More than a year after the Constitution Reform Bill was passed in the National Assembly, government last week dispatched letters for nominees to the Constitu-tional Reform Commission to be submitted by next month for swift appointment thereafter.
Meanwhile, the opposition APNU+AFC says that they have already started consultations for their candidates and plan to submit their names long before the February 10 deadline.
“On the 10th day of January, on behalf of His Excellency the President, I dispatched letters to the relevant persons and organisations, inviting their nominees to be appointed by the President, to the constitutional Reform Commission, in accordance with Section 4 of the Constitution Reform Act,” Attorney General Anil Nandlall told Stabroek News yesterday.
“…As soon as the nominees are received the names will be passed to the President for their appointments,” he added
The letters request that the nominees be submitted on or before February 10.
Opposition Leader, Aubrey Norton, told this newspaper that on Friday his office received the letter and has begun to consult on it.
The Attorney General said that work has already begun to prepare the venue where the secretariat will be situated and where the commissioners will sit. This newspaper understands it is the Middle Street, Georgetown, building, between Carmichael and Main streets where Commissions of Inquiry were held.
Nandlall noted that the process has also begun to appoint “duly qualified persons to staff the secretariat.”
In this year’s national budget, there are also allocations to the Ministry of Legal Affairs “to finance the establishment and workings of the commission,” the Attorney General explained.
In December, Nandlall had apologized on behalf of government for the delay and had assured that the process onward would be swift.
“The President assures that the Constitutional Reform Commission will be appointed in the shortest possible time. We apologize for the delay,” he had said when contacted on the matter.
He had attributed the delays to government’s focus on dealing with Venezuela’s aggression, which came at a time concurrent with his government’s timeline for the requisite processes to be triggered.
“The delay had to do with the distraction with matters connected to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our country, but he [the President] has given firm instructions to the Attorney General to dispatch the letters to the relevant persons and agencies inviting their nominations in accordance with the Constitutional Reform Commission Act,” he said
“The Attorney General has confirmed that he has received such instructions from the President and will be writing the respective agencies within the next few days in order to ensure that the consultative process begins in accordance with the Constitu-tional Reform Commission Act,” he added.
In February of this year, Nandlall had said that the PPP/C cannot force any changes to the laws of this country on citizens and therefore the constitutional reform process will see suggestions for legislative changes from across the country.
And if inclusive governance is to be one of those laws, then it will be from a recommendation made by the people and for the people, he reasoned, underscoring that consultations by the Constitutional Reform Commission will be inclusive for all citizens of this country.
He was at the time responding to former Speaker of the National Assembly and one-time PPP executive member, Ralph Ramkarran, who lamented the sloth in starting the process and said that the PPP/C fulfilling a promise in its manifesto to have constitutional reform was useless, if changes doesn’t see inclusive governance.
“The institutions which have been created, such as the constitutional commissions and the sectoral parliamentary committees, are not functioning either at all or optimally. Article 13 of the Constitution that provides for consultation is not functionally implemented. The problem, therefore, outside of inclusive governance, is not the constitution, but implementation of its provisions. Other matters provided for in the act are more appropriately dealt with by legislation,” Ramkarran had written in his Conversation Tree blog.
He posited, “Fulfilling a manifesto promise to implement constitutional reform is not sufficient unless that promise includes the purpose or reason for the promise, namely, inclusive governance. It must be assumed that when the PPP/C made the promise in its Manifesto, it was of the view that inclusive governance was not provided for in the Constitution and reform was necessary to include it… it is expected, therefore, that notwithstanding the questionable omission in which the process is going to be conducted, that inclusive governance will be a major issue in the constitution reform process, as it is in the PPP/C’s Manifesto.”
On the issue of Constitutional Reform, the PPP/C in its 2020-2025 manifesto, had outlined its plans.
“Ensuring people’s participation in revising the Supreme Law of our land. We are aware that issues concerning constitutional reform, particularly in relation to a national, inclusive governance model, management of elections, fiduciary accountability, enhancing rights of Guyanese and ensuring constitutional language, is simple, and have been raised and discussed in the public domain. However, we believe that these, as well as other issues, must be part of a process of widespread consultation with the people of Guyana before being acted upon. The extensive changes to our Constitution under the PPP/C followed such a process,” the manifesto states.
It added, “Moving forward, we are committed to continuous revision of the Constitution. In this regard, we will ensure that the Committee on Constitutional Reform that will advance the work will pursue nationwide consultation following the model used in the past, that is, with half of the members from civil society and equal representation from Government and the Opposition.”
The Attorney General yesterday echoed the position he announced in February. “It is expected that once appointed the Commission will commence its work as indicated before, the work of the commission will be driven by public consultation,” he said.
“The commission under the Act is authorised to regulate its own affairs and conduct of its business,” he added.
