Category: Letters to the editor

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AFC included foreign passport holders in its 2011 candidates list, its hypocrisy over Charrandass Persaud is boundless

I can agree with only one of the two points made in a letter by my UG Law Department colleague and friend Professor Justice Duke Pollard, appearing in the Stabroek News of January 3, 2019. The one on which we agree is the abuse of the constitutional provision for qualification for membership of the National Assembly, while on what the Professor describes as calls for the Government to resign following its defeat in a No Confidence Motion in the National Assembly, I must disagree. Let us deal with the second matter first. 

Professor Pollard suggests “condign sanctions” against what he describes as “public mischief to require at this stage the resignation of the Government …” With respect, the Professor seems to misrepresent the distinction between the observance by the Granger Administration of the Constitution in relation to the resignation of the “Cabinet, including the President” under Article 106 (6), and that of the Government under Article 106 (7) which takes place after a new President has been sworn in following elections within three months of the passage of the No Confidence Motion.

With his sharp intellect and judicial mind, the Professor would have noticed that the 106(7) resignation of the Government takes place in the future but that no such latitude applies to the resignation of the Cabinet, including the President. The ineluctable conclusion is that under Article 106 (6), Cabinet’s resignation is an immediate consequence of the vote announced by the Speaker. Indeed, instead of calling for condign sanctions against what he himself describes only as allegations, it would have been helpful for the Professor to have lent his undoubted weight to expressing an opinion on what happens in “well-functioning democracies” when a Government loses a vote on a motion of no confidence.  

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APNU+AFC Gov’t now effectively a caretaker administration, President and Ministers have diminished powers

In my letter of December 29, 2018, I focused on the interpretation given by Attorney-at-Law Mr. Nigel Hughes of the word “majority” in Article 106 (6) of the Constitution of Guyana. With your kind permission I wish to return to the other operative words of the same paragraph. The first thing to note is that Article 106 (6) uses mandatory language and imposes a duty on the Cabinet, including the President, to resign if the Government is defeated on a no confidence motion (NCM).

This resignation under Article 106 (6), brings to a halt their functions, including aiding and advising the President in the general direction and control of the Government, proposing legislation, reviewing of contracts over fifteen million dollars and the making of appointments. They can no longer meet as a Cabinet but there is nothing to prevent the former members meeting and offering advice to the President informally.

While the Constitution is silent on the specific date for the resignation under Article 106 (6), for the reason set out below, that resignation seems to be automatic, or intended to be with immediate effect. In any case, Article 232 (9) provides that the Interpretation and General Clauses Act (ICGA) shall apply for the purpose of interpreting the Constitution. Since no time is prescribed therefore, section 39 of the ICGA provides that “where no time is prescribed within which anything shall be done, such thing shall be done with all convenient speed.”

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Mr Hughes’ stand is illogical, AFC must now reaffirm its position that it accepts a 33-32 no-confidence vote as a done deal

I had the benefit of working with Mr. Nigel Hughes in the libel case brought by Freddie Kissoon against former President Bharrat Jagdeo in which Mr. Hughes displayed the qualities of competence, astuteness and effectiveness that make him one of Guyana’s outstanding attorneys-at-law. I therefore find his stand on the 33-32 vote in support of the No Confidence Motion perplexing, illogical and frankly, dangerous.

Article 106 (6) of the Constitution of Guyana brooks no ambiguity or misunderstanding and states emphatically that “(6) 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.” 

There are rules of interpretation of all statutes, of which the Constitution sits at the pinnacle. One foundational rule states that “the only safe and correct way of construing statutes is to apply the plain meaning of the words.” Mr. Hughes is too clever a lawyer for the plain meaning of Article 106 (6) to escape him, so he decides to create his own version of Article 106 (6), thus enabling him to assert boldly that “For a no-confidence motion to pass and be valid, the motion has to enjoy more votes than one-half of the full House.” 

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There is need for a more uniform, humane approach by NIS and staff to contributors, claimants

I read with sadness, but not surprise, Mr. Rampaul Chetaru’s letter in your yesterday’s edition narrating the delay in the approval and payment of his National Insurance Scheme pension. According to Mr. Chetaru, he attained the age of sixty on the 24th February, 2018 and filed for his pension on 3 January, 2018.

Editor, without in any way taking away the pain of Mr. Chetaru who is now unemployed, and for whom the NIS pension will probably be his main if not only source of income, our experience is that there are many other similar cases. Too often, the NIS, which is charged with the duty to manage contributions by the self-employed and the employed and their employers for the payment of short-term and long-term benefits, comes across as uncaring, if not callous.  

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The NIS should invite persons who have been deprived of their entitlement to establish their claims by providing reasonable evidence of their employment history

To mark the 49th Anniversary of the National Insurance Scheme, Kaieteur News’ editor and columnist Adam Harris devoted his September 30, 2018 column with a paean to Forbes Burnham with the opening line reading “Forty-nine years ago, Prime Minister Forbes Burnham conceived the idea that there should be a National Insurance Scheme.” In his second sentence Mr Harris, wrote “Whatever sparked the idea I would never know because the thought process was not documented.” These two sentences are serious cause for concern.

First, Burnham did not conceive of the idea of the NIS in Guyana. The idea goes back to British Guiana in 1954, which the PNC Labour Minister Winslow Carrington, acknowledged in introducing the NIS Bill in 1959. And second, although the NIS is not a popular subject for academic interest, the diligent researcher – or journalist – has no major difficulty in finding quite useful and, at times, counterintuitive information on the NIS, thus avoiding any quixotic search into some dead person’s head.

It would be harsh to suggest that the misstatements in the column were deliberate or an attempt to rewrite history. Still, the column states rather loosely and dubiously that the then political opposition protested that Burnham was taking money from the poor people, without acknowledging that despite their criticisms of the Bill, that the pensionable age of 65 was too high, and that casual workers and domestics should be covered, the parliamentary opposition, miniaturised in the first of a series of rigged elections one year earlier, voted in support of the Bill.

The columnist must also be aware that the Government eventually reduced the pensionable age and ironically, that it was the perpetuation of Mr Burnham’s economic policies which first placed the NIS in difficulties in the eighties.

Moving to contemporary matters, Mr Harris also reports Ms Holly Greaves, General Manager as “insisting” that everyone gets their entitlement from the NIS. Having served the NIS in a senior capacity for decades, Ms Greaves would be acutely aware of the serious deficiencies in its maintenance of contribution records. While there has been some commendable improvements, there are still hundreds of thousands of contributions which, for various reasons, have not been credited to the respective workers. But perhaps even more serious are the number of workers’ contributions which were deducted but not paid over to the NIS by employers, which the NIS did not pursue.

The law requires that such contributions be recognised and credited to the workers. Perhaps out of concern about the financial impact arising from claims from thousands of affected persons, the NIS has been resisting such claims despite compelling evidence of which the NIS management is aware.

Taking the General Manager at her word, I would like to ask that the Board and the management of the NIS make a public declaration and invite persons who have been deprived of their entitlement for years, to go into the NIS and establish their claims by providing reasonable evidence of their employment history. To expect them to have better records than the NIS is unreasonable, irrational and callous.

I would also like to see the Board and the management pursue not only those companies, but also their directors and officers, who have conspired to cheat and rob the workers of the country while threatening the viability of the NIS.