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THE COURT IS THE ULTIMATE ARBITER

May 21, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

What is happening at City Hall, in the National Assembly, and in the relations between our political parties, is no joke. Some persons may find it funny but as old people forewarn, not all skin-teeth is joke.
The happenings at City Hall – where even in the midst of a Court ruling, the City Council by majority vote has arrogated to itself the power to appoint a Town Clerk – is nothing to laugh about. It is no laughing matter because if carried to its logical extension, it can result in anarchy.
The Court has ruled in relation to where power is reposed with regard to the appointment of a Town Clerk. There remains a challenge to this appointment. Not all the arguments have been exhausted. As such, it would have been advisable and most responsible for the Council to have awaited the outcome of the full gamut of legal challenges to the appointment of the Town Clerk before attempting to impose its own candidate on the municipality.
The law must be respected at all times, because without the law there is no protection for those who may one day be at the receiving end of unjust administrative actions.
Disputes over the law are best settled in the hallowed chambers of the Court. They are not settled in the streets or elsewhere. They have to be settled in a Court of Law.
The order and stability of society is predicated on their being mechanisms for the settling of disputes. In the days of Greek mythology, one could go to the Oracle, who was seen as the fountainhead of all wisdom, knowledge and justice.
In modern societies, the Oracle is the seat of justice. It is for this reason that when persons have to approach the Court to have depositions taken in one jurisdiction certified, the person having to do such certification so that the evidence can be admitted in another jurisdiction, is often referred to as the Oracle.
The Court is our Oracle. It is there that disputes over law have to be settled. Thus, when it comes to whether we have a legal Town Clerk and to whom that Clerk is responsible, it is best to have these matters dealt with by the Court.
What is happening in our parliament is also no joke. There are important constitutional issues which remain unresolved. One of the unresolved matters is the right to withhold presidential assent to legislation passed in the National Assembly.
It seems as if the opposition is holding firm to the view that the President is required to automatically give assent to legislation passed. And so the passage of the Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism Bill is being held up – at least on the part of APNU, because it is demanding that the President assent to Bills passed by the National Assembly.
Those who feel that the President is compelled to assent to their legislation should test their proposition in the Court of Law. They have the option of approaching the Courts – and they can go all the way up to the Caribbean Court of Justice – to have a determination made on the right to withhold assent as well as to determine whether it is constitutional for a non-Executive body to exercise Executive functions.
They can also ask the seat of justice to determine whether what exists in Guyana is a system of parliamentary supremacy as opposed to constitutional supremacy, because it does seem as if some members of the opposition are of the view that the wishes of the National Assembly cannot be opposed by the Executive.
Also outstanding is the issue of whether government spending in excess of the sums voted by the National Assembly is unlawful or if under both the Constitution and the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act, the Minister of Finance is allowed to spend and seek approval from the National Assembly.
These are all questions in law, and in deciding to become a sovereign nation, the powers to adjudicate on disputes in law have been reposed in our judiciary. If we cannot settle legal disputes through recourse to the Courts, then we are in fact violating that sacred pact which keeps anarchy at bay.
That pact is a social contract that prescribes that the Court is the ultimate arbiter to settle legal disputes and where the court has ruled, for that ruling to be respected. If that social pact is violated, then we are going down the road to anarchy.

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