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“Coup d’état” fails in Guyana

Feb 01, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I am using the word coup d’état loosely as many commentators and journalists have done since the early 20th century. Literally, it means the army takeover of power. But in academic analysis and journalism, coup is referred to the removal of a government in general, except by elections. So if within a party, a cabal in the leadership removes the Prime Minister, you can say there was a coup. The term’s loose usage is now generally accepted.
This was the headline of my January 1, 2019 column, “Power grab in Guyana the world must condemn.” I didn’t want to use the term power grab again, so I settled for coup d’état. There was no question in my mind that the no confidence vote was constitutionally sound. What the leaders in the AFC and APNU were doing was simply engaging in a power grab or attempting a coup d’état.
What is interesting to note at this very minute is that no court has granted a stay of the Chief Justice’s decision, meaning that the government has to resign. As it stands, the court ruled that the political leadership of the government has been defeated. There is no other authority higher than the Chief Justice, except the Court of Appeal. Once the Court of Appeal has not heard a request for a stay, then the political leadership of the government has to resign. As I write, there is no stay. The APNU+AFC lost a vote of no confidence.
If today the APNU+AFC ministers including the president and the prime minister do not resign, then do we have a coup d’état in Guyana? I think it is unfair to parliament that the people’s representatives have defeated the ruling party and the ruling party says we are staying in power, because we will appeal for a stay of the Chief Justice’s decision. Suppose preparations for drafting the writ takes time. Suppose the appeal to the higher court takes weeks, why should the people’s representatives, that is, parliament, and the people of Guyana themselves, accept that a defeated regime must remain in power?
I am not voting for the PPP. I am not voting for APNU+AFC. I supported the no confidence motion because I want to see a power configuration in which the two goliaths are not allowed to run Guyana with a winner-take-all obsession. And that is what the PPP and the PNC have been doing since Independence.
Guyanese may recall that when the PPP became a minority presidency in 2011, it chose not to share power with the PNC or AFC. In fact, the AFC’s no confidence motion was premised on the PPP regime implementing the Procurement Commission Act. Had the Ramotar administration accepted that demand, there would have been no AFC motion, thus no need to prorogue parliament. What the PPP showed when it was a minority government was that it was not prepared to compromise with other parties.
The APNU+AFC coalition did the same thing. It won the House by one vote. The PPP lost the Region 8 seat by one vote. APNU+AFC won the top up of seats by less than 5000 votes. Yet as David Hinds continues to sing and sing to the point of ad nauseam, the leadership of the government behaved as if it had a landslide majority.
I want my editor’s permission to use the word asininity to respond to those who say that one vote in parliament should not topple the government. But the government won its 33 parliamentary seats by one vote. The GECOM Chairman, Dr. Surujbally refused a recount in Region 8. One PPP leader told me that the PPP will never forgive Surujbally because a certain powerful person in the US embassy instructed him not to allow a recount.
I want to use the word asininity again to describe those who feel APNU+AFC had a mandate to govern. What mandate do you have when you won parliament by one vote and central power by less than 5000 votes? Deep moral obligation required APNU+AFC leaders consult with a wide scope of stakeholders when the coalition got power in 2015. It contemptuously turned its back on those who helped to bring it to power.
All over this country, particularly at the University of Guyana, a government with a razor-thin majority or a majority that took the form of a coat of varnish that separated its numbers from the opposition’s behaved as if it were the receptacle of knowledge and refused to consult those who helped it win the election.
I close by saying, it is poetic justice they lost. I hope they lose again in the higher courts.

 

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