In our edition last Sunday we carried a report about a directive issued by Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon, to pay an employee of the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) who had been summarily dismissed on August 13, 2001, the sum of $886,766.

An abbreviated account of the sequence of events which led to this payment is as follows:

The former employee in question, Mr Dexter Cummings, had been the beneficiary of two scholarships, the last one involving a degree programme at the University of Guyana. On completion of his studies, he had declined to take up the positions offered to him by the GFC, although he had been bonded to the commission through the Public Service Ministry. It was following this refusal that he had been summarily dismissed. He then appealed to the Minister responsible for forestry, Mr Sash Sawh, who requested that the GFC board rescind the termination letter until the matter could be reviewed by a committee.

It was at this point that the GFC board asked the commission's attorney, Mr Khemraj Ramjattan, for a legal opinion on the issue. That opinion was unequivocal, stating that the Minister had "absolutely no right, duty or power to order a rescission of the dismissal of Dexter Cummings by the Commission." He went on to state that neither did Minister Sawh have any power to have the decision reviewed by a committee of his making.

However, the GFC itself appointed a sub-committee to look at the question to which both Mr Ramjattan and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Fisheries were invited. That sub-committee found that the GFC had acted entirely properly in the matter of Mr Cummings, a position which was endorsed by the full board at its 147th meeting.

According to Dr Luncheon who spoke about the dismissal in his press briefing last week, in an attempt to seek "redress" Mr Cummings then approached the President, who in turn asked the Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS) to deal with the matter. The HPS said that after consulting the Commissioner of Forests and the Chairman of the GFC board, he had found that the "Commission was unacceptably insensitive and covertly discriminatory in its treatment against this young man." It would appear that the three of them then "worked out the broad and the general outline of the remedy that I [Dr Luncheon] caused to be put in place."

That remedy was contained in a letter to Minister Sawh from the HPS, dated March 1, in which the latter required that Mr Cummings' service be treated as though it extended to December 31, 2001; that his salary for the months from August 1 to December 31, 2001, be calculated on the same basis as that of an Assistant Commissioner of Forests; that his total period of service be counted as ten years; that he be given payments of accumulated benefits from the Pension Scheme; and that he be awarded severance payments. In a subsequent letter to the Minister, headed "Attention: Mr B. Balkaran, Permanent Secretary," Dr Luncheon issued instructions requiring payment in the sum of $886,766 to the former employee.

At some point thereafter, it seems that the Chairman of the GFC board, Mr Fries, took it upon himself to order the acting Commissioner of Forests and the finance section to make the payment in accordance with the instruction from Dr Luncheon. The acting Commissioner of Forests thereupon penned a memo to the head of the finance division requiring him to prepare a cheque in favour of Mr Cummings.

And what power, it might be asked, does Dr Luncheon have in relation to the Guyana Forestry Commission? The answer is none whatsoever, a point which was made in a different way by Ms Kamini Balram, the GFC's Head of Human Resources and Administration in a communication to the Commissioner of Forests and the board. "The unilateral determination of the issue by the HPS has patently bypassed structures and procedures that are established in the Commission..." she wrote. She also pointed out (among other things) the defects in the award to Mr Cummings, including the fact that for the period August 1-December 31 his salary was computed on the basis of that of an Assistant Commissioner of Forests, although he had never served in that capacity; that his service was nine years and not ten; and that in circumstances of summary termination he was not entitled to severance payments.

Ms Balram's position found reinforcement from Mr Ramjattan, who in a second, more comprehensive legal opinion stated that Dr Luncheon had "absolutely no authority to give any instruction to the Guyana Forestry Commission." The GFC, he said, was an autonomous body, separate and apart from the Minister except that the Minister may give the commission "directions of a general character as to the policy to be followed..." However, the matter of Mr Cummings could in no wise fall under the rubric of general policy. And if the Minister did not have the power to overrule a specific management decision, legitimately arrived at by the GFC board, then certainly Dr Luncheon could not do so.

Since Dr Luncheon was wrong to issue the instruction in the first instance, and Minister Sawh was wrong to instruct the commission to make payment, then Chairman Fries was wrong in trying to overrule a decision of the full board; the Permanent Secretary was wrong in asking the acting Commissioner of Forests to facilitate payment; and the acting Commissioner of Forests was wrong in instructing the Head of the Finance Division to make out the cheque to Mr Cummings.

Last week Dr Luncheon dismissed accusations that the Office of the President (OP) had been guilty of "some arbitrary, unilateral action." He is wrong about that too. The issue is not about whether Mr Cummings was unfairly treated by the GFC in any larger sense; the issue is about the fact that even if Dr Luncheon was convinced that he was, the OP still does not have the power to put it right. In such circumstances Mr Cummings' remedy lies with the courts, not with the HPS.

Good governance means in part that the administration has to follow the rules punctiliously, must allow statutory and recognized procedures to take their course without interference, must allow autonomous agencies to operate autonomously and must steadfastly resist the temptation to behave like a deus ex machina.

No matter how well-meaning the Government's intentions might be in any given instance, in the long run it undermines structures for it to interfere with management decisions arrived at in a legitimate manner. Civil servants and other state agency officials cannot function effectively if they are to be arbitrarily overruled by the politicians, and neither can they make rational decisions without fear or favour if they are constantly trying to second-guess the political arm.

In addition, political interference politicizes everything, and will inevitably open the Government to the kind of charges it is at pains to refute, namely, that it operates on a partisan basis. Last but not least, of course, is the matter of politicians bypassing any regulations in place, which can only serve to undermine, not enhance our democratic framework.

In specific relation to the GFC issue, Ms Balram - who should be commended for her stance and her courage - put it best: "... the quality of intervention by the HPS now in issue," she wrote, "would have the most destructive influence upon decision-making by the Commission and render its every decision a matter of conjecture."

What the Government should be seeking is a faithful adherence to the rule of law, not the rule of caprice.