The fracas in the National Assembly last month that prompted Deputy Speaker Clarissa Riehl to suspend the budget debate was ugly enough. The brief adjournment ended a bitter row which had erupted in the Assembly between the PPP/C and PNCR benches that escalated into a verbal brawl. But there have been many worse precedents of unparliamentary behaviour in the Assembly’s hallowed halls.
Abuse, boycotts, walkouts and suspensions have disturbed the sedate atmosphere and trivialized the deliberations in the house over the years. In the pre-independence era, the Speaker Mr Rahman Gajraj suspended the Premier Dr Cheddi Jagan from the Legislative Assembly after the latter had “verbally abused” him for making an unfavourable ruling. Dr Jagan refused to apologise. As Opposition leader, Dr Jagan’s parliamentary performance was repeated about 25 years later when, to express disagreement with another unfavourable ruling, the Mace was displaced, volumes of the Laws of Guyana were thrown down and a paper weight was hurled at the Speaker Mr Sase Naraine.
In more recent times, People’s National Congress-Reform members in February 2008 boycotted the debate in the National Assembly to discuss the events surrounding the Lusignan massacre after the Government side indicated its intention to introduce amendments to the motion. The PNCR walked out in November 2009 when the Speaker Mr Ralph Ramkarran, denied the request to suspend the sitting in order to discuss a motion under the heading of ‘Urgent Public Importance’ dealing with the torture of a 14-year-old suspect by the Guyana Police Force. The PNCR again walked out of the National Assembly in July 2009 after its application for leave to discuss “the explosive sworn testimony” of Selwyn Vaughn in a New York City Court was disallowed.
These incidents, far too frequent for a mature democracy, are indicators of a dysfunctional system. They are symptoms of the sclerotic relations that impair political development up to the present.
The legislative branch
Owing to the party system, the initiative in government rests not with the legislative branch in the National Assembly but with the executive − represented by the Cabinet of Ministers. The Assembly, however, plays a vital role not only as the institution to which the executive is responsible but also by passing laws, voting money and acting as a forum at which complaints can be raised. Members of the Opposition fulfil their role by scrutinizing government activities, tabling motions, asking questions, speaking in debates and participating in the work of select committees.
The Assembly today comprises 65 members who are elected every five years. Membership has been growing. It first rose to 53 after the 1964 electoral reform that introduced the Proportional Representation system. The 1966 Independence and 1970 Republican constitutions were replaced by the 1980 constitution when membership was increased to 65. The Assembly now has more members than the lower houses of the parliaments of the richer states of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica which, respectively, have twice and three times the population of Guyana.
One of the chief features of the new constitution was the election of an Executive President who was both Head of State and Head of Government with vastly increased powers, such as immunity from prosecution for any act done during his term in office.
A special Constitutional Reform Com-mission comprising representatives of all parties in the National Assembly made recommendations which should have been implemented immediately after the 2001 general elections. One important innovation has been the spawning of a plethora of committees.
The Assembly can appoint a Parliamen-tary Standing Committee for Constitutional Reform; Parliamentary Sectoral Commit-tees for the scrutiny of all areas of Govern-ment policy and a Standing Committee of the National Assembly with responsibility for the appointment of members of Consti-tutional Commissions. Standing commit-tees include the Parliamentary Management Committee; Committee of Selection; Public Accounts Committee; Constitution Reform Committee; Committee on Appointments; and Sectoral Committees on Natural Resources, Economic Services, Foreign Relations and Social Services. Sessional Select Committees and Special Select Committees may also be appointed. The Government side retains 5-4 majorities but the chairs are rotated annually between the Government and the Opposition in the sectoral committees.
The executive branch
The executive work of government is done by the President and his Cabinet Ministers. Here, it is clear that the ministers are functionally loyal to the President who appointed them and who is the Chairman of the Cabinet. They are at the same time, however, constitutionally loyal to the National Assembly to which they belong and must give account.
The President does not attend the National Assembly but his official actions have to be legitimized by the Assembly which is the supreme law-making body. The President is often presented to the public as a deus ex machine making disbursements to different agencies for diverse purposes especially in preparation for international conferences and sporting events. Does the National Assembly authorize these disbursements?
The President is also occasionally reported making financial grants to local government bodies and other agencies. But is such Presidential intervention necessary if the National Assembly approves the annual budget and the Minister of Finance issues an instrument authorising the withdrawal of monies from the Consolidated Fund into which state revenues are paid?
There have always been challenges to the Constitution and it seems that there will be even more with the promised challenge to the immunity enjoyed by the President. The President is immune from prosecution for any act committed while in office and cannot be summoned before a court of law. As Alliance for Change member Khemraj Ramjattan pointed out, however, the framers of the constitution “never intended that the President could walk into a room and commit an illegal act with impunity.”
There will always be tension between the two branches. At the heart of the problem of governance in Guyana is the collision between the constitutional functions of the legislative branch as represented by the National Assembly and the executive functions of the government. In democratic states, the principle is that the Legislative Branch should be independent of the Executive branch.
It was in light of such a guiding principle and with the aim of making the National Assembly more efficient in performing its functions that the Commonwealth Secre-tariat’s Senior Parliamentary Staff Advisor Sir Michael Davies was invited to Guyana five years ago. The result was the compilation of the Needs Assessment Report on the Guyana National Assembly.
Complete control
The main problem that Sir Michael Davies identified was that the “National Assembly of Guyana, though recognised as paramount in the Constitution, is sadly not playing its proper role in governance.”
The Needs Assessment Report identified seven main weaknesses – lack of independence of the parliament and its management from the control of the Executive; members who are not sufficiently au fait with their role within the parliamentary framework; an Opposition which is angry, frustrated and, therefore, does not grasp the opportunities afforded it by the rules of procedure; standing orders in need of revision; a committee system which is not properly functioning; insufficient qualified staff with ill-defined roles and lack of procedural knowledge and no awareness of the National Assembly’s responsibility to relate with civil society, the private sector and the wider public.
The Report criticised the Administration over aspects of the relationship between the Executive and the Legislative branches. In Davies’s view, unhealthy executive controls were hindering the effective functioning of the National Assembly. He asserted that the controls exerted over the National Assembly’s budget by the Office of the President severely inhibited the Assembly’s independence.
The big problem which the Report identified surrounded the exercise of executive power over the legislature. The Report determined, in brief, that the National Assembly’s weaknesses were the result of the Administration’s attempts to run the National Assembly like a government department rather than to allow it to function as a separate and independent institution. Accordingly, to the extent that recommendations for reform sought to enhance the National Assembly’s effectiveness, they would threaten to erode the mechanisms put in place by the executive branch to retain its control over the functioning of the legislative branch.
The Davies Report drew attention to the fact that “meetings of the Assembly are entirely at the whim of the Executive”; that both the staffing and the budget of National Assembly are controlled by the Administra-tion; and that the work of the Committees “is subject to frustration by the Executive.” At the same time, it noted that the Administra-tion “allows the opposition few opportunities to debate policy or to consider bills.”
The Report also criticised the practice of the submission of parliamentary Order Papers to the Office of the President which, it stated, “can and does strike out questions and motions which the Office of the President does not like.” According to the Report, “if Opposition Members cannot ask the questions they would wish to ask they will abandon parliamentary process in favour of other action, as they have done in recent years.”
Power
Although measures have been taken to correct some of the most blatant abuses, the Administration’s mindset has not altered. At first glance, the constitutional reforms create the image of the National Assembly which is a fountain of broad representation, rigorous deliberation and thoughtful legislation. In reality, however, the lopsided way in which the Assembly’s business is manipulated by government members in the Assembly who are in the majority inhibits democracy.
PNCR’s Chief Whip Mr Lance Carberry, addressing the 34th Annual Regional Conference of the Caribbean, the Americas and the Atlantic Region of the Common-wealth Parliamentary Association in July last year, claimed that the evolution of a vibrant committee system in Guyana demonstrated the need for Members of the National Assembly to function almost on a full-time basis. He explained that “The reality is that the establishment of the committee system has proven to be very challenging, since like in most Caribbean territories they operate on a part-time basis.” Carberry noted that it was not enough to establish committees that are “not endowed with the resources and institutional support” to enable them to discharge their mandates effectively.
Speaker of the National Assembly Mr Hari Narayan ‘Ralph’ Ramkarran, similarly, in an address to the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association earlier this year, suggested that the time had come for Guyana to consider having full-time members and for ‘larger and better-trained staff’ for the committee system to be effective.
The National Assembly, with its oversized membership is underemployed. The problem is not one of the composition members or the organisation of the staff. The central issue is one of control. The Assembly is simply not being allowed to function as it needs to.
The Administration is quite satisfied with the false complacency and dilatoriness which is a screen designed to prevent Opposition legislators from becoming successful and outplaying and overshadowing the Government side. At the same time, the Administration seems to be obsessed with discrediting everything the Opposition attempts to do to represent the interests of its own constituents who, after all, represent 45 per cent of the electorate.
One excellent example of the power that the executive wields over the legislature has been the deliberate six-year delay by the special select committee established to review the report of the Disciplined Forces Commission. Bills proposed by the Opposi-tion can be blocked interminably. Motions and resolutions can be amended into meaninglessness. Questions can be avoided or half-answered. Urgent issues can be postponed. All of these can occur with the democratic support of a parliamentary majority that, clearly, is in no hurry to discuss matters it does not want discussed.
The National Assembly functions the way it does because that is exactly the way the Administration wants it to function.
