According to Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon it is ludicrous for the PPP/C government to exclude his party from state boards because it maintains that the administration is fraudulent.
“There is a difference between the State and the Government. The State of Guyana is a legal entity that operates in perpetuity. Governments come and go. A government can be illegal and illegitimate [but] where State Boards are prescribed in a law, then it is of the State,” Harmon said in a statement released yesterday.
He went on to remind that it is the Parliament, a state entity, which comprises both Government and Opposition that passes laws not the Government.
“Therefore, where the law requires Opposition representatives to sit on Boards, the Government is required to comply,” he maintained.
Harmon was responding to an article appearing in yesterday’s edition of the Stabroek News. In the article, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Government, Gail Teixeira, stated that the APNU+AFC Coalition has not been included in any of the state boards announced because they continue to refer to the government as “illegitimate.”
“They say we are an illegitimate government. If we are an illegitimate government why would you want to sit on any board we are appointing? They have got themselves into what you call a problematic position. You can’t say you want to be on boards but you don’t recognize the government that is appointing those boards,” Teixeira told Stabroek News in an invited comment.
Members of A New and United Guyana (ANUG), the Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) and The New Movement (TNM), which share one of the 32 opposition seats in the parliament have been appointed to the Boards of the Guyana Oil Company, Guyana Water Incorporated and the Guyana Power and Light. Also included are members of the United Republican Party (URP) and The Citizenship Initiative (TCI); these two parties contested the March 2 polls but did not gain enough support to be represented in the House.
On Friday, AFC General Secretary David Patterson said that it was disrespectful for the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) to select representatives on behalf of the opposition.
He reminded that the Leader of the Opposition, a constitutional position, is normally the person or office which identifies opposition representatives.
Harmon in his statement yesterday further explained that “where the law does not specify Opposition participation, the Government is obliged to include the Opposition in the interest of transparency and accountability and because the law is a law of the State and not of the Government.”
He argued that if Teixeira’s “ludicrous” position is taken to its logical conclusion “it would mean that it, the illegitimate PPP, can ignore statutory demands of mutual agreement and proceed to unilaterally appoint a substantive Chancellor, Chief Justice and a new Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission.”
It is an absurd argument that Teixeira proffers, Harmon maintained.
