Dear Editor,
I read former Clerk of the National Assembly Frank Narain’s letter (“Clerk of the National Assembly has acted impartially…” SN – November 1, 2014) and I am disappointed, at best, on the degree to which the writer missed the opportunity to tie his commentary on precedent to the current context of the situation upon which he chose to write.
Most fundamentally, Mr. Narain’s intervention curiously ignores any comment on the unprecedented reality of a [post-Independence] government of Guyana with a legislative minority, something that one would think relevant to his historic decision at intervention via public correspondence.
I supposed I am unqualified to speak to the precedent Mr. Narain refers to, particular considering that even he admits that his narrative surrounding said precedent was incomplete within his letter. That said, perhaps the most important part of Mr. Narain’s intervention has to do with the events of 1963:
“No-confidence motions in the Speaker and in the Government were submitted. The Speaker requested the Clerk to call the next meeting of the Assembly… The Speaker went ahead, and caused the date proposed by him for the sitting to be announced. It was reported that the Government did not want the sitting and made the Clerk take away the Mace from the Office of the Legislature.”
“On Friday afternoon, when the first reports were posted online that the Parliament Mace went missing, that the Speaker had reported it as stolen to the police, and that the Clerk of the National Assembly claimed to have taken it for cleaning and safekeeping, the Facebook page of the Parliament of Guyana posted the status:
“Please be informed that the Parliamentary Mace has not been stolen as was reported. The Mace was taken to the Clerk’s Office for cleaning, as is customary, and also for a new housing box to be made for it. It will remain in the Clerk’s Office over the weekend and then returned to the Speaker’s Office on Monday, 3rd November, 2014.”
I posted a message enquiring whether it was standard practice for the Clerk to remove as important an item as the Mace from the Office of the Speaker without informing the Speaker beforehand – that query was unanswered up to the time this letter was sent off. The former Clerk’s recollection of the events of 1963 now puts some possible perspective of what might be at play here – a direct instruction from a beleaguered government to deliberately thwart parliamentary procedure.
Mr. Narain says that he is not a politician, and neither is Mr. Isaacs – this is the same argument that Ms. Carol Sooba could make and indeed has made and it is a simplistic one that ignores the reality of overt political influence on public servants in every sphere of the public service in Guyana. Mr. Isaacs’ Sooba-esque assertion that the Speaker of the National Assembly should have enquired of him about the missing Mace not only smacks of insubordination, but his excuse for removal of such a critical ceremonial item for cleaning and the construction of a new holding case’ rings hollow considering that he had months while Parliament was in recess in order to do so.
This is the reality of the situation – over a month after Parliament is supposed to have resumed, the executive government of Guyana, facing an historical no confidence motion, has refused to exercise the prerogative it says to be invested exclusively within it to reconvene Parliament, a position in effect supported by Mr. Isaacs and now Mr. Narain.
A little over a week ago, the public was treated to a bit of absurdist political theatre with the lead parliamentary opposition APNU holding extra-parliamentary meetings with the executive under the broad agenda of ‘governance’ with a priority being placed on having the government commit to a date for local government elections, while its chief whip, Amna Ally accused the government of duplicity in settling upon a date on which parliament would reconvene. Ms. Ally’s counterpart, Gail Teixeira – someone whose credibility has increasingly been found wanting – retorted that Ms. Ally was misleading the public since agreement had been reached with the PPP and APNU in which a date for the reconvening of Parliament would be settled upon subsequent to the their extra-parliamentary engagement. As far as I know, there was no response from APNU to this assertion, which implies it was factual.
Now earlier this week, even as Mr. David Granger, leader of the parliamentary opposition was asserting that his engagement with President Donald Ramotar was “bearing fruit” vis a vis a definitive date for local government elections, going as far as asserting that the government was engaged with GECOM on logistical issues, Ramotar was announcing that it would be foolish of him to set a date for LGEs. It took two days for Mr. Granger to effectively respond to express the obvious, that is, that he was disengaging with the government.
In the meanwhile, pressed on their commitment to reconvening Parliament, the executive committed via Dr. Roger Luncheon, to coming to a decision by the end of the week. That week has effectively ended with still no commitment from the government.
Before I return to the main thread of my argument, permit me to recount something that I believe epitomizes the mindset of the average PPP supporter at present. On Friday, HGP Nightly News broadcast a man-in-the-street feature on the Nandlall affair. It starts off with a man vehemently denying that it was the Attorney-General heard on the now infamous recording. “Nandlall is a gentleman. He would never do something like that,” he shouts, a position he contorts himself in defending until the reporter informs him that the AG admitted to being the voice on the recording.
In less than a minute you had someone who had invested his entire faith in the PPP, when confronted with the reality of its ugliness go through what is known in psychiatry as the five stages of grief: denial that Nandlall was capable of such a thing; anger at what he believes is a conspiracy by Glen Lall against the AG; bargaining in the sense that he wants to believe that it could have been a case of mistaken identity; depression, not verbally expressed but clear in his sudden silence and a visible slump in his shoulders; and finally quiet acceptance with the quiet words, “Nandlall did that? Then I have nothing against it.”
This acceptance, this resigned complicity with behaviour (corruption, discrimination, oppression, racism, impunity) that one starts out as decrying as reprehensible is the story of the PPP from 1992 to now. The very monster – both real and constructed – that the party has seen itself as struggling against in the PNC, it has both become and surpassed.
That is the abstraction with regard to the character of the present government.
The reality, something that should have guided any negotiation that APNU sought to engage the PPP in, is that there is nothing that Donald Ramotar has to offer that is truly his to offer. The very people that are part of his negotiation team are creatures of a higher power, his predecessor, Bharrat Jagdeo. When newspapers’ tax information was released to Nandlall, it was at the behest of Jagdeo. When Nandlall sought to lure Leonard Gildarie away from Kaieteur News with promise of a place on an ‘elitist’ media team, as captured on the recording, it was pending a review by “BJ”.
As I have had reason to assert before, the PPP is afraid and will try anything, including making false overtures. APNU’s power exists not on its own but within a parliamentary framework. Mr. Granger is not leader of the opposition within any conception of the executive government – not a single person in the cabinet belongs to APNU and hence he has zero influence on its decisions, and if it is that he needed a lesson in that reality, it is when Ramotar summarily and publicly dismissed the very thing he expressed optimism in, a date from the executive for LGEs.
I understand, realistically, that devoid of resources, and facing an internal insurrection, Mr. Granger as leader of the PNC/APNU might not be enamoured of heading into a general elections, making him susceptible to whatever lifeline the PPP might seem to throw his way. I understand also that there might be a faction within the PPP that has tricked itself into believing that it can retain executive power while working to cleanse the party of the influence of Jagdeo. This is what I’d term the delusion of Mutually Assured Relevance on the part of the PPP and the PNC, particularly in the face of an Alliance For Change that, while not performing at its most optimal, has the least to lose in absolute terms when it comes to an election, particularly one triggered by its no confidence motion.
Mr. Granger is an extremely intelligent man, said to be an adept strategist. I humbly offer him the advice of Machiavelli who wrote that, “There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.” The battle to be fought for democracy in this country is against a PPP that has lost all of its democratic credentials, and the battleground is not a small table somewhere in the dark recesses of the Office of the President but within Parliament, in plain sight of the public the political opposition was elected to represent.
And there is no postponing that battle – it has to be fought now because every single day that it is avoided, the country continues to bleed profusely, haemorrhaging resources, people and most importantly hope. The parliamentary opposition needs to press for the return to Parliament and let the PPP face its inevitable destiny there.
Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson