Guyana’s Court of Appeal recently ruled that the two-term limit which was inserted into the Constitution after amendments by the Parliament, to curtail the amount of times someone serving as President of Guyana can be re-elected, was unconstitutional.
The bottom line was a referendum was needed so that Parliament could make such a complex alteration to the Constitution simply by a two-thirds majority, despite the recommendations of the bipartisan Constitutional Reform Committee of 2000/2001.
This landmark and historic ruling by a majority of the Judges who presided over the case brought by Cedric Richardson, now effectively widens the populace’s choice as far presidential candidates are concerned, while protecting their sovereign and democratic rights.
In fact, it paves the way for the return of Bharrat Jagdeo to the presidency in 2020 if the Peoples Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) believes that he is the candidate that could propel them back into Office with a majority. Jagdeo would have to first agree in principle that he is interested in being re-elected to Office, despite his recent decisions to return to active politics, and stand for elections as the PPP’s General Secretary after being nominated on the floor of the Party’s January Congress.
He would also have to prepare his mind for the no doubt insurmountable challenges that lie ahead and the never-ending attacks on his character, previous tenure, and political stock which will be accelerated by the current regime and its public relations pundits.
It is therefore not passing strange that those who have for long hated the idea of Jagdeo’s return or the PPP’s return to power following the controversial and nightmarish elections of 2015, have resurfaced following the ruling by the Appeals Courts. Before the ink dried on the ruling, agents from ruling A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and its Coalition partner, the Alliance For Change (AFC) were out and about peddling falsities and misinformation aimed at besmirching the character of the Judges who presided over the case hoping that somehow Guyanese at home and abroad who feel that the ruling was bad in law, compromised or flawed.
No lesser a person that People’s National Congress (PNC) loyalist Emile Mervin in his letter to the Stabroek News on February 25, 2016, under the caption “The pieces of Jagdeo’s jig-saw puzzle are falling into place”, sought to suggest that a majority of the people were fearful of Jagdeo’s return to the presidency given his track record, whom he likened to Forbes Burnham’s. He said that the PPP won elections by depending on the numerical strength of its predominantly Indian support base and that sugar workers from that base were also fearful of this “comeback kid”.
Mervin could not be residing in Guyana and if he were, he could not be more wrong. Perhaps it would be good for those persons who share the same mind-set and thinking as Mervin to take a trip around the country in order to listen to the views of the masses. They would find that Jagdeo’s support is growing, despite the continued attacks on his person by the APNU/AFC machinery and talks about jail time and some scheme hatched by him to siphon off State assets before sharing them amongst a select group of businessmen and political allies.
Surely, Mervin knows that the support that the current Government enjoyed in 2011 and 2015 has dwindled not because of Jagdeo’s action, but its own action, inaction, incompetence and divisive politics. The APNU/AFC Government has given Guyanese more reasons not to trust the new kid on the block and to become more resentful of sweet talking politicians, and those who preach ethnic politics under the guise of political enlightenment as well as ethnic solidarity. Also, Jagdeo enjoys more support than other politicians including those who were expelled and resigned in high drama from the PPP to pursue their ambitions with the APNU/AFC grouping amongst Guyanese of mixed and African descent.
Many felt if he had not left the scene in 2011, notwithstanding the PPP’s right to choice its own Presidential Candidate in the person of Donald Ramotar who performed well in the midst of an opposition-engineered crisis during his tenure, the PPP would have not lost its majority or ended up in Opposition. Youths across this country are longing for Jagdeo’s return or the emergence of someone who possesses his frankness and economic competence if nothing else regardless if they are from urban or rural hubs.
The Government and its no doubt learned Attorney General is free to appeal the case at the level of the Caribbean Court of Justice as they said they will do but this would only cement further what is already carved out in stone. The pieces of the current Government’s jig-saw puzzle is falling out of place as Jagdeo is slowly unravelling them because the APNU/AFC regime can fool the some of the people, all of the time but not all of the people, all of the time.
