That President Granger was moved at a New Amsterdam forum on Friday to reassert that he was a `constitutional President’ demonstrates the great difficulty he faces in convincing at least half the people of the country and key sections of the international community that he is anything more than just a caretaker President and functioning only to clear the path for early general elections.
Speaking in one of the traditional strongholds of the PNCR, the key player in governing coalition partner, APNU, President Granger adverted to the fact that his government had admirably convened two local government elections and said “and we going to have it again whenever the constitution says we must have it because we are a constitutional government and I am a constitutional president.”
The nexus between the next local government elections and the constitutionality of this administration is unclear as the next elections are scheduled for after this government’s term in office would have ended.
President Granger faces an uphill task in being considered as having a constitutional leg to stand on. His government’s plight remains that having gambled recklessly in the courts to stay in office at any cost, the two three-month periods in which general elections should have been held have expired and his government is now in a constitutional netherworld post September 18th 2019. The unconstitutionality of his government’s presence has been prominently pointed out.
The Bar Council of the Guyana Bar Association, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth have all made the point that the government is operating unconstitutionally. The blame for this lies with President Granger for not recognising the validity of the December 21, 2018 motion of no-confidence and subsequently with the Guyana Elections Commission for failing to discharge its constitutional duty to convene elections within the constitutionally stipulated timeframe.
With elections now being more than four months away, many important areas of governance will remain neglected as the government does not have the mandate for the presentation of new laws, programmes, policy papers etc. The management of the oil and gas sector is a prime example of where the President was prepared to risk the country’s ability to authoritatively legislate and regulate by seeking to extend his stay in office.
Aside from regulatory legislation such as that pertaining to the Petroleum Commission, Local Content policy, insulating the country from oil spill damage and the monitoring of claimed expenses, there are other areas where the government cannot even begin to lay the groundwork as in the case of the proposed cash transfers from expected oil revenues.
In the last few months there has been feverish debate in the newspapers, broadcast sector, social media and public forums on the cash transfer proposal which has been ardently championed by governing coalition member, the Working People’s Alliance. Civil society has begun to do its job here. It has been the locus for this public ferment of ideas on the cash transfer and how it might or might not work. The proposal is clearly a non-starter for the short-term as the government has no mandate, no revenues will be recognised for appropriation until a 2020 budget is in place, the infrastructure for the Natural Resources Fund has to be activated and the quantum payable for 2020 remains unknown and subject to many variables.
Had Parliament been functional there could have already been an initial debate so that MPs from both sides of the aisle could present their views. From all that has been argued about cash transfers in a country with a yawning gap between the rich and the poor and its status as an emerging oil and gas economy, it is clear that it requires careful studying and investigation of the various options.
As the premier indigenous education institution in the country and in keeping with the expectation that it will play an increasingly prominent role in oil and gas education and in studying the social ramifications of the sector, the government could have commissioned the University of Guyana to undertake a study on the cash transfer both from the perspective of its possible impact on the impoverished and its larger macroeconomic implications such as on the rate of inflation. It would be intransigent and incomprehensible, of course, for any government to make arbitrary declarations on the direct transfer of oil revenues.
Whatever decisions are finally made on the cash transfer – it is one of the areas where there should be political consensus – it would seem just and sensible that monies be directed to those in extreme poverty for whom day-to-day living is a hard scrap – families living on the edge. On a regular basis as is evidenced in the media there are families without food for the day, without access to clean water, without the ability to send their children to school, without the means to secure basic health care and residing in conditions that lead to violence and abuse in all of its forms. These are the families that need urgent help and should have the first call on any revenues that might be set aside for cash transfers.
This newspaper has long argued for the mapping of extreme poverty in all parts of the country and for this to provide the foundation for targeted interventions to lift those persons from this state and to enable them to begin edging towards independent living. This poverty mapping could have already been initiated to provide an informed basis for action by the various ministries entrusted with improving the circumstances of the people.
By its own doing, the government has been left bereft of constitutional legitimacy. There are still, however, areas where it could have beneficial impact such as contextualising the cash transfer debate. It should spend the remaining months before elections addressing matters that will attract broad approval from stakeholders.
