The constitution undoubtedly bestows upon the President the power to refuse to assent to legislation as long as he signals within the prescribed period his reasons for doing so. This aspect of the Burnham constitution which remained untouched during reforms could hardly be seen as a progressive element of constitutional governance. One would therefore expect that the refusal to assent would come only in the case of a gross and patent illegality in a bill, a previously unforeseen threat to national security or the country’s territorial integrity or some untoward development between the point of passage of the bill and the period prior to its consideration by the President. None of these conditions are applicable to the two bills in question: the Fiscal Management and Accountability (Amendment) Bill 2012 and the Former Presidents (Benefits and Other Facilities) Bill 2012. The first bill seeks to fortify the financial independence of the courts and the service commissions among others. The second bill seeks to restrain the extravagant runaway train of benefits that former President Jagdeo designed for himself.
Further, one expects that given the special result of the 2011 general elections, President Ramotar would be sensitive to the reality that he was refusing to assent to bills which were shaped, presented and piloted by the representatives of the majority of people who voted. To simply reject the will of their elected representatives without convincing reasons is to disrespect their covenant with the people and cynically ignore the democratic basis of governance which the PPP spent 28 years in the opposition ranks preaching to anyone who would listen. President Ramotar is now conveniently ignoring this significant detail.
Indeed, his belated decision to reject the two bills is irreversibly coloured by his outburst last year that he would assent to no bill which his party didn’t agree with. That in turn was the starkest expression of his and his party’s refusal to accept that the opposition combined had gathered more support than them at the election and that as a consequence the government had lost control of Parliament. Simply put the government is unable to get anything passed in Parliament without the opposition’s say-so yet the President has nonchalantly rejected the only two bills engineered thus far with the opposition’s one-seat majority. It is a totally unbalanced equation.
The President’s stance on the bills has been further sullied by the fact that the Office of the President was cavalier and evasive with respect to the constitutional injunction on the period within which he had to respond. The same constitution which the President cited in rejecting the two bills requires under Article 170 (3) that the President shall return the bill to the Speaker of the National Assembly within “twenty-one days of the date when it was presented to him for assent”. The Clerk of the National Assembly had previously disclosed that the bills had been sent to the Office of the President since February which would place President Ramotar in flagrant breach of the constitution. It was only on the dispatch of a letter by Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Trotman on May 3rd enquiring about the fate of the bills that President Ramotar responded on May 7th communicating his formal rejection and making the incredible assertion that the bills had only gotten to his desk on May 3rd. President Ramotar cannot expect the people to accept that nonsense. Since last year he was aware that these bills were in the works and he had to have been cognisant of their passage in January of this year. Surely the President and his legal advisor would have wanted to ensure that these bills were rejected at their earliest because of the provisions purportedly offending the constitution and would have sought to ensure that they were rapidly returned to Parliament with explanation. It appears however that the bills were withheld simply to avoid any potential opposition threat to the budget appropriation bill for 2013 which was passed months later than the two opposition bills but assented to before them. This amateurish manoeuvring is contemptuous of the people and beneath the high office of the President. The President should do his utmost to resist these deceptive practices.
The real question now is what will the President and his government do to tangibly convey to the opposition that there is room for compromise and more importantly that they are prepared to show this in concrete terms.
There are many areas in the coming months where the legislative agenda will test the willingness on both sides to make concessions. The government is however yet to show an understanding that it lost the popular vote at elections – and control of Parliament as a result. Local government legislation will likely be the next test and one expects that in areas like the composition of the local government commission, fiscal transfers and the powers of the regional and municipal councils that the government – and particularly President Ramotar – will let better sense prevail.
