Parliamentarians Unite – Kill The Bill
The Alliance For Change Column
Kaieteur News
May 13, 2007
So it has finally happened. Indeed I am reliably informed that one late night, a month ago, His Excellency and the Honourable Opposition Leader drafted it themselves. So united they were on the core issue, that the only disagreement was smoothed over in no time. One had argued how economical the provision should be expressed; the other, how legal the intent should be worded. Maybe a distinction without a difference you would think.
What am I speaking about? I speak here of the Recall Law - Constitution Amendment Bill No. 17 of 2007. One PNC/R member who may possibly suffer from it in the not too distant future calls it the “Call-back Law”.
No doubt it had its origins when I made my decision, which created so much controversy, to remain a Parliamentarian on the Government bench when I was so outrageously expelled from the P.P.P.
I must say that their draft is astounding for its brevity if not its presumption of constitutionality. This is how it is intended and worded:
“156A (1) Where the Representative of a List from which a member of the National Assembly was extracted indicates in writing to the Speaker that the list has lost the confidence in that member, the Representative of the List shall give a written notice of recall of the member to the speaker and forward a copy of the notice to the member concerned;
(2) Upon receipt of a notice of recall under paragraph (1), the Speaker shall declare the seat of the number of the National Assembly vacant, and the vacant seat may be filled in the manner provided by law”.
The Representative of the List is now made a constitutional creature with powers which even Burnham did not dream of giving himself. How times can change!
This power in the hands of a Representative of the List is but a massive assault on the will of the electorate. It is power to smother independent thinking and free debate in our National Assembly. It is power to crib and confine elected Parliamentarians within the safe perimeters of the List Representative's, or his cabal's, confidence.
A couple of fundamentals ought to be restated for us to appreciate the damning nature of this recall law and the chilling effect which will be its consequence.
Firstly, the concept of democracy which is at the foundation of the electoral system focuses on peoples' power and peoples' interest, and not a party's nor an individual's power and interest. A political party is simply the vehicle used to getting worthy members into that destination called the National Assembly. Once that destination is reached, such members having disembarked the party vehicle, and having embarked the hallowed halls of the National Assembly become representatives of the people, guardians of the constitution and defenders of the national interest, first and foremost.
Members of the National Assembly who perceive themselves as representatives of their respective parties rather than representatives of the people are subscribers in no small measure to the concept of party paramountcy and democratic centralism, and are the ones who corrode and erode the essence of Parliamentary democracy. Such members are guilty of party sycophancy and will never be true to the oath they have taken upon entry into that august body.
Secondly, for the purpose of election of representatives into our National Assembly, each contesting party is required to submit a list of candidates. Under the PR system the constituency is unitary and the various lists of candidates are collective. In the first-past-the-post system, each party would have had to put a candidate for each constituency. In the Guyanese hybrid, a list of 25 representatives from the Geographic Regions and a further 40 representatives from what is called the national “top up” must be submitted. A blank list cannot be sent in.
Whatever the system, proportional representation, first-past-the-post, or the Guyanese hybrid, it is these candidates or list of candidates which the voters vote for. A party means nothing without this list of actual people who are its candidates at a National Elections!
It is the people on the list which gives the party its public image, and is that tangible object what the voters vote for. From this list they would see the capacities, the skills, the articulation abilities, newness, freshness, honesty and integrity, the industry, the friendliness, etc of the people who potentially will be their representatives in the Legislature and/or Ministers in the Executive. It is not that inanimate object, the party, which voters vote for. A party cannot be a representative in Parliament nor a lawmaker.
Since it is the persons named in the lists who will ultimately be the representatives of the people in the National Assembly, the election then relates to the list of candidates and not to parties. Indeed, a party may include in its list a person who is not even a member of that party! And it is this list of candidates which defines the party; it is not the party which defines the list. So the strength of a party largely if not wholly depends on the names on the list.
And so when the Representatives of our respective lists extracted our names, they did so on the premise that we were the persons most capable of representing not our own but the public interest in the National Assembly.
Fourthly, since Parliamentarians thus elected must be said to be elected by the voters, then the power to recall, if it is desired in the first place, must best reside in the voters! Never should it be in one person, the Representative of the List. This will be an aspect of totalitarianism we will be condoning. Such an objectionable feature is a legalizing of party-leader paramountcy.
This matter was addressed in our constitutional reform process only too recently. And realizing how difficult it is to effectuate a voters recall in a PR or a hybrid system such as ours, the framers of our constitution decided on what I can only describe as a self-recall as provided by art. 156(3). And what is this article saying? It is emphatically asserting that it is the Parliamentarian, and he alone, who has the power to disqualify himself! Any reading of that art. 156(3) must mean that the final decision as to vacating the seat rests on the Parliamentarian. This was where the constitutional reform process rested it, in view of the difficulty of resting it elsewhere.
However, what our framers in a long drawn out consultation process, with world-wide expert advise, did not want for our constitution is all going to now be upturned by an agreement by His Excellency the President and the Opposition Leader. Amazing, is it not! What a product of shared governance!
And this is the same President who subscribed to the Latimer House Principles, which places the threshold so high even the cessation of membership of a political party should not lead to the loss of a member's seat. What will be the new Guyana threshold? Simply a notice to the Speaker from the List Representative stating: “Please be informed, Mr. Speaker, the list has lost confidence in Mr. ….. and his recall is requested”. And is gone he gone; done with!
Members of the National Assembly who understand and appreciate this draconian measure must never support it! Such support will ensure the collapse of our premiere institution once again into what it was like in the Burnham years. They will cease to be the peoples' representatives, but suffer becoming morons of parties, and unconscious subscribers of the doctrines of party paramountcy and democratic centralism. They will remain stultified in their growth as defenders and promoters of the national interest; they will remain just as their parties' controlling cabals want them to be, mere glorifiers of party interests.
This is the genesis of dictatorship. We must prevent a reinstitution of that despicable system in our beloved land. Let us not abdicate from our duty.
Khemraj Ramjattan
Leader of AFC