Faced with the threat of a no-confidence motion (NCM) in 2014, the minority PPP/C government invoked the archaic monarchical law of prorogation and dismissed parliament. In 2018, confronted with a similar threat from the PPP/C, the one-seat majority APNU+AFC coalition government boasted that no one from its side was likely to vote with the opposition, but fell when MP Charrandass Persaud did just that with repercussions that are still with us today. In both cases, there were many calls for the abolition or radical reform of the prorogation and no-confidence mechanisms. Buoyed by such demands, launching his coalition campaign in January 2020, David Granger, much to the acclaim of supporters said, ‘We are going to reform the constitution so that the nonsense (NCM) they tried with us over the last 12 months does not happen again.’
The NCM is overwhelmingly a defining feature of parliamentary systems of government, such as in the United Kingdom, which hold that the government is accountable to parliament and can continue in office only while it has the confidence of a majority of the elected representatives in parliament. It should be crafted to suit the specific conditions of a country. In Germany, because Chancellors (heads of government) were frequently removed without their successors having enough parliamentary support to govern, an NCM against the Federal Chancellor requires that in the same motion the opposition propose a candidate to be the new Chancellor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion _of_no_confidence#Ireland).
An NCM does not usually bring down presidential-type governments in which the head of the executive government is usually directly elected by the electorate and does not rely on the support of parliament to hold office. For instance, in the US the president may be impeached for serious misbehaviour and abuse of office but a resolution expressing that the House or Senate has ‘no confidence’ in a particular federal officer or office does not have any immediate or binding legal import. However, it expresses a particular moral judgment that could have practical political implications (https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34037.pdf ). Switzerland has a collective presidency with Federal Councillors who are elected by the legislature for a term of four years and cannot be removed by an NCM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland).
In semi-presidential systems NCMs usually remove only the cabinet and prime minister. For example, in France such a motion against the government passed by a simple majority in the lower house of parliament – the French National Assembly – will remove the government and the president has to appoint a new prime minister who then forms a new government. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_of_no_confidence#Ireland). In Guyana, the president is not directly elected but chosen by the National Assembly from the party with the highest plurality of votes at the national and regional elections but is the head of state and government.
According to article 93 of our Constitution, the president may be removed from office if he becomes physically or mentally incapable of discharging his duties, article 94 states, ‘The President may be removed from office if he or she commits any violation of this Constitution or any gross misconduct’, and article 106 (6) states, ‘The Cabinet including the President shall resign if the Government is defeated by the vote of a majority of all the elected members of the National Assembly on a vote of confidence.’ Thus in Guyana the president faces the sanctions of both the presidential and parliamentary worlds: he can be impeached and must fall when the government falls.
As should be easily deduced from the references above, the essence of constitution making is that it must properly align one’s vision of democracy, etc. with concrete local conditions. With theoretical and empirical support, I have repeatedly argued in this column that an important element of Guyanese reality that is missed by political theorists and politicians is that, whether they accept or not, the latter represent not two – local/constituency and national – interests but also group/ethnic interests (Future Notes, SN: 14/08/2019). We can talk glibly about what is the law but unless it operates in a manner that is acceptable to substantially all of us it will not be respected in a fashion that facilitates the development of national unity.
In 2014, the vast majority of its Indian followers supported the PPP/C actions and four years later the overwhelming number of Africans supported the coalition government’s efforts to thwart the NCM. When the law pits substantially all of us against each other it cannot be good and needs to be eliminated or reformed. Indeed, we have become so accustomed to the ethnic meanderings of the two larger parties that their behaviour appears normal. However, when an individual, Mr. Charrandass Persaud, the member of a largely African political party, voted against it in favour of a largely Indian party, the harm done to race relations cannot be easily estimated. Even if, as I suggested previously, secret ballots on such matters could be generally useful, the witch-hunting to find the culprit may have been even more destructive given the number of persons that would have been wrongfully dragged into the veil of suspicion (Future Notes, SN: 25/15/2018).
In other places the assumption that similar obstacles could arise and inflame ethnic tensions has led to the establishment of special constitutional arrangements. For example, the Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to the decades-long deadly conflict in Northern Ireland required cross-community support for certain issues such as an NCM. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-northern-ireland-politics-383643450. The need for cross-community support is usually raised as a result of a “petition of concern” in relation to proposed legislation or executive action. For it to be successful at least 30 of the 90 members of the legislature must sign the petition. In a cross-community vote, the majority of those pre-designated unionists’ and nationalists are each required to pass a motion put to the assembly. As of October 2019, petitions of concern have been tabled 159 times since 1998 and have blocked same-sex marriage, abortion law reform and the censure of politicians
(https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Cross-community_vote).
The conditions and awareness that will make cross-community type arrangements politically feasible are yet to materialise within the Guyanese leadership. So how could we otherwise progressively reform the NCM? Staying within the semi-presidential tradition, the reform process could simply reformulate the role of the present, largely titular, prime minister to that of head of government and allow any successful NCM to cause only the PM and cabinet to resign. This will give the prime minister work more associated with the status of the office of PM but will not significantly affect the distribution of power since the president will not only continue to be the head of state but will have significant influence in the legislature by being the leader of the majority party in the Assembly.
Indeed, if as previously suggested in this column, the reform process requires a supermajority in parliament to become president, not being involved in the day to day management of the government might enhance the president’s capacity as a unifying national figure (Future Notes, SN: 26/08/2020).
