A ton of bricks becomes a box of feathers

Jul 20, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The AFC and APNU are in agreement that the Finance Minister should be cited for criminal behaviour over spending sums of money from the 2014 National Budget that was not authorized by the National Assembly. Both parties claim that the Minister is in violation of the law and the Constitution.
The AFC has written to the police on the matter and has forwarded a notice to the President of the contemplation of a no-confidence vote, with the unambiguous statement that the Minister committed a serious constitutional assault that the AFC cannot accept. For the sake of argument, let us say that the AFC and APNU are right. Then a compelling question has to be asked. Why did the Minister do it?
I did a little research Friday afternoon. I spoke to three lawyers, and two prominent, experienced citizens, and they feel that the Minister is indeed in violation of the law. My opinion on the issue has been guided by what I was told by those persons. So my opinion is that the Minister has committed a violation.
Again for the sake of argument, let’s accept that the Minister knew what he was doing. Why did he do it knowing that the Opposition would check the laws and come down on him like a ton of bricks? But here is the thing. The Minister probably knew that the opposition would come down on him, but not like a ton of bricks but with a box of feathers.
What Minister Ashni Singh is alleged to have done is what the Executive (meaning the presidency and the Cabinet) has been doing since the 2011 elections. The Executive has not been hindered, deterred or stopped by the majority parliament and in turn has continued on its authoritarian pathways with concomitant dismissal of the power of the National Assembly.
If you believe that Singh is in the wrong, then you have to accept that Singh’s behaviour is a denial of the supreme power of Parliament. Let’s put it in layman’s language and you will see the theoretical implications which have serious consequences for the opposition, but particularly, the PNC.
Parliament gave the Executive a sum of money to run the country. That sum of money is a law that was assented to by the President. Its name is the Appropriations Act 2014. In that law, the sum of 500 million for buying land in Xanadu was taken out. The Minister then went and spent the same 500 million on the land in Xanadu.
The crux of the matter here is that if he did that and it was a violation of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act, then it is tantamount to him saying – I am not accepting the power of Parliament. The theoretical implication of this, and so many other contemptuous acts against Parliament, is that the PPP does not recognize and accept the results of the 2011 elections.
I have written it several times in these columns and I am repeating it again – the opposition from January 2012 onwards should not have recognized the authority of the Executive if the Executive refused to accept the authority of Parliament.
The PNC, in particular, would be hard pressed to defend its record if it tells its supporters that since 2011 the PPP has shown courtesy and respect to Parliament. The very issue that has enveloped the Minister of Finance is about the Executive’s flippant dismissal of what Parliament voted for in the form of the Appropriations Act 2014.
The PNC has had to endure three decades of PPP’s global hysterical cry that there were no free and fair elections. Any schoolboy would tell you free and fair elections become farcical and fancy elections if the results are not accepted by the most important stakeholders and the citizenry. The theoretical position I am submitting is that if the 2011 elections results have resulted in the weakening of Parliament, then the election’s integrity is called into question.
I find it difficult to understand how the PNC, berated for decades by the PPP for its disrespect for election fairness, could now accept what a minority government is doing to Parliament whose shape was as a result of a majority of votes.
The PNC, which gets parliamentary solidarity from the small opposition party, the AFC, has in effect been empowered by the results of the 2011 elections. But that empowerment has been dismembered by the political non-recognition of Parliament by the PPP, and that political non-recognition has become legal non-recognition, given the Ashni Singh action. The ball is in the PNC’s court.

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A ton of bricks becomes a box of feathers

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