Dear Editor,
Raphael Trotman should not have sought legal advice on whether the National Assembly can act against Clement Rohee. He should have known that the National Assembly is elected directly. It is also the highest body in the land, higher than the executive (presidency) largely because it can constitutionally remove the president while the president cannot remove the National Assembly.
Clement Rohee was elected to the National Assembly on the PPP’s list of candidates. He is therefore subject to the National Assembly as an elected member. The National Assembly is entitled to sanction Rohee within its powers. Mr Rohee can be sanctioned by the National Assembly in his role as an elected member. What the National Assembly cannot do is remove Mr Rohee as minister. Only the president can remove Mr Rohee as minister in an ordinary fashion.
The issue is whether Minister Rohee’s actions or omissions amount to gross misconduct. Clearly, he was incompetent and perhaps negligent in failing to act proactively or failing to act at all before and after Linden and Agricola events and in failing to deal with those accused of killing innocent civilians and of terrorizing citizens but does this necessarily amount to gross misconduct to allow the legislature to sanction or remove an elected member who happens to be an executive appointee? It is debatable, and in the absence of hard evidence of some clear act or convenient and deliberate omission that results in death or injury, it is hard to prove. For example, if there is concrete evidence of a minister telling policemen to shoot and kill unarmed civilians or knowing that the police intended to kill civilians and did nothing to prevent it, it would amount to gross misconduct and warrant Parliament excluding that minister from the National Assembly. An objection by the president does not matter in matters such as these; the executive cannot save the appointee in these circumstances from legislative action.
There is no way this Burnham constitution which was drafted to weaken the Parliament, to make a mockery of the separation of powers and to give outlandish powers to the president that even powerful presidential systems like the USA do not even possess, would grant the National Assembly the power to remove the president without similarly and implicitly granting the Assembly the power to remove the minister. If the highest executive (president) can be removed by Parliament for gross misconduct, so can all ministers who are beholden to the President. There is a reason why the constitution requires the president to appoint most of his cabinet from the party’s list of candidates who sit in the National Assembly. It is to make those executive appointees (ministers) subject to Parliament. This is why the Guyana constitution differs from the US constitution, which requires all executive appointees of the US President to resign immediately from the US legislature (Congress). One constitution (US) intended to keep the powers separate and apart while the other (Guyana) intended to make some executive appointees subject to Parliament by requiring the president to select most of his ministers from among members of the National Assembly.
The PPP has embraced and enforced this same constitution for the past 20 years. It has to now live with it. This is the intent of the 1980 constitution and in this sense, Clement Rohee is under the authority of Parliament even as a minister. By allowing this lacuna, the constitution allows Mr Rohee to be sanctioned by Parliament even as a minister. In this particular instance, Mr Rohee cannot be removed by the National Assembly because while there is sufficient evidence of incompetence and of perhaps negligence, there is insufficient evidence of gross misconduct. However, that evidence of incompetence entitles Rohee to be reprimanded by the National Assembly. If in the future, any persuasive and convincing evidence of gross misconduct is found against any government minister, the National Assembly would be entitled to commence proceedings to remove that member from the National Assembly. This is what the constitution intended. Everything said, at the end of the day, the true issue is not about the opposition’s attempts to discipline Mr Rohee or the government’s defence of him. The true problem is Minister Rohee’s gross incompetence and telling failure and the fact that this morally adrift PPP administration continues to support him. This plays into the hands of the opposition, which gets to expose the PPP using a liability like Mr Rohee as the crux.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
