Drawing a line

The citizens of Guyana will have to draw a line in the sand on the creeping subversion of the rule of law that is a disturbing sign of a return to the dark days of the PNC’s dictatorial rule between 1968 and 1985 under Forbes Burnham, the party’s “founder leader”. There are too many examples abounding of institutions outside their legal remit taking unilateral political decisions that plunge their countries into the political abyss.
It usually begins with seemingly innocuous actions without the authority of the civilian agencies to which they answer. When this intrusion is part of a pattern of violations of the rule of law, the vigilance of the citizenry becomes critical since dictatorships are usually constructed in broad daylight, while the citizens are inattentive. Earlier this week, the acting Chief Justice ruled that the unilateral action by President David Granger to annul the leases of several West Coast Berbice farmers was illegal. It is very hopeful that the court has drawn its own line in the sand against a president who had labelled a prior ruling as “perception” and that he is entitled to his own “perception”. We do not believe this latest ruling will serve to disabuse the President of his misapprehension of the “separation of powers” doctrine and his encouragement of the traducing of the rule of law.
Not surprisingly, the President’s cavalier attitude has affected other officials of his government and almost every day one can read of further transgressions. The secreting of a “signing bonus” by Exxon in the Bank of Guyana (BoG) for over a year by two senior Ministers – the Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman and the Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan – and not the Consolidated Fund as mandated by the Constitution (Article 216) is only the most egregious transgression.
The fact that the two Ministers can try to alternately stonewall and offer patently specious “reasons” for their breaking of the law demonstrates their contempt for the Guyanese people, but it is grounded in them following a president giving short shrift, if any, to even the highest laws of Guyana. What has been very unfortunate is the partisan lines along which the citizenry has been split towards these transgressions, evidently oblivious to the encouragement it offers to our country’s inevitable slide into authoritarianism, at best, and to a dictatorship, at worst.
The most recent undermining of the rule of law, ironically, but, maybe prophetically, just occurred in the National Assembly, the locus of the promulgation of the laws of this country. The Speaker invoked his power via a procedural rule, to deny an MP’s substantive right to speak on the issue before the House in fulfilment of his duty as a representative of the people. While one may argue that the Speaker should not have allowed procedure to trump substance, he was still technically acting “legally”.
What followed when the MP refused to sit, however, demonstrated the extent to how far Guyana has proceeded on the slippery slope towards a dictatorship. Policemen entered the Parliament and manhandled (there were no female Police present) a ring of MPs in attempting to arrest the silenced MP. The 500-year-old tradition that led to the rule where no Police or even the President can enter Parliament without its permission was broken with impunity.
In 1642, the then Speaker of the House of Commons, said to King Charles I, who tried to enter the House to arrest some MPs: “May it please Your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here, and I humbly beg Your Majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what Your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.”
The chastened King departed and the rule was set in stone for Assemblies following the British Westminster tradition. Our Speaker claimed he did not summon the Police. There must be an inquiry immediately to ascertain who did and condign action should follow.