Dear Editor,
In the Guyana Constitution as in most constitutions, the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, the three ‘powers’ of government, overlap. It is the work of the political culture to keep them from intruding unlawfully on one another’s jurisdictions. Judges are not legislators, but they make law. Many of the laws we are guided by as ‘binding precedents’ are made by judges. Societies are not going to throw away these precedents until the courts themselves, or the parliaments, make them no longer binding.
In Guyana it should be easy for a court to appreciate that the business of the National Assembly is governed by a special body of rules with the status of law called Standing Orders. Are not procedures of the courts governed by Rules of Court? And does not the High Court Act empower courts to determine their own procedure where the Rules of Court do not apply?
Act No 2 of 1980, which had the present 1980 Constitution as its Schedule, deemed the existing Standing Orders to be constitutionally valid. The same Act No 2 authorised the 1980 Constitution on which both parties and the court based their arguments.
I am sure many will agree with my prayer, “Lead us not into confusion.” If the judicial ‘power’ has its own laws, why not the legislative and deliberative ‘power’? The one power able to sanction the others is the judicial power.
As I said, in Guyana law, as in most places there is no sharp line separating the powers.
Article 50 dropped some “supreme organs of democratic power” during the revision by the CRC. There are now three, namely the President, the Parliament, and the Cabinet. (The Judiciary is not one of them.) The minus 50 per cent President features in all three of these supreme organs. Luckily, the article is largely a notion with no new powers attached. The National Assembly is not listed. For non-politicals, the Parliament is the National Assembly with the President.
The Chief Justice, as one friend observed, is ready to grant the National Assembly the constitutional right to reject the whole budget, but not to reject a small part of it. The part is greater than the whole in the judicial arithmetic.
According to the CJ’s ruling as reported, under Article 219 it is open to us to conclude that the whole budget debate and the days and process of Committee of Supply are high farce. All the Minister has to do is to see that the estimates “are prepared and laid before the National Assembly.”
By the way, Article 9 of the Constitution says “Sovereignty belongs to the people and they exercise it through their representatives and the democratic organs established by or under the Constitution.” The case now goes to appeal.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
