CURRENT PROCEDURE FOR CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM IGNORES RELEVANT LAWS

Readers of Stabroek News Sunday edition (9/21) were treated to an extra-ordinary commentary from the Chairperson of the Constitutional Reform Commission (CRC) former Chancellor Carl Singh. Chairman Singh’s comments were what one would expect from an external observer, bemoaning the fact that “everything that happens to the Commission is determined by the membership.”

The Chair laid out a catalogue of reasons – from finding chairs to invasion from Venezuela – to defend why the CRC has produced little to nothing over the past three years. He also invoked the fact that many Commission members needed to be educated about constitutional reform before starting their work – which raises a host of issues about selection to the Commission. Whether Commission members were remunerated for all of this nothingness is unknown. While non-performance in itself is sufficient to conclude that the life of the CRC ought to be closed down, a more cogent reason for reaching the same conclusion is the fact that the Commission from its inception was not seen as part of organically evolving law in Guyana.

Towards the end of the Constitutional Reform programme 1999-2000, the then Commission addressed the issue of continuous future reform.   This resulted in the Constitutional (Amendment no.6) of 2001 passed by the National Assembly on June 21, 2001 and assented to on 31 July 2001 by former President Bharrat Jagdeo. When assented, the ‘Official Remarks’ of the Constitutional Reform Commission stated that this Act be inserted after Article 119 of the Guyana Constitution and referred to as the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Future Constitutional Reform Process.  The pertinent clauses of that Act are as follows:

119A (1) The National Assembly shall establish a Standing Parliamentary Committee for Constitutional Reform for the purpose of continually reviewing the effectiveness of the working of the Constitution and making periodic reports thereon to the Assembly, with proposals for reform, as necessary.

(2)  In its work the Committee shall have power to co-opt experts or enlist the aid of other persons of appropriate expertise, whether or not such experts or other persons are members of the Assembly.

This law intended to guide the continuous process of Constitutional Reform has been ignored by the Ministry of Legal Affairs, Parliament and the Constitutional Commission headed by former Chancellor Singh.

Moreover, Singh also introduced another proposal, namely that the Commission should be re-structured for legal reasons since the PNC has been replaced by We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) as leader of the Parliamentary opposition. The badly written law creating the CRC specifically named the PPP and the PNC to occupy the 50% of the seats on the Commission.

No matter what motivated the former Chancellor to raise this matter it provides an opportune moment for both the PPP and the PNC to adjust to the new facts of political life created by WIN. WIN have changed the political calculus in ways that require both the ruling party and the PNC to obey the rules, given they are not above the law. To a lesser extent, the same conclusion applies to the Forward Guyana Movement (FMG), especially in matters related to Regional politics. The obvious action required to correct all of the above obstacles is for Parliament to create the Standing Parliamentary Committee in order to create the appropriate mechanism to address Constitutional reform.         

The Chairman of the CRC emphatically stated that the matter of re-structuring the CRC was nothing to do with himself or the Commission. This is incorrect, both he and the Commission members could, as a matter of principle, resign.