“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.” This famous line is from the masked protagonist of the graphic dystopian novel, “V for Vendetta” by the British writer Alan Moore.
Initially done as a serial strip, it went on to be published by DC Comics before being adapted into a 1982 Warner Bros. (WB) film. The comic illustrator, David Lloyd developed the idea of dressing the hero as a resurrected Guy Fawkes after the best-known member of the English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Lloyd’s striking black and white mask of a smiling face, a wide moustache upturned at both ends, and a thin vertical pointed beard has since become ubiquitous worldwide, ending up a bestseller on Amazon for revelers celebrating Halloween and “cosplay” or “costume play,” with a cut of the profits going back to WB.
Adopted online by members of the decentralised international hacker-anarchist group “Anonymous,” it is the choice of public wear for street protesters who wish to hide their identity, such as in the associated annual Million Mask March primarily in London and Washington on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5. The mask has since been banned in a few countries because of the Movement’s potential to stir strife whether through demonstrations for democracy, anger against banks and financial institutions, or continuing calls for action to cut climate change and reduce political corruption.
In an interview with the BBC, Lloyd commented, “The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny – and I’m happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way.”
It was the British statesman, Winston Churchill who declared in the House of Commons in 1947, “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Our own vulnerable system is under increasing pressure following the shock approval of the December 21, 2018 no-confidence motion (NCM) filed by the Opposition and the lone crossover vote by then APNU+AFC Member of Parliament, Charrandass Persaud. This week, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in landmark rulings, announced that the motion against the President David Granger-led APNU+AFC coalition was validly passed with the votes of the minimum majority of 33 members of the 65-member National Assembly, rather than the spurious 34 as belatedly argued by the Government. In its other decision, the CCJ led by Justice Adrian Saunders deemed President Granger’s unilateral appointment of Justice (Ret’d) James Patterson as Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) “flawed” and unconstitutional, with the country’s final court ruling the President had no authority to introduce new eligibility requirements.
“The validity of Mr Persaud’s vote, the nature of the majority that is necessary validly to pass a motion of no confidence, the constitutional consequences upon the passage of such a motion, and a range of other questions were posed in the cases filed. Some of these questions implicate constitutional issues of enormous significance going to the heart of the philosophical underpinnings of Guyana’s ‘hybrid’ Constitution,” the Court stated.
It added, “For example, issues of the relationship between the parliament and the executive, the validity of the votes of members of the National Assembly who choose to defy the party whip and vote according to their conscience and relatedly, the extent of the obligation of (these) members…to support the List from which their names were extracted and the jurisdiction of the court to rule on claims that a person is disqualified from being a member of the National Assembly. It is to the tremendous credit of Guyana’s justice system that the consolidated cases were heard expeditiously, and a full and well-reasoned judgment was delivered on 31 January 2019 by Chief Justice Roxane George.”
The CCJ pointed out, “Fealty to one’s party cannot override sworn allegiance to the Constitution and to the people of Guyana. Members of parliament, should they so decide, and as long as they are willing to pay the political price, are not to be denied the freedom to vote according to the dictates of their conscience even in a proportional representation system.”
In his concurring judgment, Justice Jacob Wit acknowledged Guyana’s “truly constitutional pepper pot” with its “colourful mixture of both presidential and parliamentary ingredients.” He noted, “ I realise that those whom we call floor crossers or ship jumpers, or by any other name, do not always have the best of reasons (probably in most cases not) for so doing, so there could be very valid reasons for anti-defection provisions in order to keep the government stable and to ensure continuity of governance. But where these provisions threaten to become too strict, they may well lead to strangling whatever democratic fervour is left. It is not easy to find a proper balance between the many countervailing constitutional values that make a democracy. Some would say, a perfect balance is not possible. But in any event, it is better to have an imperfect democracy than a strangled one. That much is required by Article 1 of the Constitution; that Guyana is a democratic sovereign state.”
Justice Winston Anderson in his concurring judgment also referred to the importance of parliamentary continuity, saying that “In our predominantly non-industrialized countries where issues of poverty and under-development are endemic, and where our open economies are vulnerable to destabilizing shocks, including natural disasters, stability is a paramount requirement from our governance arrangements. We have little margin for error or for malingering in advancing the people’s business.”
He elaborated, “Consider the facts in this very case. General elections were last held in Guyana on 11 May 2015 and Parliament was officially summoned to meet on 10 June 2015. Under the terms of Article 70 (3) of the Constitution, elections must be held within the next year, that is, by June 2020. At that time the people of Guyana are constitutionally entitled to pass judgment on the stewardship of their Government. The inexplicable disregard by the organs of the State of the constitutional injunction in Article 106(7) that elections must be held within three months of the passage of a confidence motion means that the country has been mired in a constitutional crisis for the past six months with no clear end in sight. This is exacerbated by the overriding power vested by Article 162(2) of the Constitution in the Elections Commission to postpone the holding of elections because of ‘danger or serious hardship.’ There is no assurance that this scenario will not be repeated in the future, perhaps not infrequently, perhaps with a Government formed from a different List or combination of Lists. In short, in the context of a highly polarized electorate, governance of the Republic could become paralysed or tenuous, to the peril of the economic and societal advancement of its people.”
The Jamaican-born Justice concluded, “The Constitution was never meant to be a suicide pact. The Court is above all else the guardian of the Constitution and the guarantors of rule of law. The remedies section of the Constitution gives the Court the widest powers to address constitutional infractions and to uphold constitutional integrity. I concede that the circumstances in which a court is entitled to disregard the procedures and timelines specified in the election legislation in favour of upholding the fundamental tenets of the Constitution regarding eligibility to sit in parliament, are not entirely clear and require further thought. However, I consider that one circumstance where this extraordinary jurisdiction may be warranted is where parliamentary membership was obtained by intentional and fraudulent means. In the accepted vernacular of the law, fraud unravels all.”
ID thinks of Guyana’s leaders and ponders the line from “V for Vendetta” that “You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.”
