Stabroek News
June 1, 2001

The National Assembly yesterday unanimously passed a number of amendments to the Constitution to enforce the fundamental rights already enshrined.

But despite supporting the bill, speakers from the major opposition parties, led by PNC REFORM (PNC/R) Chairman, Robert Corbin, stressed the need for the government to act in good faith in the implementation of the provisions of the amendments. They cited examples of legislation being passed and there being undue delay in their implementation.

But speakers from the government benches rejected this, claiming that the lack of good faith was not on the government side. They cited the PNC/R's refusal to abide by the decision of the CARICOM Audit Commission as an example of this.

The bill, piloted through its second and third readings by Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Reepu Daman Persaud, provides for the establishment of four rights commissions, changes in the way members of the public, teaching and police service commissions are appointed, as well as for the establishment of a Public Procurement Commission among other things.

The changes remove the President's power to appoint chairmen of commissions. This has been transferred to commission members to do so by a consensual mechanism. The President's power to appoint the commissioner of police and his/her deputies after consultation with the Police Service Commission, has also been removed. The constitution now requires the President to reach agreement on the appointment with the Leader of the Opposition after consultation with the Police Service Commission.

Good faith

Supporting the bill, Corbin noted that among the lessons which should be learnt drawn from the confusion and unrest which followed in the wake of the 1997 and 2001 elections and the measures put in place to address them was that decisions taken in good faith should be implemented in similar fashion.

He cited as an example the delay in bringing the constitutional amendments agreed before the dissolution of the last parliament, in a timely manner to ensure they are enacted within the one-month timeframe agreed between President Bharrat Jagdeo and PNC/R leader, Desmond Hoyte.

"What faith can the people have in the words of our leaders if there are many incidents like this one?", he asked.

Corbin, noted that despite the bill being born out of consensus among the parliamentary parties in the last parliament, it was an indictment that rights already enshrined in the constitution needed these provisions to ensure that they were enforced.

Among the rights already enshrined, he said, were the right to life (article 138), and the right of assembly (article 139). But he said that enshrining them was not sufficient to stem the tide of extra-judicial killings such as that of Jermaine Wilkinson who was tried and executed before reaching the police station. To this there were shouts of "who killed [Walter] Rodney" from the government benches, to which the retort from the PNC/R benches was that they had eight years in which they could have discovered who had done so.

About the right of freedom to assembly, Corbin said that the constitution guaranteed the right of peaceful assembly and that a proposed amendment would guarantee the right to picket peacefully. However, these rights were breached when peaceful demonstrators were demonized as thugs and terrorists. He stressed that unless rights of the individual were protected the society would not progress.

The right not to be discriminated against was also being observed in the breach, Corbin charged, claiming that whole communities were being discriminated against.

The PNC/R chairman recited a litany of agreements which he said the government made but had reneged on and cautioned that while the amendments were intended to ensure social justice and the rule of law, unless the concerns were addressed, there would be no faith in the various rights commissions no matter how constituted.

A more recent act of bad faith, he claimed, was the decision of the government to announce its position on the proposal from Alcoa for the takeover of the Bermine operations ahead of the completion of the work of the bauxite resuscitation committee appointed by President Jagdeo and Hoyte. Corbin noted that the original timeframe for the work of the committee was reduced from three months to one month because of the urgency of the issue.



Extra-judicial

Corbin's charges did not go unanswered. Bernard DeSantos, SC, a former attorney general and now a PPP/Civic backbencher, asserted that the extra-judicial killings did not start eight years ago. He ventured that if Corbin's claims were right then Dr Walter Rodney and Vincent Teekah were still alive and Dr Joshua Ramsammy had not been shot and wounded.

He pointed out too that the freedom to demonstrate did not include lying down in the streets, explaining that this was obvious since there was no right to stand in the middle of the street to impede traffic.

Khemraj Ramjattan, another PPP/C backbencher told the Assembly that bad examples of faith were the PNC/R calling for the use of special identification cards to vote and then claiming that they were unconstitutional and its refusal to accept the results of the CAC, which audited the results of the 1997 elections.

Ramjattan also defended the announcement by Prime Minister Sam Hinds of the government's decision on the Alcoa proposal. He said that the discussions with Alcoa had been taking place before the committee was appointed. Also, he observed, the appointment of the committee was not intended to be a burden on government's decision making authority.

Investigate

Ramjattan said that one benefit that would flow from the establishment of the rights commissions, would be that they would allow investigation of claims that Afro-Guyanese were on the whole worse off than Indo-Guyanese and that Buxton was worse off than Enterprise. He explained that the powers given to the commissions would allow for the facts about the award of a contract to be known.

Ramjattan also addressed a concern by GAP/WPA parliamentarian Sheila Holder that the commissions would increase the load on the judicial system, which was already performing below expectations. He said that the Human Rights Commission, for instance, would allow the disadvantaged to have their grievances investigated and provide a less formal approach than the courts.

Winston Murray hailed the appointment of the Public Procurement Commission pointing out that the Assembly would be demonstrating that "we can agree on the people of calibre and expertise who will eschew partisanship in the execution of their duties."

He warned however that the commission, like others to be established under the bill, would only function if it honoured in the spirit and letter the legislation by which it was created.

Among the other speakers on the bill were Pauline Sukhai and Indra Chandarpal from the government benches and Raphael Trotman and Deborah Backer from the PNC/R benches.

At yesterday's sitting, Persaud also tabled three other bills containing additional amendments to the constitution, all of which have been agreed with the PNC/R. He also announced deferral of consideration of the bill to validate the constitution and the parliament of Guyana tabled last week to allow consultations to take place on it.

At yesterday's sitting, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Ralph Ramkarran, announced the receipt of and circulated, the list of findings by Justice of Appeal, Claudette Singh in the Esther Perreira elections petition.

Another departure from normal procedure was the appearance of Dhanram Kunjebeharry, assistant Sergeant at Arms, resplendent in his new uniform standing in for Sergeant of Arms Kenneth King, who was absent because of ill health.