s right to craft the budget. Roger Luncheon proclaimed that a stubborn Parliament will not be allowed to block the Government’s development plans.
It has not occurred to Ramotar and Luncheon that the PPP Government is dealing with an institution that even with our dictatorship constitution allows enormous latitude to the Legislature.
What APNU and the AFC have to do is what Ramotar and Luncheon have done. The two PPP leaders have announced that the Executive has power and that power will be used. Granger, Ramjattan, Nagamootoo, Trotman and Roopnaraine have to tell the ruling party that Parliament has power and it will use that power.
Eric Phillips of ACDA made an interesting comment in relation to my dismissal from UG. He says APNU and AFC should not participate in budget talks unless I am reinstated.
I will now take a different line. I do not want that precondition to be tabled. I want APNU and the AFC to call a meeting with the Government with the demand that the Government order an investigation with PPP, APNU, AFC participation and with an input from the Bar Association, the Guyana Press Association and labour to examine with documentation how my contract came to be terminated and what criteria were used to reject the UG Vice Chancellor recommendation for contract renewal of the Registrar, Mr. Vincent Alexander.
I cannot speak for Mr. Alexander, but I should be called to make a presentation with witnesses from my superiors at UG being called too. If the findings are against me and Alexander, we should accept our fate.

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