Moses, how can you destroy your legacy so carelessly?

Oct 23, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Writing in this newspaper yesterday, Moses Nagamootoo asserted; “The caveat is that the list has to be not unacceptable to the President. In a case where the Leader of the Opposition failed to submit a list, as provided by the Constitution, the President would appoint as GECOM Chairman, a judge, a former judge or a person qualified to be a judge. The President is not required to go beyond these qualifications…”
Where did Moses Nagamootoo get this interpretation from? The Chief Justice has ruled on a matter that most high school students who did grammar would know. The constitution unambiguously states that if you cannot find the three categories that Nagamootoo listed above then, any other “fit and proper” person is eligible.
The Chief Justice is pellucid – she ruled that the particular article in the constitution on the eligibility of the chairman does not insist on the three qualities Nagamootoo is quoted on above. The controversy over what “any other fit and proper person” means is over. It is a dead debate in Guyana.
The Chief Justice has ruled and until her interpretation is overturned that is what pertains. So the Prime Minister is manifestly wrong when he penned those words quoted above. But there is a big but.
If the list of the opposition is rejected then the president is obliged to pick a judge. But if you do not want a person that is not a judge, then you can keep rejecting list after list then in accordance with the constitution pick your judge. Is this what Granger did? If he wasn’t mischievous or devious and is not guilty of conspiracy then there has to be a good argument in support of him and it has to be deeply philosophical in its reasoning. This is what Nagamootoo’s polemic yesterday did not achieve.
How can a polemist argue with convincing ideas that the President was up to some conspiratorial invention? We have to look at the antecedents. In such an adumbration, the president’s defenders will not look good. Here we go. First, Mr. Granger kept insisting that “any other fit and proper person” also means the person must be a judge or have judge like qualities. Even when the Chief Justice asserted that the constitution allows for persons outside the judicial status, the President responded that it was her interpretation and he has his.
And what eventually happened? He picked a former judge. Surely, you cannot blame someone for thinking that he had a person in mind all these months. Secondly, he enumerated a list of criteria that the selectees must meet; one of which is experience in electoral matters. And what eventually happened? He chose someone who didn’t meet that criterion. Can you blame someone for thinking that he had already identified a candidate?
Thirdly, he is on record as defending the exit of public officials who held office way into their late seventies. He explicitly said that such departures make way for younger persons; which is what the government needs. Even if you do not see age as a factor in Justice Patterson’s appointment, then it automatically comes into the polemic because the president introduced it in the identification of public office holders. Fourthly, and this is where Nagamootoo’s legacy is entangled in some serious wild-growing weeds.
Mr. Nagamootoo is the Prime Minister in a two-party coalition (for this purpose, I’m treating APNU as the other entity rather than a coalition in itself). He is senior to Mr. Granger in terms of experience in politics. Mr. Granger told an interviewer he entered politics in 2010; that is seven years as against Nagamootoo’s 47 years.
Why in such a sensitive move as the unilateral appointment of a GECOM chairman, Mr. Granger couldn’t have sat down with Nagamootoo and the AFC and asked for assistance in the search for a candidate? It would have looked better than how it currently appears. This newspaper had a bold front page lead that read like this, “AFC played no role in selection of GECOM chairman.”
My question to Nagamootoo is, do you think in practical and moral terms, it would have been a strategic advantage if Granger had dialogued with his junior partner in government on such an issue?
My second question to the Prime Minister; do you think Granger could have walked another road? If no, fine. If yes, describe that other road. I will now describe that other road which I think would have strengthened our democratic culture.
Knowing Jagdeo would create a volcano over the unilateral pathway, Granger should have reached out to other stakeholders far and wide. Why didn’t he, Mister PM?

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