Senior Counsel and Member of Parliament Mr. Roysdale Forde said the National Intelligence and Security Bill which the Government intends to pass has no place in society.
In an invited comment above the Government’s decision to send the Bill to Select Committee, Forde told Village Voice News, the Bill “sets out an intended legislative scheme that is oppressive as well as highly invasive of the constitutional rights of the Guyanese people.”
Last week amidst concerns expressed by A Partnership of National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) parliamentarians in the National Assembly on the Bill and condemnation by the Guyana Bar Association, the Government has decided to have the Bill go to Select Committee.
The Select Committee is a standing committee in the Parliament where bills are reviewed, and recommendations made.
Appearing on his weekly programme, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Mr. Anil Nandlall, said the “Bill seeks to bring a transparent legal structure into being and to establish an accountable framework in respect of the agency itself and those who will man and comprise the agency, and to say clearly how the agency will be funded.”
But according to Forde, who has parliamentary oversight for the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, “Nandlall brings no serious thoughts to serious matters and his comments are not unexpected.”
Forde said the “Bill has no place in any society, not even a society like Guyana’s which only masquerades as a democratic society.” This Bill is extremely dangerous, feeble on oversight, flimsy on accountability, opaque, and contravenes a number of the constitutional rights of the people of Guyana, the senior counsel contended.
Noting that in keeping with Article 13 of the Constitution, it would have been expected the government would have engaged in consultations even before the Bill was tabled in the National Assembly, the senior counsel said the government continues to flout constitutional provisions that would ensure government functions in a manner that would realise the citizens’ aspiration for “One People One Nation One Destiny”
Article 13 states: “The principal objective of the political system of the State is to establish an inclusionary democracy by providing increasing opportunities for the participation of citizens, and their organisations in the management and decision-making processes of the State, with particular emphasis on those areas of decision-making that directly affect their well-being.”
Attorney-at-law Ms Pauline Chase, President of the Bar Association, last week expressed the Bar’s opposition to the Bill in its current form, warning that it poses a serious threat to the legal profession, particularly in terms of confidentiality between lawyers and clients.
