The National Assembly’s Constitutional Reform Committee met only twice this year due to COVID-19 constraints but this should not be seen as non-commitment to the process by the PPP/C government, Attorney General and Chairman of the body Anil Nandlall says.
“Admittedly, we would have liked to achieve much more but we are operating under very constrained circumstances,” Nandlall told Sunday Stabroek in an interview.
“I hate to use the occasion to make reference to the opposition, but in five years, absolutely nothing was accomplished—I believe only two meetings of the committee was held. In a few months, we have passed that record. Frankly speaking, there is no basis to compare performances between the two governments on any given matter,” he added.
The Committee, Nandlall said, has had two meetings since it was formed in December of last year and all plans were stalled because of the COVID-19 impact on the staff of the Parliament.
Giving an insight into the operations of the committee to date, the Chairman of Parliament’s Standing Committee for Constitutional Reform noted that at the first meeting he was elected Chairman.
Much of what he had told this newspaper in an interview back in February of this year was repeated and at the second meeting he had emphasized that the group must work together if they truly need reform to key articles of the constitution.
“In those circumstances, I expect, that the work of the committee, if we are to achieve anything, will have to be consensual,” Nandlall had said.
“A second meeting was held in which discussions began, in relation to working out the work schedule of the commission. As Chair, I pointed out to the committee that because of the nature of the constitutional reform process – it is a process that must be consensual if we are to succeed – that an agenda be worked out that receives the support of both the government and the opposition members of the committee,” he explained on Friday.
The Chairman said that having regard to the discussions that emanated from the second meeting, he formed the opinion that the consensus principle was accepted by all the members.
Agreeing to working together, both sides, according to Nandlall, decided that a review of the work of the previous constitutional reform body be done to assess how much was done so as to avoid duplication.
“We then decided that it is important that the committee examines the work of the previous committee in order to avoid unnecessary duplication. It was agreed that I request the Clerk of Committees to provide to the members of the committee, the work done by the previous Constitutional Reform Committee and that once that is received and examined by the individual members, we can meet again to continue the discourse of working out the modus operandi which will be used by the committee to conduct its work,” he said.
“Since then, we had a shut-down of the National Assembly as a result of the members of staff and the Speaker contracting the COVID virus. Although parliament has resumed working, I do not recall ever receiving the information requested from the Clerk of Committees,” he added.
Realistically
Nandlall promised to “dispatch a reminder letter”.
However, he noted that not much would be done since Parliament is expected to go into recess next month.
“But realistically, Parliament is scheduled to go into recess sometime in August and then it will resume in October,” he said.
Nonetheless, the Committee Chairperson believes that “once the documents are received from the Clerk, there may be opportunity for one last meeting” before the closure.
He reasoned that by the time Parliament resumes in October, this country is expected to reach herd immunity against the COVID-19 virus and work would be continued at an accelerated pace.
“The country is expected to return to a greater amount of normalcy and hopefully we can have a very accelerated and aggressive agenda worked out for the Constitutional Reform Committee. As is known, all parties in the National Assembly have expressed a desire for constitutional reform so there should not be great difficulty in galvanizing an active momentum once the recess is concluded,” Nandlall contended.
Soon after the PPP/C took office in August of last year, Nandlall had outlined the legislative agenda for his ministry and said that reform of the election laws and constitution were high on the agenda.
Underscoring that the process will be a “people driven” one, Nandlall had said that he did not want to pronounce on specific deliverables but the nation can be assured that the committee will work tirelessly to ensure the changes proposed by the majority are made.
He had told the National Assembly that his ministry will spearhead wide-ranging reforms, including legislative reforms to the electoral process to make it “stronger, more transparent, more accountable and to ensure that it is manned by persons of high integrity and professional ethics, so as to prevent the electoral machinery from being hijacked by political fraudsters, who cannot win government through the will of the people.”
When he was asked by this newspaper on the process to be executed, he replied, “How this will be executed will have to be ironed out, in terms of if the guiding force is going to be a national commission established or a committee itself.”
“Would experts be incorporated into the process, and if so at what stage? Would this vehicle established, travel the country or would people be invited to meet at an established place to be determined? All of these matters will have to be discussed and agreed upon,” he said.
“Speaking from the perspective of the government, that is precisely why we are putting the process to the people. The people must be the driving force from our stand point. The PPP/C and the government are simply stakeholders in the process, like other stakeholders. It is not going to be a government dominated and driven process… It would be premature to speak to deliverables since the process would be driven not necessarily by the government,” he added.
Nandlall emphasized and echoed much of what he has said on the issue from the time he became Attorney General as he repeated that by the end of this PPP/C government’s term in office, reforms needed by this country’s citizenry would be completed.
Former member of the Steering Committee for Constitutional Reform (SCCR) formed under the APNU+AFC Harold Lutchman and A New and United Guyana Executive Ralph Ramkarran had said that governments clamour for constitutional reform when in opposition but when they are in government seem to have a change of mind.
“What they support when they are in government is entirely different to what they support when they are out of government. The same thing they criticize when they are out of power, the same thing when they are in power they don’t see anything wrong with,” Lutchman had said in a previous interview.
Nandlall said that for persons to look at the two meetings and say that government doesn’t seem to be serious or that it is dragging the process out “would be an unfair comment because when one looks around the Caribbean, there have been virtual shutdowns of public offices and public agencies and the private sector” and they would understand that COVID-19 has significantly impacted the entire world.
The Constitution Reform Committee comprises Nandlall, Minister of Education Priya Manickchand, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Charles Ramson Jr, Minister of Public Service Sonia Parag and Sanjeev Datadin from the government side, .and Khemraj Ramjattan, Raphael Trotman, Dr. Nicolette Henry and Amanza Walton-Desir from the opposition.
