The President recalled Parliament on November 10, but it was all a charade. When the opposition members turned up they were greeted by notices lying in front of their chairs saying Parliament had been prorogued. In his address to the nation that day the Head of State told citizens that his prorogation decision was his “sole recourse to ensure the life of the 10th Parliament was preserved,” and to end the opposition’s “political gamesmanship.” The intention was, he said, to engage the parliamentary opposition in “constructive ways” on matters of national importance. “The answer lies,” he was quoted as saying, “in the practical choice between the atmosphere of confrontation as the no confidence motion debate would fuel, or that of possible accommodation as a prorogued Parliament can facilitate if there is a genuine intent on all sides.”
This is all absolute twaddle, of course. In the first place, the government had ample warning of the intention of the combined opposition to debate a no-confidence motion in the National Assembly, and as such had ample time for discussions with them. In fact, the first sitting of the House following the recess was to all intents and purposes postponed owing to government inaction, but there was still no move on the side of the ruling party to “engage” the two opposition parties in dialogue.
In his column in our issue today (see page 7) Mr Ralph Ramkarran cites instances long before that when the government had the opportunity to make overtures to the opposition to seek compromise, or make creative decisions, such as naming a date for local government elections, but they chose not to do so. In the end, Parliament was recalled (an empty exercise as it turned out) only when those in power came under unsustainable pressure owing to the fact they had rejected the holding of local government elections as well as general elections, and were preventing Parliament from meeting. That was shredding their already frayed credentials too much, since everyone perceived it as a raw power move which could not be camouflaged as anything else.
The mandarins in Freedom House now think they have avoided being branded dictators by proroguing Parliament instead; after all, prorogation is an option under the constitution, and consequently is perfectly legal. Unfortunately for them, it does not help their case; it is still a raw power move which cannot be camouflaged as anything else. Carried away by the technical constitutionality of it all, the ruling party in its infinite wisdom decided that it was a democratic move. They were, of course, guilty of linguistic confusion; what is legal is not necessarily democratic, and in the current circumstances what is legal happened to be unquestionably anti-democratic.
Then there is the baffling matter of why the President and his party should seriously believe that extra-parliamentary negotiations would have a different outcome from all the previous discussions, let alone that the atmosphere would change from one of ‘confrontation,’ to one of possible ‘accommodation.’ If anything, the atmosphere should be worse once the President has engaged in an indefensible stratagem to exclude elected representatives from the House, and prevent them from discharging their various duties to the electorate, including their oversight functions, some of which are fulfilled through the parliamentary committees. How could the government believe that barring the opposition MPS from their legitimate public forum would cause them to rush into talks with a government which in any case has never been amenable to compromise either inside or outside the House? The ruling party has now dramatically shrunk the space in which the opposition can operate and yet refuses to let go of the myth that it is acting democratically.
Then there is the issue of what is to be discussed between the two sides. If it is the same subject matter that has come up before, such as the Anti-Money Laundering Bill, then either the government is unfamiliar with the law, or it really is not very interested in securing passage for its own legislation. According to a legal source, a prorogued Parliament does not suspend any unfinished business in the House; it terminates it. On a resumption of Parliament following a prorogation, therefore, everything would have to start again from scratch. What on earth is it, therefore, that needs to be discussed outside the context of Parliament which could not have more meaningfully been negotiated while it was in session?
Given that, the question has to be asked once again why the President did not seek compromises long before this to keep the Parliament in session so serious discussions could be pursued. That they didn’t do this means either that at the time they didn’t know what to do; or they thought if they procrastinated for long enough it would all blow over and that in any case, APNU would not stand by the AFC on the matter of the no-confidence motion. As it is their solution to all their woes in relation to the no-confidence vote, illegal spending, a minister summoned to the privileges committee, another minister under scrutiny for his comments to a reporter and all the rest of it, is to take power directly into their own hands and call it democracy.
The least which can be said about all of this is that the PPP/C appears totally out of touch with reality. If that is indeed so it would not be the first weak government in history to try desperately to cling onto power in a crisis it cannot comprehend, and which has adjusted the mental picture in its mind to correspond with a reality it wants to see, rather than the one which exists.
Its inability to understand how the opposition thinks, and therefore would react, is plain to see, but there is something else too which is characteristic of desperate governments: in their fantasy world there is no alternative to doing what they did, while their opponents had alternatives. There was no other “recourse” to prorogation, the President told the nation in all seriousness, despite the fact that as indicated above, clearly there was. And even when the hour of decision had come, he could have dissolved Parliament, or better yet, let the no-confidence motion go ahead.
The second thing this government shares with some others in history which have responded inappropriately to crises, is in its inability to see long term and work out the consequences of its actions. The longer it continues on the path of absolutism the more it will find itself entrammelled in the logic of its autocratic situation. As a result it will become more repressive, and not less so. As such it will feel the strain even more of its own internal contradictions, which will cause problems within the party, particularly for those who came through the old days. This is, of course, quite aside from the significant pressure it is going to feel from the international community. In short, this move will not alleviate its woes, it will exacerbate them at the same time adding new ones to the mix. And this is the third thing it has in common with some of its historical predecessors: it blindly takes actions which will cause itself harm.
The one saving grace – if such it can be called – in all of this is that the President said more than once if there was no agreement for “normalcy,” then he would have no option but to call early general elections. ‘Normalcy’ is another word which, like ‘democracy,’ the ruling party has unilaterally redefined, but since in the Head of State’s context it means agreement with the opposition, President Ramotar should waste no further time in dissolving Parliament. The combined opposition has now spoken: They say they are not going to talk. What, therefore, is the President waiting for? Dissolution is the only way he can rescue himself and his party from the quicksand of one-party rule.
