De Santos concerned at apparent breach of committee procedure
Amid strong opposition objections to its second reading, the government yesterday passed a Bill that sets a new system for local government elections that includes first-past-the-post voting for the first time in decades.
In the backdrop of an acrimonious walkout from Parliament by the opposition and a protest on Brickdam, the session also saw rare questioning of the government move by one of its MPs, former attorney general Bernard de Santos SC.
The second reading of the Local Authorities (Elections) (Amendment) Bill 2009 surprised members of the main opposition PNCR, who said that they had not been informed that the Bill would have been dealt with yesterday afternoon.
Prior to the second reading, Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran announced that the Bill would be proceeded with at yesterday’s sitting and the date previously published was a mistake. This sparked strong reactions from the PNCR-1G MPs with Opposition Leader, Robert Corbin pointing out that the matter had been referred to a special select committee and procedure would demand that the committee present its report to the House with the full complement of members. “I am not aware of any such recommendation or any such report coming to this House and I would believe that it is in breach of the standing orders for the government to unilaterally impose as we arrive here in this Assembly this afternoon that they are proposing with this Bill this afternoon knowing full well that they haven’t had the courtesy to inform any member of the opposition that they will deal with this bill this afternoon”, he declared as his party’s MPs backed him loudly.
Shadow Finance Minister, Winston Murray, pointing to Rule Eight of Standing Order 103 said that a motion may be moved by a member after one day’s notice. “The date on this purported report is the 30th of July 2009, which is today. It therefore cannot sir, with great respect under these standing orders as we have done them, be taken today”, he declared, adding angrily that “this nonsense must stop”.
Ramkarran stated that the time had not yet arrived for the consideration of the matter and when it does, he would listen to the points made and then make a ruling. However, when the time for the Bill to be debated arrived, the Opposition had already walked out after Corbin was disallowed an application to have the assembly adjourned for discussion of a definite matter of urgent public importance.
Concern was also raised by PPP/C MP, De Santos, who expressed worry that the legislation had not properly emerged from the special select committee review and could therefore be challenged in court. The points raised by him were dismissed by his fellow MPs Gail Teixeira and Manzoor Nadir and Speaker of the House Ramkarran said that he does not think the Report contains any procedural flaws.
Local Government Minis-ter, Kellawan Lall, who piloted the bill through its final stages, tabled the committee report, which said that there was agreement to present it to the House. Unconfirmed minutes of the final committee meeting dated July 28, 2009 stated that opposition members had not agreed to the proposal. This was pointed out by De Santos who expressed worry that the legislation “has not properly emerged from the select committee and might not be what I call ripe for debate.” There were no opposition MPs in the House at the time as the PNCR had walked out.
Major piece
Leading off the three government presenters on the Bill, Lall said that the legislation is a landmark one. “This is the first major piece of legislation coming to this house that seeks to make substantial changes to the present local government system”, he observed.
He was at this point interrupted by De Santos. “This is an extremely important piece of legislation and you don’t want to hurry it through or to pass it, if it is felt that it is not quite ready because it can be challenged in the courts and it would stymie the government’s effort to hold the elections as it wants to do”, he said. The attorney referred to the minutes of the last meeting which he said, seemed to say that no decision was made on a proposal to present the Bill to the National Assembly and it then was adjourned to August 4. “If I am wrong, it does not appear from the record, if your honour is convinced that a decision was taken and I really don’t see how you can go outside the pale of this record, which is to my mind extremely inconclusive.”
Responding to him, Teixeira noted that the Report had agreement. She stated that the points raised by De Santos are not relevant to the debate on the second and third readings of the Bill. Nadir, meantime, added that the Bill is one of five and the Committee continues its work.
Continuing his presentation, Lall recalled the work of the now-disbanded Local Government Task Force, which had worked on the legislation for the past several years. After eight years, he said, “we must recognize what is happening on the ground and as parliamentarians and as legislators; we have to behave in a very responsible manner”. The local government system has been put under severe pressure and is in crisis, he declared. “We cannot stabilize the system without local government elections”, he said.
The Minister asserted that there were some people, who seemed to deliberately be trying to stymie the process and they had to take a strong position at the level of the select committee to work within certain timelines. Because of the drastic changes necessary after the legislation would have been passed, sufficient lead time needs to be given to the various organizations, especially the Guyana Elections Commission to do some ground work, he asserted. Bearing in mind that national elections are due in two years’ time, it would be difficult for the country with its limited resources to hold such big elections within a short space of time “so we need to hold these elections some distance away from the national elections”, he added.
Name the date
Lall stated that several amendments were made though not of a substantial nature. However, he noted, there is one area of contention. “That contention is that the minister should not name the date of the election”, he said noting that the Bill provides for this. “I think the opposition to this clause is there because of fear and suspicion, not grounded in anything real. They fear that the minister may not call elections. How are we not going to call elections when all these years we have been agitating, we are fighting and we are bringing these pieces of legislation to parliament, how after all these things we are not going to want to call elections”, he queried. He noted that existing legislation provides in a specific way, the date for elections. “The minister cannot, doesn’t have the authority to change those things”, he declared. The minister said that the second contention is that the naming of dates for elections should be a function of the elections commission. “We never really agreed with the opposition that this should be a function of the elections commission and it remains with the local government minister in this particular instance”, he said. He declared that work is continuing and “we are hoping that before the recess, we would have completed a substantial amount of this work”. He added that Government is firmly committed to have the next local government elections under a reformed system.
Meantime, Teixeira, in her presentation recalled that parties on the government and opposition side had an agreement that all five bills would go to one select committee and the Local Authorities (Elections) (Amendment) Bill would be given priority by the committee. They had also agreed, she said, that the committee will complete the examination of the said Bill and the other four bills in a timely manner to ensure the agreement is enacted before the National Assembly goes off on recess on August 8.
The MP declared that the impression given that government members are ramming this through is a distortion of the facts and highly mischievous. She noted that the Bill is critical for holding local government elections under a reformed system.
Meantime, Teixeira said that there was never any agreement or commitment at any time that the five bills were going to be tabled as a package and dealt with as a package in the House. She noted that the importance of this piece of legislation is to allow certain things to start operating stating that there is much work to be done. Noting that it is a new system, she said, that work has to be done in demarcation of constituencies and work on voter education. “Therefore there is no mischief afoot as had been conveyed at the beginning of this parliament”. She said that the Bill allows for a progressive, participatory, inclusionary approach to local government power and empowerment. Responding to Murray’s statements, she declared that nothing was done in the special select committee that breaches Rule Eight of Standing Order 103. She pointed out that the Committee finished on July 28; the minister signed the document that very day, and, in so doing, gave the House more that one day’s notice for the bill and the report to reach for discussion.
Ramkarran, meantime, said that after looking at the Bill, he does not think that the report contains any procedural flaws. The Bill was passed, with amendments, after the second and third readings.
Hybrid
The Bill, a hybrid proportional representation (PR) and first-past-the- post electoral system, emphasises accountability to voters. It seeks to amend the Local Authorities (Elections) Act, Chapter 28:03 and is one of the pieces of legislation agreed to by the bipartisan Task Force on Local Government Reform before that body was scrapped.
According to the bill’s explanatory memorandum, it “seeks to set the legal framework for the holding of local government elections this year” under “a mixed system of proportional representation and first past the post and shall provide for the involvement and representation of individuals and voluntary groups in addition to political parties.” The new elector system also affirms that “there shall be accountability to electors.”
The bill proposes the insertion of a new section, 38 A, which introduces a mixed system (50-50) of proportional representation and first-past-the- post to be used within each local authority area – one of the major agreements of the Task Force.
Under the proposal, members to be elected under the proportional representational (PR) system shall be elected on a party list or voluntary group list, while members to be elected for the first-past-the- post system are to be elected for a party, a voluntary group or as an individual whether or not nominated by a party or a group.
The new section also sets out that each local authority area shall be divided into constituencies to elect members of the municipalities and neighbourhood democratic councils. Further, it says the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) shall determine the areas comprising a constituency as, by order, it would be empowered to combine or subdivide one or more electoral divisions to form a constituency for the purpose of electing members of that local authority.
Additionally, the bill proposes to empower the Local Government Minister to determine the local government authority area where the election shall be held as well as the number of members to be elected by each system, provided that they are even.
Also proposed in the bill is the insertion of another new section, 44 A, which sets out the criteria each list must satisfy. According to the proviso, each voluntary group or political party would be allowed to submit lists containing the names of persons qualified to be elected for each area. While the party or group could duplicate a name on both lists, subject to a number of conditions, a candidate’s name would only be allowed to appear once on each list. Further, all candidates would have to be registered voters resident in that local authority area.
A third new section, 44 B (1), provides for voting and allocation of seats for both systems, allowing every voter to have one vote for each, while a fourth new section, 71 A, spells out the requirements of a ballot paper for a constituency. Section 94, also new, has subsections dealing with the procedure for counting of votes.
Also, Section 105 would be amended by the bill to include a new subsection 3 providing for GECOM to have custody of ballot boxes with their locks and keys rather than the police.