THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY SHOULD BE PUT ON NOTICE

Nov 22, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Guyana’s system of parliamentary democracy faces its sternest test today. This day will either go down in history as a day in which the country’s parliamentary democracy survived its gravest challenge, or it will go down as a day of infamy when democracy was trampled upon within our legislative assembly.
If the opposition political parties have their way, then a motion is likely to be passed today that would gag the Minister of Home Affairs and prevent him, ironically in the name of enforcing ministerial responsibility, from exercising that responsibility and his rights as an elected member of the National Assembly.
The international community should be put on the alert about the possibility of the overturning of democratic norms within the National Assembly this afternoon. The regional grouping, UNASUR, should in accordance with the “democratic clause”, inserted into its charter, be informed that constitutional and democratic rule, faces its gravest threat this afternoon in the National Assembly.
Guyana for the better part of its history as an independent nation has had a checkered history in so far as democracy was concerned.
For twenty-six of those years, Guyana’s parliament was an unrepresentative body, the product of shamelessly rigged elections. The result was that Guyana became a pariah in the international community, its name being associated with the subversion of democratic norms.
Guyana seems destined to once again suffer similar infamy if that repugnant motion seeking to gag an elected member of the National Assembly is passed.
If that motion is passed it effectively undermines parliamentary democracy. Parliament would have been reduced to a legislative pariah because it would have censored, unjustly, one of its own members.
This attempt at silencing a minister, thereby stopping him from any meaningful role in a parliament to which he was elected, is far more endangering to constitutional rule than the parliamentary putsch that occurred earlier this year in Paraguay when President Fernando Lugo was impeached without due process.
Then, the international community responded promptly, recognizing the dangers Lugo’s impeachment represented to democracy in the western hemisphere. UNASUR eventually suspended that country, effectively derecognizing the government that emerged following the impeachment which was deemed a rupture of the democratic process.
The silencing of the Minister of Home Affairs of Guyana by the National Assembly by way of a motion, would constitute more than a rupture of the democratic process. It opens the way for the opposition majority in the National Assembly to silence the entire government at its whim and fancy.
If this motion goes ahead, it would mean that parliament can effectively decide which minister should function and which minister should not function. It would effectively eviscerate ministerial participation in the National Assembly and hold the Executive hostage.
This possibility, alone, has dire implications which the international community cannot and is not likely to ignore. Not after Honduras and most definitely not after Paraguay.
If an opposition with a one-seat majority can move with such swiftness, and without any trial, silence an elected member of the National Assembly, what else are they not capable of doing? Is this an opposition that can be trusted with political power ever?
If a one-seat majority can be used to threaten and possibly subvert parliamentary democracy, imagine what would happen if this opposition gets its hands on Executive power on Guyana. What will it do then? This is all the more reason why the international community must be put on immediate notice about what is likely to happen today.
The motion to gag the minister should not be entertained. The Minister can only be gagged if he has shown contempt for parliament and has committed a breach of privilege. There is no such breach established and even if they were, the matter would have been required under the Standing Orders of the National Assembly to be sent to the Committee of Privileges.
The motion being proposed should therefore not be entertained. It does not establish a breach of privilege and is tantamount to effecting punishment without either cause or due process.

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