The Chief Justice, Nigel Hughes and opposition supporters

Mar 03, 2013 Letters

---

Dear Editor,
Many, many times in my long career as a public commentator, I was tempted to wild chauvinism by publicly proclaiming that I was the first person in Guyana to direct the nation to this fault and that fault of people, institutions and organizations when these very entities became the storm of controversy. Of course I haven’t done so (maybe once I think). You just shrug your shoulder and get on with your analyses.
I was the first Guyanese in recent times to pen a critical note on the thinking of the Chief Justice. Any person who followed my media career would know that I openly questioned the decision of the Chief Justice, Mr. Ian Chang for fixing Mr. Jagdeo’s libel writ against me eleven months after the President filed his affidavit.
It remains a record in the history of litigation in this country and I go so far to say the world. Nowhere in the world a libel hits the open court eleven months after the plaintiff filed papers. I have written on this inexplicable decision of the Chief Justice several times in both the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News
I have not been impressed with many of the decisions of the Chief Justice, some of which I think are highly flawed. I have written enough on his Guyana Cricket Board imbroglio to get into that again. But two recent pronouncements of the acting Chief Justice I reject totally. I believe they cannot stand up in the CCJ because they are highly flawed. One is the budget cuts. I think there is a constitutional role for Parliament to cut any item in the budget.
Secondly, his ruling on Parliament’s decision that precludes Mr. Rohee from speaking. It is my opinion that Parliament is constitutionally empowered to do so. And there are precedents to learn from. Previous Speakers (particularly Sase Narine) had prevented Members from addressing the House. I also believe that it is outdated to have just one particular judge hearing all constitutional matters. The Chief Justice heads the Constitutional Court and is the only judge presiding .
Now that the Chief Justice has ruled on many of the complaints about the Opposition’s behaviour in Parliament taken to him by the AG and in favour of the AG, the letter of Mr. Nigel Hughes (“Guyanese may now be willing to urge their political representatives to talk about urgent constitutional reform before another election,” SN, March 2, 2013) will be on extreme importance to all the people who voted for APNU and the AFC
Mr. Hughes rightly asked the question  – what is the purpose of the opposition in Parliament if Parliament has not got legal, constitutional and political power? Mr. Hughes’ letter is important not only for its content but because of who wrote it. He is the Chairman of a powerful opposition party in Parliament.
This is the second time he brought up the issue; the first was when he was interviewed by Mr. Yesu Persaud on television. Are there others thinking the way of Mr. Hughes in ANPU? I know of two such persons – Clive Thomas who sits in the leadership council of APNU and David Hinds who as Thomas’s alternative in that body
The Chief Justice’s rulings on the confrontation between the Legislature and the Executive in Guyana whereby the Executive has unchecked power calls in focus the arguments of one of philosophy’s great thinkers, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes reasoned that humans are essentially wild in their instincts (a similar line Freud took more than two hundred years after Hobbes but for different reasons) therefore governments need to have a large residue of absolute power. He contended that democratic government and the free reign of these instincts are antithetical
To check the unlimited demands of Homo sapiens, absolute government is needed but not to rule absolutely over Homo sapiens but to save humans from their own innate self-destruction.
The result was a social contract in which the Absolute Ruler is given absolute power and that power must be used for the specific purpose of protecting Homo sapiens. What untold numbers have overlooked when discussing Hobbes is that he left an exit clause for the Ruler’s subjects to remove him. Hobbes justified the removal of the Leviathan once the Leviathan broke the social contract and the Leviathan does so when he fails to offer security and protection to Homo sapiens. In other words, even absolute power has accountability clauses
It appears in Guyana that there are no checks and balances on the power of the Executive. If Parliament cannot have its motions and Bills accepted by the Executive, then the Guyanese Executive is even more powerful than Hobbes’ Leviathan. But here is where Hughes’ letter comes in and the role of opposition supporters. From where does the power of the Executive derived? Clement Rohee answered that last week in a television interview. He said he is not worried by the opposition’s action against him because his party the PPP was voted into power. It means then that only the votes for the PPP counts. Hughes then is right. The Parliament is a dead duck
Frederick Kissoon      

---

---