The campaign trail is in full swing

Jan 16, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

The campaign trail is in full swing for the upcoming March 2020 National and Regional Elections. The major political parties are in communities across the country, detailing the messages to Guyanese. However, some of what is being said on the campaign trail is cause for serious concern.
Editor, I would like to look specifically at the Coalition’s campaign promise of constitutional reform, as it relates to the no-confidence provision in the Constitution of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana.
At the Coalition’s campaign launch, held on the 3rd January 2020, APNU/AFC Coalition Leader, Mr. David Granger, argued that he will amend the Constitution to deal with the No-Confidence Motion provisions. He said, “We are going to reform the constitution so that the nonsense they tried with us over the last 12 months does not happen again.”
This promise was more recently repeated by People’s National Congress Reform Executive, Basil Williams, at a community meeting in South Georgetown. He promised those in attendance that the Coalition plans to amend the Constitution to have a “definite term limit” in Guyana. He went on to say that when you win elections you have five (5) years in Office.
Mr. Williams added that this was done in the United Kingdom also, where legislation was passed to have fixed terms. Not only is this absurd, but a blatant lie.
Editor, the main function of the National Assembly is to hold the Government accountable for its action. The Constitution is the supreme law of the country and to amend the Constitution in such a manner, in effect mean, removing that accountability and transparency.
G. C. Malhotra, in the book ‘Cabinet Responsibility to Legislature’, wrote: “Collective responsibility in a parliamentary system implies that the Council of Ministers is always accountable to the Parliament. For Governance, and also for providing legitimacy to its authority, the Executive must, at all times, enjoy the confidence of the House.”
Further, on the Oxford Constitutional Law website, Anna Dziedzic, in an article titled ‘No Confidence Vote’, stated: “No confidence votes are the procedural expression of the defining feature of parliamentary systems of government, which is that the executive government is accountable to the parliament and holds that office only while it has the confidence of a majority of the elected representatives in the parliament.”
Editor, it is clear that Mr. Williams does not understand the difference between a parliamentary system and a presidential system.
Dziedzic explains that: “No confidence votes in this sense do not feature in presidential systems, in which the head of the executive government is directly elected by the people and does not rely on the support of the parliament to hold office. The impeachment process in presidential systems differs from no confidence votes in parliamentary systems, in that the grounds for impeachment are confined to serious misbehaviour and abuse of office. In contrast, a no confidence vote may be brought because the majority in parliament no longer supports the executive government, and no specific reason is required.”
As is stated above, there is no definite fix term for any Government, under any of the two systems.
What Mr. Williams failed to mention was the fact that there was a Fixed-Term Parliaments Act of 2011, which denied the prime minister the authority to unilaterally call a new election. However, under the new system, a Parliament would last a full five-year term unless a two-thirds supermajority voted for dissolution and early elections.
Editor, it would appear that the APNU/AFC Coalition wants to amend the Constitution of Guyana to allow for an Authoritarian Government in Guyana for five years. I, therefore, urge all right-thinking Guyanese to reject!

Sincerely,
Roodi Balgobin, MBA

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