The right of the National Assembly to cut the budget

Apr 20, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor:
I know this issue has been dragging along for some time and many people including competent lawyers have expressed opinions on it, but it is yet unresolved. The Speaker of Parliament has given his decision and we yet await the ‘final ruling’ of the Chief Justice. It is in that context I would like to express an opinion.
Under our Republican Constitution, Parliament has two separate components – the National Assembly and the President. The two together constitute Parliament, the sovereign and supreme legislative authority of the country, whereunder the National Assembly passes Bills but the President must assent to them before they become law. The giving of his assent is not a mere formality, as in England, and cannot be forced, since he must act in accordance with his own deliberate judgement.
Even though we have an Executive Presidency, the structure of our National Assembly is based largely on the Westminster model and in its operation and function we look mostly to the British House of Commons.
In a Parliamentary Government, like in the United Kingdom, the executive Branch is more or less fused with and dependent upon the Legislative Branch, which controls the executive by passing or rejecting its Bills and by making Ministers answerable to the House for their actions.
In a Presidential Government, like ours, there is a far clearer line of separation between the powers of the Executive and Legislative branches, and the President depends upon the Constitution and not upon the Legislative Branch for his authority. In fact the Legislative Branch depends upon the President’s assent to pass its laws. He is the Head of State and the Supreme Executive Authority, which makes him the Government, with the authority to appoint members of the National Assembly, and sometimes others, to exercise various segments of his executive powers.
The Minister of Finance is one such appointee, who is concerned with money matters, chiefly how to raise money to pay the expenses of Government. To govern, the President will need money, and he will also need to have other laws passed, as the constitution says, for the peace, order and good government of the country. This is where the National Assembly can exercise control over the government, and this is also why the government needs to have control of a majority, or in the case of a minority government, be assured of majority support, in the National Assembly.
In theory, any member of Parliament can present a Bill, but in actual practice, as part of the process of governance, Bills are presented to the National Assembly by Ministers to meet the needs of their departments. The development and presentation of a Bill by a Minister, who is an appointee and agent of the Supreme Executive Authority, is an executive act of governance, and that Bill can be changed or withdrawn only by the Executive Authority.
In the National Assembly the Bill is read and then if necessary debated, and in the course of debate or at a committee stage the opposition could suggest changes and amendments, but in the end the Minister will have to decide whether or not to accept those changes. If he does not, the Assembly has to accept the Bill as it is or defeat it. The Assembly cannot make its own changes and then proceed to pass the Bill. If they do they will be performing an executive function, an act of government, which is clearly outside the powers of the Legislative Branch.
In England, the House of Commons has pre-eminence in money matters, and it controls taxation and the supply of money to the Government. There the governing party is always in a majority or could control majority support. The Party and any other supporting element are intimately involved in the development of the budget long before it is presented, and at presentation, the Commons reviews the main estimates and then votes on whether or not to support them. In fact the passing of the budget is a vote of confidence in the government, and the government, needing that vote, makes sure the budget is acceptable before it is presented. Any attempt to chop or butcher it is unknown.
Guyana now has a minority government which cannot pass its budget on the strength of its own votes. What all other democratic governments the world over in such circumstances do is seek to enlist the support of another party to get majority support in Parliament. They have to negotiate with that party while they are developing their budget, and may sometimes have to make major concessions for its support.
It happened in Canada with the first Harper government which was a minority. He had to negotiate with the NDP and grant major concessions to Mr. Leyton for his support in Parliament, outside of a coalition. He governed successfully and then came back to win a majority government.
In Guyana that position is stymied by one simple fact. While I believe the PPP genuinely wants to practice good governance, it seems to believe it cannot possibly let the public see that a minority government can be a success, for it fears it will never again get a majority, so it cannot co-operate with the Opposition, and must keep on behaving as if it thinks it is the majority.
So when the Speaker ruled that the Opposition can cut the budget he was entering new territory.  Maybe he thought that desperate times required desperate measures, for how else can the National Assembly control a minority government that refuses to cooperate?
What he in effect did was to implicitly abrogate old existing conventions about the separation of powers and create a new one to the effect that where a minority government does not have majority support in Parliament and refuses to cooperate with the majority opposition to construct the budget, when that budget is presented, the National Assembly as the supplier of money to the Government, can commandeer the functions of the Executive, and over the head of the Finance Minister reshape the budget to suit itself, pass it, and then leave it to the President to assent or not.
If the President assents, that is the end of the matter. If he does not then the Government falls and new elections must be called. Whether all this is in keeping with constitutional provisions is another matter. To say that Guyana is now in uncharted waters is to put it mildly.
A new election at this point in time may not help, for what with APNU not yet shaping up as a credible alternative and with the AFC some distance behind, the results could be the same. What is most urgently needed is amendment of Article 177(2) (b) of the Constitution to give the Presidency to a group capable of commanding a majority in the National Assembly. Unless this is done, I do not know where we are heading, and I could quite understand the apparent reluctance of the Hon. Chief Justice to further deal with this matter.
Kumar D. Doobay

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