Dear Editor,
Raphael Trotman’s June 25 speech to the National Assembly spelt out a number of constitutional actions the government intended to take. Local government elections are now pushed back to the first quarter of 2016. The APNU+AFC 100-Day Plan states it would set the date for the early holding of local government elections. Despite Mr Trotman’s comments, no date has been set. Let’s get this straight: local government elections in the first quarter of 2016 is not the early holding of local government elections as promised in the manifesto. Without an actual date, this is peacocking, gimmickry and tomfoolery. It is also a badly broken promise. If there is one area this coalition and specifically its bigger partner, APNU, cannot fool around with, it is elections because the PNC’s electoral past continues to be a sword of Damocles hanging over its head.
I was shocked to hear Mr Trotman suggest that use of prorogation will be altered but will nevertheless remain. After what happened last year under President Ramotar, it is a truly dictatorial mindset that will maintain this raw power in a tragically broken and imbalanced constitutional structure that significantly favours the presidency and executive arm over the entire state. Mr Trotman is spinning our wheels.
Prorogation cannot be anything but a presidential whim to suspend the people’s elected assembly at pleasure. Because it is inherently despotic and because it operates in an imbalanced presidency-dominated constitutional structure, there is no logical modification to prorogation
that can be made to render it democratically palatable. Mr Trotman stating that this government will never prorogue the National Assembly is as shallow as Georgetown’s silt and garbage filled drains. This government controls the majority in the National Assembly. No wonder it can loudly
proclaim it will not prorogue its own majority-controlled assembly! The more things change, the more they stay the same. Wasn’t the constitutional change commission supposed to be activated in July 2015? Where is the commission? How long does it really take for the NCN fraud report to go from the President’s desk to the Prime Minister’s desk, particularly when the PM is working right there in the presidential complex and when the report is also available publicly on the internet? Has President Granger, claimed famed man of the people, held a single press conference with the fifth estate of this country?
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
