The tragic story in and of Guyana’s Parliament

Sep 12, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The fear of falling seriously ill over the stress of his job as the Clerk of the National Assembly must have touched the heart of everyone who read about it in this newspaper yesterday. Here is a long-serving public servant openly telling the nation that his job in the 10th Parliament is so stressful that he feels if he does not leave he will fall ill and die.
Should the Guyanese people raise their voices about the plight of Mr. Sherlock Isaacs? If we do not intervene and we hear about his collapse then what happens after? How do we feel as humans if something terrible should happen to Mr. Isaacs’s health and we had the power to help him and we didn’t?
From what was spoken by Mr. Isaacs, it seems that he wants to vacate his position but is concerned about his benefits. Who in Guyana has the authority to help Mr. Isaacs?
It would seem that it would be the President but this in itself raises an anomaly in Guyanese politics that does not obtain elsewhere. It appears more than inelegant that it is only the President that has the power to grant Mr. Isaacs his request.
Surely that is a situation that ought to be changed. It ought to be the Speaker or some select committee that should have the authority to discuss Mr. Isaacs’ contract.
As it turns out, the President did not approve Mr. Isaacs’s request to retire with his pension. It would be wise for the President to reconsider his decision given Mr. Isaacs’s fear about his health.
While addressing a gathering in Region Five, the President in reference to the resignation of the Director of the UG campus at Berbice said that no one is indispensable. Mr. Ramotar cannot be that shortsighted to think that there can be no replacement for Mr. Isaacs.
More importantly, President Ramotar should give deep consideration to the health fears of Mr. Isaacs
The plight of Mr. Isaacs tells a tragic tale of the life and nature of this country. The Clerk of the National Assembly who has a long record of service to the House has publicly exclaimed that the 10th Parliament is the worst of all the previous sessions that he has experienced and he certainly has been around a long time.
This certainly tells a sad story of our Parliament. The 10th Parliament should have been the most fruitful in Mr. Isaacs’s career. It should have been the Parliament where he would have seen the evolution of bipartisanship that Guyana has not witnessed since self-government more than fifty-five years ago.
Isn’t it ironic that what should have been his finest moment turned out to be Mr. Isaacs’s worst moment? And the reason for that is the rejection of the PPP of the parliamentary majority of the opposition. Herein lies the heart of Mr. Isaacs’s predicament (no pun intended).
The PPP has not publicly said it but all Guyanese know it – the PPP will not accept its parliamentary minority status. It is not going to accept legislation that originates from the AFC or APNU or both. If the nation sides with Mr. Isaacs and call upon the President to pay him his benefits and let him enjoy his health, his successor will not be given an easy task.
Once the PPP repudiates the opposition’s control of Parliament the succeeding Clerk of the House will have to face the fire of bitter divisions
The other side of the coin is Mr. Isaacs’s crusade to help his country when his country may feel that he is offering nationalism that derecognizes certain laws of the land and the Constitution itself. His country may also feel that his nationalism is being exploited for narrow political reasons. In this regard one cannot help but feel for Mr. Isaacs but the Clerk knows that he has to play it as stipulated by the law.
Conventions are not laws. Conventions have no legal standing in the eyes of the Constitution. If it is a convention for a new Commissioner of Police to present his appointment to the army chief that does not mean the convention cannot be broken if the Commissioner says there is no law that says he has to go to the army chief and show him his instrument.
In the same vein there is no law and there is nothing in the Constitution that allows the Clerk to forward Bills to the AG’s chambers. Despite his good intentions, Mr. Isaacs should play it safe and send the Bills directly to the President.

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The tragic story in and of Guyana’s Parliament

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