On Thursday President David Granger invited members of civil society and the diplomatic community to listen to a presentation at separate engagements in the Baridi Benab. The civil society representatives were more than a little disconcerted to find that all it consisted of was a half-hour speech, and that no questions were entertained. What the diplomats thought is not known, since the media were not invited to that session.
Essentially the two groups heard the same address, with one omission for the foreign officials, according to the two texts made available by the Ministry of the Presidency. The President was at pains to repeat what he had said before, namely, that any list for the Gecom chairmanship which “does not accord serious consideration to the Government’s recommendations, in the spirit of the CCJ ruling, would be spurious and that I would have great difficulty in accepting such a list.” The diplomats were not privy to what he said next: “In other words, the President is not a passive bystander to the process. He is an active participant in ‘hammering out’ the list of persons ‘not unacceptable’ to him.”
Exactly why this should have been excised from the presentation to the diplomats is not clear, since his point had already been made, if rather less directly, in the first part of his statement. Perhaps it was simply that he made the addition subsequently before meeting civil society in order to emphasise his position, or even that the Ministry of the Presidency made a typographical error. Whatever the case, the disputation over the CCJ ruling has now been overtaken by Friday’s selection of Justice (Rtd) Claudette Singh as GECOM Chairman.
What is interesting about Thursday’s event is that the President is obviously concerned about how the Western international community perceives his actions. The US, British and EU missions had earlier exhorted the government to observe the Constitution and the rulings of the CCJ, most recently following the conservatory orders handed down by that court. In a joint statement the two Ambassadors and the British High Commissioner had said, “… It is important for the rule of law that all invoked actors abide by its ruling and the relevant provisions of the Constitution. We urge everyone to do so expeditiously”.
During his speech the President let it be known that since the July 12 ruling of the CCJ, he had been required to present his government’s case to Caricom once and Baroness Patricia Scotland, the Commonwealth Secretary General, on two occasions. Presumably he remembers the warning given to previous president, Mr Donald Ramotar, after the Parliament had been prorogued for some months. Then then British High Commissioner Andrew Ayre told a press conference at the time that “Guyana is moving into a category of concern for the Commonwealth,” and that the prorogation of November 10, 2014 was a clear breach of the Guyana Constitution and the Commonwealth Charter. “The UK and other governments don’t sign the Commonwealth Charter … and then just put … [it] to bed,” he was quoted as saying; and as such Guyana could be subject to a critical review for breaches of it. As we all know, Mr Ramotar eventually heeded the warning.
As we reported on Friday, Guyana is currently one of the eight members of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group on the Harare Declaration. The policy programme of the Commonwealth is enshrined in the Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme, which is designed to uphold Harare, including its core political values of democracy, the rule of law and good governance. Millbrook allows the Commonwealth Secretariat to sanction offending members, which in serious or repeat cases could involve suspension or even expulsion, while the enforcer, so to speak, is the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group which investigates cases and recommends action.
At the very least, one would have thought, if there is sufficient concern about Guyana in the Commonwealth Secretariat then she could not continue to sit on the Ministerial Action Group, because she cannot investigate herself. That apart, at the worst, she could face the humiliation of sanctions for what our report cited as the “unjustified postponement of elections” or the “undermining of the judiciary.”
Where Caricom is concerned the situation for President Granger is different. The organisation is not what it was when Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica wanted Guyana thrown out following the December 1985 ‘election’, and Prime Minister James Mitchell of St Vincent arranged a hurried meeting on the island of Mustique. There, then President Desmond Hoyte committed to free and fair elections with international observers, and a free press. By the time it came to former President Ramotar’s turn, it was reported that the Caricom Council of Ministers was satisfied that the prorogation of parliament was in keeping with the provisions of the Guyana Constitution and did not constitute a breach of the Commonwealth Charter.
By then, however, Caricom had been penetrated by Venezuela, which had been very generous to some of the islands, and had provided subsidised oil to the region. Several members had joined President Chávez’s ALBA, with its objective of regional economic integration within the context of socialism. If these islands couldn’t condemn Venezuela’s undemocratic practices, they couldn’t condemn those of Guyana.
While ALBA has become irrelevant, Caricom still does not speak with one voice, or anything close to one voice. In any case, given the continued links of some to Venezuela, and their reluctance to condemn that country in the OAS, one imagines President Granger does not have a great deal to fear from that direction. He will, however, be interested in securing Caricom’s backing because of its influence in the Commonwealth.
There is too, the OAS, but given its preoccupation with Venezuela, one suspects that Mr Granger will not have to devote his attentions there, at least for the moment.
In his lecture the President presented the case that recent political developments had been subject to misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the government’s intentions. It can only be remarked that intentions are inferred from actions, and if those actions allow of only one interpretation, then the question of misinterpretation doesn’t arise. So, for example, to cite just one case in point, if the Constitution requires the resignation of Cabinet and President following a vote of no confidence, and then they do not resign, wherein lies a critic’s misinterpretation of government’s intentions?
President Granger’s reaction has been to claim he is in conformity with the Constitution, and in an attempt to demonstrate this, he has been engaged for some time in revisionist interpretations of this country’s framework document. Now he is applying the same technique to the decisions of the CCJ to justify himself. “They [the CCJ judges] sought to explain more clearly and to interpret certain provisions of the Constitution,” he told his two audiences. Those interpretations, however, are his own, not what the Justices had to say.
It is hard to believe that the President does not know that the representatives of the international community, more especially the Commonwealth, are perfectly capable of reading and understanding the provisions of the relevant articles of the Constitution, not to mention the rulings of the CCJ judges without his help. After all, they are both perfectly clear and brook of no aberrant interpretations.
The President would be advised to take another look at his strategy. While he may conceivably bluster his way through locally, that may not work at the international level, as Messrs Hoyte and Ramotar found out to their cost.
