Constitutionality must precede reform

Sep 24, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

I feel compelled to offer my comments to a long but well-scribed statement emanating from A New and United Guyana (ANUG).
In this epistle, ANUG accurately chronicles the President’s, the Government’s and GECOM’s contumacious violations of the Constitution, their disrespect for the norms and practices of democracy, their abrogation of the rule of law, their contemptuous disregard for rulings from the Judiciary and, the President’s characterization as “hooliganism”, the citizenry’s exercise of their fundamental right and freedom to protest against these atrocities.
I am in complete agreement with this descriptive concatenation.
In introducing each of the occurrences in this chronology of authoritarianism, the author asks, rhetorically, “what do you do?” In the end, the author offers his solution: “substantive changes to the Constitution.” With this contention, I differ sharply.
While I hold resolutely to the view that constitutional reform is always requisite to meet the dynamism and exigencies of an evolving society, it is not the panacea that so many in this country perceive it to be.
I am fortified in this view by the fact that the greatest and largest democracies in the world – India, the United States of America and Canada – have rarely altered their respective Constitutions since independence, though they would have been confronted with enormous governmental, democratic and constitutional challenges over the decades. The United Kingdom presents us with nearly 2,000 years of democratic government without a written Constitution!
A brief overview of the Commonwealth will confirm that Guyana’s Constitution has undergone more reforms than perhaps any other. And I daresay, stands out, comparatively, as one of the more democratic in its devolution of political power to non-Executive organs.
So my friends, the solution is not and cannot be, merely, constitutional reform. What we are confronted with in Guyana is a colossal attack on constitutionalism, the rule of law and democratic ethos – all rolled up in one.
Therefore, unless there is a preparedness to comply with the Constitution, to abide by the rules of democracy and to respect the rule of law, then whatever the provisions of the Constitution are, it will continue to be trampled upon by those who do not embrace constitutionality.
The Caribbean Court of Justice’s recent exhortations in its consequential orders for the constitutional actors to discharge their duties with integrity falling on deaf ears, is but a stark reminder of this reality.
In the circumstances, there is sufficient empirical data to impel to the conclusion that constitutional reform will not engender constitutionality. Indeed, we run the risk of becoming a nation of serial constitutional reforms attracting an unending cycle of constitutional violations.
For the reasons adumbrated above, I demand unreserved and unqualified constitutional compliance, and perhaps then, we can resort to constitutional reform.
Mohabir Anil Nandlall, MP
Attorney-at-Law

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