Recent board appointments are unlawful- Datadin

Mar 10, 2019 News

By Abena Rockcliffe-Campbell
Attorney At Law Sanjeev Datadin is of the opinion that recent Board appointments are unlawful. This is mainly because the “ministerial plenary” took over a role that is not prescribed in the constitution.
The Official Gazette of March 9, 2019 notes that appointment of boards and committees.
The appointments of the Board for the Guyana Forestry Commission and the Guyana Prison Service Sentence Management were noted. Appointments for the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Committee and National Tripartite Committee were also made.
Yesterday, in an invited comment, Datadin said, “The position is quite simple. Everybody knows Article 106 which is the foundation of everything going on. Article 106 says that Cabinet shall resign.”

Attorney at Law, Sanjeev Datadi

Datadin said, too, that the effect of the Chief Justice ruling is that Cabinet is resigned.
He said that Article 107 however keeps the government in place. Datadin stressed that there is a distinction between Cabinet—which is executive authority—and government. “All the civil servants work with the government and they do not change, or should not change when a different party takes control.”

He said that the power exercised by the ministerial plenary which “approved” the appointments is actually an exercise of executive authority.
Datadin said that such powers ought not to be exercised now because the effect of the no confidence motion is to bring executive authority to an end.
“Government must run, people must be paid, and taxes must be collected, but executive powers must cease,” said Datadin.
The lawyer said that the so called ministerial plenary acted unlawfully.
Further, Datadin was keen to note, “The life of boards can go several years. What this government is appearing to do is load the boards with their personnel so notwithstanding whatever happens with an election they are going to have their persons in control of state boards.”

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