In his maiden presentation to the National Assembly, government Member of Parliament (MP) Sanjeev Datadin on Monday accused the opposition APNU+AFC of being responsible for the erosion of the rule of law and democracy during its tenure in office, and the five months it took to declare the winner of the March 2nd polls.
In his contribution to the budget debate, Datadin said that the emergency budget expressly states that it is one for strengthening democracy and the rule of law.
Referencing the passage of the December 21st, 2018 No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against the the David Granger-led A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) coalition, Datadin reasoned that the nation ought not to have been made to wait from then until June 18th, 2019, for the government to discover that 33 is a majority of the 65-member House and therefore the vote had been validly passed.
“We cannot wait for 179 days for
leaders to appreciate the most elementary of mathematical principles. The rule of law was undermined when the then government wanted to not respect the No Confidence vote in this House… the CCJ [Caribbean Court of Justice] had to tell the APNU+ AFC this,” Datadin, a lawyer, said.
He then went on to reference that it would take from June 18th to July 8th, 2020, 20 days, for the APNU+AFC to understand that the votes at an election, as is obvious, meant valid votes under Article 177 of the Constitution, while noting that again the CCJ had to tell the former government this.
On this point and making reference to the earlier presentation by APNU+AFC MP Raphael Trotman, also a lawyer, Datadin said that contrary to Trotman’s utterances that “no weapon formed against the APNU+AFC shall prosper,” Datadin declared “he’s wrong. It’s been formed already. It’s the Caribbean Court of Justice and the people of Guyana.”
These utterances by Datadin did not, however, sit well with APNU+AFC MP Amanza Walton-Desir, also an attorney, who expressed alarm. Walton-Desir chided Datadin for what she said was his admission to the “weaponisation” of the CCJ. She said that as an attorney her colleague’s statement is cause for alarm and concern to the nation at large.
As he continued with his presentation, Datadin said that the five months following elections were characterised by the coalition “doing everything within its power to undermine the rule of law …the attempts to rig the elections were transparent and childish.”
He also decried the use of the courts as what he called “an instrument of oppression” by the former administration, while citing the filing of frivolous litigation to delay the declaration of elections’ results and frustrate the will of the people.
Highlighting parliamentary oversight and scrutiny as an essential pillar in democratic societies for a government to be accountable to its people for the expenditure of taxpayers’ money, Datadin said that Guyana had not had this for 640 days because of the passage of the NCM. Against this background, the lawyer submitted that the mere presentation of a budget for debate in the House was a monumental step towards the restoration of the rule of law and democratic principles. The MP stressed that the people of Guyana must know where their money is being spent and that the government must be accountable to the people.
Datadin told the House that “the undeniable lack of vision and progress” in the past five years by the coalition has now been replaced by a budget that he described as being for all Guyanese.
He said that while he agreed with Trotman’s assertion that Guyana’s economy is being recognised by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that growth, he contended, was not to the benefit of the public coffers, which were in overdraft by billions.
According to Datadin, the growth was driven mainly by the petroleum sector. “…The government and people of Guyana were not included in this growth… the economy was growing and is growing but there was no structure whatsoever for this growth to take place… no laws, no regulations… no structure,” he said.
