Dear Editor,
All of us, including PPP supporters, have to congregate to avert the rule of tyranny. Hard as President Ramotar tries to make acceptable the application of the proroguing authority vested in his office, as outlined in Article 70 (1) of the constitution, it cannot remove the clear fact that in this instance its use is misapplied. Those who remember history, Mon-day, November 10, evoked memory of October 1953 when the colonial authority suspended the constitution, threw the government out of office and the rest is now history. The PPP never forgets to remind this nation of that dark period in our history. And rightly so, because this was an attempt by the Crown to silence the voice of the people and hinder their inalienable right to self-determination.
Less we forget during that era:- 1) Guyanese were the subjects of the Queen; 2) the society was governed by a different constitution; and 3) the people were waging a struggle to deepen and strengthen the freedoms won with emancipation and the end of indentureship. The Presi-dent in wanting to repeat 1953 forgets that the circumstances are not entirely the same. In 1953, the constitution was different, the sovereignty belonged to Her Majesty, and the people were her subjects. In 2014, according to the constitution at Article 9, “Sovereignty belongs to the people, who exercise it through their representatives and the democratic organs established by or under this Constitution.”
In today’s Guyana, the head of state is not a monarch, but the people’s chief public servant. Also, the commonality of 1953 and 2014 is that No 3 still remains applicable and we, the people, must never lose sight of making real this aspiration. A way forward must be found to address the President’s misapplication of the constitution. Irrespective of our differences on issues, what must bind us is the desire and inalienable right to be free.
It may be another tempting proposition to use the misapplication of Article 70 (1) to castigate the ‘Burnham constitution.’ Persons are urged to rethink this approach since it would be creating another smokescreen to attack a bogeyman, while the President and his cabinet are allowed to run amok in their continued violations of this sacred instrument. Let us be reminded, Article 70 (1) is a parliamentary procedure used in the British parliamentary system, inherited and maintained verbatim by former colonies including Austra-lia, Canada, and sister Commonwealth countries.
In Guyana our constitution, at Article 106 (6) enshrines power in the people through their elected representatives, and holds the cabinet accountable through a vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly. For the Presi-dent to have his administration escape answering/ subjecting themselves to the people under the guise of enforcing Article 70 (1), is to disregard the representative tenet underpinning our constitution, and a dictatorial act. No person, group or individual, is greater than the people under our constitution, and this must be upheld.
What the President has done is sought temporary escape from accounting to the people in whom the constitution vests the power. The people will now have to come together and restore to them what is guaranteed to them. And while in 1953 this inalienable right to self-determination was not enshrined in that constitution, in 2014 the constitution safeguards this right. To give up this right now, under any pretext or machination of the President and his cabinet, would be a case where, we the people, have voluntarily surrendered our right for a new form of colonisation. Our voices and actions in the coming days must be designed to return sovereignty to the people.
Yours faithfully,
Lincoln Lewis
