There is everything conspiratorial about litigation filed and instituted recently in the motion in the name of Cedric Richardson against the Attorney General and the Speaker. In local parlance, cockishness is written all over it.
Mr. Richardson is here making an application to the High Court that his right to choose Jagdeo as President for a third term is unconstitutionally prohibited by virtue of a statute, namely Act No 17 of 2001, which took away that right.
To realize this objective, Mr. Richardson, through his Attorney at Law, is making an argument that Act No 17 of 2001 is unconstitutional in that it was not passed in accordance with the proper procedure. Instead of the two-thirds majority support it got in the National Assembly, it should have been passed via the referendum route and the referendum route only! Why? Because introduction of a new provision into the Constitution of Guyana; which this two-term limit legislation of 2001 made provision for, was and is an alteration of the Constitution, and an alteration which required a referendum in accordance with article 164, rather than just a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
This argument I am well aware has been doing the rounds under the stewardship of the most garrulous Attorney General in our country’s history, the Chatree and Queen’s College scholar, Mr Anil Nandlall. This was especially so when the AFC had demanded that the country must have the Procurement Commission in place; and had further demanded that unless it was made operational, support for the Anti-Money Laundering Bill would be withheld. Realising that the coming into being of this Procurement Commission will bring a halt to gorging at the trough by PPP officials and their cronies, the PPP Administration was hell bent in finding a way to avoid its operationalisation.
One such way was to argue that it was unconstitutional. But there were two difficulties in this. Firstly, how could the PPP make that argument? It would be most barefaced and shameless. After all, it was the PPP who had agreed to have that Procurement Commission in 2001 in the aftermath of so much national strife which was resolved by the Herdmanston Accord and these agreed upon constitutional reforms. So it had to find somebody other than PPP associates to file and institute such proceedings.
The second difficulty of the PPP was, how to make the argument of unconstitutionality in such a roundabout way so as to divert the gaze of an increasingly suspicious populace that it is not the Procurement Commission that is the target it wants to shoot down.
Both these difficulties it seems have now been overcome; the first by a Cedric Richardson and his team of lawyers who filed the litigation. These are not known associates of the PPP. Secondly, the gaze being diverted from the true target, the Procurement Commission, by this decoy Jagdeo and the third term.
Once the arguments start, expect the Attorney General to meet them not with his usual gusto and genuine aggression and stout resistance. I suppose that now that this is being written he may very well be theatrical. But inside, deep inside, he will be meeting them with an embrace.
He is well aware that a ruling in the present matter as to unconstitutionality on the ground that the alteration of the constitution was improperly done by two-thirds majority rather than referendum will mean that, consequentially, the Procurement Commission is thus invalid and void and unconstitutional. As a matter of fact, all the constitutional reforms of the 2001 to 2003 period will have to be literally deleted. It must follow as a matter of course.
This is the whole strategy of this piece of litigation. To strike down all those scrutinizing institutions which were created to be a check and balance on the executive lawlessness of, immediately, the PPP Government and, mediately, any future Government. So in one fell swoop that which had evolved during that period of our history and which may have been fought for by the Applicant and his lawyers, will be wiped out! Yes….completely!
This is the nature of the beast we have to deal with.
But in conclusion the AFC wants to add this last point. The PPP wants to provoke another national crisis as happened in the late 1990s. It wants a repetition of that saga. Strife has always benefitted the PPP. It might very well get it. This time, however, it may not just realise constitutional reforms.
So it should run far from such grand conspiratorial schemes as it has arranged here. Rather than strife, this time it is subversion of its own Constitution. All with the purpose to hold onto power. This is hugely dangerous.
