Acting Chief Justice Ian Chang has fixed the continuation of government’s challenge to last year’s budget cuts for early next month, according to Attorney General Anil Nandlall.
Minutes after the opposition used its parliamentary majority to cut the $5.63 billion air transport programme from the Ministry of Transport and Hydraulics’ budget, Nandlall told reporters that Justice Chang had sent out notices indicating that the matter would be continued on May 8.
“I am pleased to announce that the Chief Justice sent out notices for a hearing and the continuation and hopefully the conclusion of the budget cut matter that will culminate in the handing down of the final ruling,” Nandlall said early yesterday morning.
Nandlall recently said he had written to Justice Chang on the need for a final ruling in the case. In a preliminary ruling handed down last July, Justice Chang had found that while the National Assembly had the power to reject or pass the budget, cutting or reducing the estimates of was outside its constitutional remit.
However, Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman last week upheld the National Assembly’s right to amend the budget, while saying it could not be bound by the preliminary ruling.
“The National Assembly of the Parliament of Guyana has the power to amend, by reducing only, the Estimates of Expenditure submitted by the minister responsible for Finance,” Trotman had ruled last week Tuesday, after the opposition tabled motions for cuts once more.
Trotman also pointed out that those who gave and those who received the instruments of independence could never have intended that such a hallowed right and privilege of the National Assembly to “amend” estimates would be usurped, surrendered, or so given up. Correspondingly, he noted, such an important right must be used responsibly.
“The political system practiced in Guyana does not negative the authority of the National Assembly to amend Bills and Motions, including those dealing with public finance,” he added, though he cautioned that the power to amend cannot be “used, injudiciously, whimsically, and/or wantonly,” he had cautioned.
Nandlall and the government have disagreed with Trotman’s ruling, pointing out that he was ignoring a ruling of the High Court albeit a preliminary one.
Yesterday he said that there will be a series of “ramifications” if the final ruling is in line with the preliminary one. The opposition parties have also indicated an interest in a final ruling in order to clear the way for them to file an appeal.
Last April, the opposition effected $20 billion in cuts from the government’s proposed budget, citing a lack of transparency and accountability in the explanations for the allocations. Although President Donald Ramotar later assented to the budget passed by the National Assembly, Nandlall subsequently moved to the courts to reverse the cuts. Justice Chang, however, said that while the National Assembly did not have the power to cut the budget, the court could not restore the funding sought by government, except for allocations to the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) which is a constitutional agency and entitled to draw directly from the Consolidated Fund.
