The PPP is threatening a dangerous precedent in blanket use of the presidential veto

Feb 09, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The use of the veto in presidential democracies is rare. It is even rarer in Westminster democracies.
The world’s most famous presidential system, the United States of America, has used the presidential veto only 2,564 times in its entire 237-year history since 1776. This is a country that passed over 219 bills in its last congress from 2011-2012, one of the slowest legislative periods.
The USA has passed more than 50,000 bills in its entire 237-year history. It has used the presidential veto around 5% or less of all the bills it has passed.
If the greatest ever presidential democracy has sparingly used the veto when the president of that country (the USA) is directly elected by the people and typically wins a majority of the votes, why does this PPP government think it has the right to use a blanket veto to block everything passed by a National Assembly elected by the people?
In fact, there have been 15 out of 43 times that a US president won less than a majority. Since 1901, the USA has had 57 Congresses (each Congress is elected every 2 years except in times of war).
In 25 of those Congresses, there were minority governments, meaning no party controlled the Congress (legislature) and the Presidency (executive) together, a situation that is similar to Guyana since the November 2011 election.
Out of a total of 114 years of American electoral history, some 50 years (44% of all years) since 1901 have been minority government for the party holding the presidency. Eleven of the nineteen US Presidents since 1901 have faced minority governments.
How have those Presidents used their veto power? There have been 1,688 vetoes from US presidents since 1901. The minority presidents have used their vetoes a total of 796 times since 1901, but some of these presidents only had minority governments for one Congress (just two years).
As such, I divided the total use of vetoes by the actual number of congresses the President faced a minority government in.
My calculation puts the use of the veto at 499, but considering the veto would have been used more during minority governments, I use 650 vetoes used during the times US presidents held minority governments. 650 vetoes from minority presidents equal 38.5% of all vetoes used by all US presidents since 1901. Considering that 44% of the time US governments were elected they were minority governments, the use of vetoes is lower than the number of times minority governments were elected.
Based on available Congressional statistics from 1947, the divided governments (minority governments) in the USA since 1947 passed 1,346 pieces of legislation between 1947 to 1949; 3,165 between 1955 to 1961; 2,762 between 1969 to 1977; 3,923 from 1981 to 1993; 2,839 from 1995 to 2003; 585 from 2007 to 2009 and 151 from 2011 to 2013 (to date).
From 1947 (the presidency of Harry Truman) to 2012 (presidency of Obama), there have been 14,771 bills passed by the US Congress of which the US presidential veto has been used roughly 468 times. That is 3.16% of all bills passed by Congress.
So when this arrogant government stands before this country with brazen pomposity and utters it will issue a blanket veto to every single piece of opposition legislation, it is a frightening descent into dictatorship, despotism and totalitarianism that threatens to engulf this country.
If that paragon of democracy known as the United States of America, which has had a presidency for 237 years has not made this reckless use of the presidential veto, what entitles the PPP to think it has the right to use the presidential veto in a democratic world of Arab Springs in this despotic fashion?
What gives this band of brigands the right to use this fraudulently obtained constitution and its powers, secured by thievery, in this fashion that is an affront to every presidential system and to even basic standards of democratic governance?
When one looks at the times the US president has used the veto, one understands that this power was used not for aggrandizement of filthy power-drunkenness or for selfish pursuit of power while the country burns and turns into a cesspool. The veto has been used fearlessly for the good of America.
One of the biggest users of the veto was US President Harry Truman who fought a Republican-dominated Congress to prevent laws restricting unions, civil rights, national healthcare and tax increases on the rich.
The PPP is threatening to use the veto for the good of those who have hijacked the PPP and believe they have to right to steal this country from under its people.
The PPP will lose power sometime in the future and it must be aware that its acts of misconduct offer those who replace it an opportunity to claim it as precedent and they are bound to follow them.
Only a party that is positively suicidal, knowing it is in terminal decline, would ever apply a blanket veto to very law passed by an opposition-controlled legislature.
It is no coincidence that the Americans have called on the PPP to call local government elections. This nation (the USA), which is intimately familiar with minority governments, will recognize PPP’s use of the blanket veto to all bills passed by the National Assembly as nothing more than dictatorship and an attempt by a callous minority government to destroy the legislature, expression of the electorate, and democracy and separation of powers.
The West knows there is a thin line between use of the veto and dictatorship by use of the veto. It is for this reason that in the USA, since 1947, the veto has been used only on 3.16% of all bills passed during minority governments and these were some of the most fractious periods in American political history.
If the PPP thinks it will use the veto to utterly silence Parliament and deny it its inherent right to pass laws on the people of Guyana’s behalf, it will face the wrath of the Guyanese people and of the USA and other democratic heavyweights.
It is an affront to the dignity of the state, the rights of the people, democratic governance and to the constitution, for any government to use a blanket veto, particularly when that government’s president has no problem signing bills approved by the National Assembly giving it money to spend.
The PPP must be reminded that gone are the Cold War days when America supported dictatorships for geopolitical reasons. Nowadays, America is backing democracy and good governance. An old Stalinist party with a politburo that has killed democracy within its own party may be tolerated, but a government from those pretentious communists that uses its executive power in draconian veto fashion to block and deny the expression of the electorate will not be tolerated in this new age of democracy. The PPP is on thin ice. Walking carefully is not even an option anymore. It should stand still. And think.
M. Maxwell

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