Dear Editor,
On March 13, Mr Roysdale Forde, Attorney-at-law, filed with the courts in Guyana an application by way of an affidavit for certain declarations and a conservatory order intended to prevent the Minister of Finance from carrying out his usual trick of spending from the Consolidated Fund without the benefit of an Appropriation Act or the prior or retroactive approval of the Parliament. The expenditure in question pertains to monies received from the InterAmerican Develop-ment Bank. The latter announced the approval of the two loans on February 24, 2015. The application widely publicized in the press last week was filed on my behalf.
Mr Forde was informed yesterday that the CJ has named April 1 as the day on which the matter will be considered. I am not aware of whether judges indulge in humorous pranks in the course of their professional practice, so assume that the date is of no significance, but the decision has disappointed and alarmed me for two reasons.
An injunction or conservatory order would normally be considered within one or two days because the subject matters they concern cannot be undone easily, if at all. The need for urgency is obvious. In a specific case involving the CC&E Department in the 1980s, a judge granted an injunction preventing the CC&E from holding the goods of an importer. Although the goods were not perishable, the judge agreed to consider and grant an injunction against the then CC&E in the course of a single Sunday. It raised many eyebrows as well as the ire of the CC&E and the Ministry but it went ahead. The goods were imported without any duties at all, although the law required an impost and the challenge was about the quantum of the duty. In Guyana judges sometimes make odd decisions.
A Minister of Finance may spend billions with the stroke of a pen, as it were. Within the two weeks to the end of the month that the CJ will be reflecting on the matter all the money is likely to have been spent unless the date for the hearing has been issued along with the equivalent of a temporary restraining order. That, as far as I am aware, has not been done, so I am looking at the situation and wondering what to make of the CJ’s intentions.
He has been asked to look at the law (FM&A Act in particular) and stop the Government from spending without the agreement of a new Parliament.
He has accepted the order but sets a date nearly two weeks away, an unprecedented act as far as I have been advised, especially because he is likely to give the Government an additional 14 days, at least, to prepare their defence.
The CJ, therefore, without pronouncing on the merits or otherwise of the case has left the stable door open in a manner that would render any decision he eventually hands down almost completely ineffectual if not meaningless.
The delay in the so-called Budget Cuts Case of 2013 has had exactly the same effect. The Government was able to spend unrestrained despite two sets of Budget cuts whilst the courts oblivious to the danger pursued a process which had the effect of giving the Government the room they wished. In the most recent case the APNU brought before the CJ he agreed that the Government was breaking the law in spending what had not been approved but he declined to venture a decision regarding constraining them from continuing to break the law and breach the constitution.
Most people would agree that justice delayed is justice denied, but C Northcote-Parkinson, one of my favourite references for students reading Public Finance or Public Administration coined a rider, The Law of Delay – delay is the deadliest form of denial. And he went on to explain, “Delays are thus deliberately designed as a form of denial and extended to cover the life expectation of the person whose proposal is being pigeon-holed … This is the law of delay.”
I say to the Minister delay will not save the Government from the wrath of the electorate in May.
Yours faithfully,
Carl B Greenidge
