Speaker Rafael Trotman had some seemingly placatory words for the three political parties that sit across the benches in the National Assembly. But when you look behind all the platitudes about “democracy” and “sacred trust”, what you butt up against is just another ploy to strip power from the elected PPP government of the day.
Trotman declared he wants “the National Assembly… (to) be the central hub from which democracy radiates outwards.” For ‘democracy’ read ‘power’ and you’ll see where he’s coming from. Ever since the opposition got their one-seat majority in the National Assembly last November, they’ve been fighting tooth and nail (and then some) to wrest power from the PPP government.
Behind all of Trotman’s rhetoric about ‘democracy’, there are some hard facts he really can’t escape. The modern world – including Guyana (despite the opposition’s crude attempts to club us back into the Stone Age) – has long moved past the Athenian model of democracy. You know…where all the people gather in one spot and make decisions. We’ve accepted representative democracy where the people elect their representatives to represent their interests.
But whether Trotman and his ilk like it or not, those representatives are divided into an executive – which runs the government and a legislature. The executive formulates policies, proposes them to the assembly in the form of a budget and other bills. In our system, the assembly can scrutinise the government submissions and make recommendations – but it is up to the executive to accept the suggestions or not.
If as the opposition are demanding, they have the right to chop, say, the budget, like the Texas Chainsaw massacre, what’s the point of an executive? You might as well have the opposition running the executive! We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again. If the opposition don’t like the way the Constitution has distributed power between the executive and legislature, then go ahead and change the Constitution!
The Constitution provides for this contingency. But the wankers in the opposition, including the smooth-talking Speaker, know they don’t have the votes to pull this off. So what do they do? Subvert the Constitution by trying to usurp the powers of the executive.
Trotman’s decision to inject “civil society” into the affairs of the National Assembly – for instance by accepting a petition from the motley self-selected crew calling itself a “People’s Parliament” – is an unacceptable, unconstitutional re-allocation of power in our political system. Reject this abomination.
Opposition’s conundrum
Next week, the opposition are going to find out that sometimes you too clever for your own good. For years, to buttress their invidious “kith and kin” claims, they’ve been shedding crocodile tears over the Guyana Police Force (GPF). But as they’ve shown time and again, when the chips are down, they’re only interested in using the GPF to grab power.
Of recent, they’ve become increasingly infuriated that the GPF has maintained discipline in the face of their overtures. For instance, contrary to what WPA and ACDA’s Ogunseye predicted, the police didn’t fold at the protests at Linden and Agricola. So the opposition have been caught in a bind: how do they criticise the police for not going along with their power plays?
They decided to blame Rohee for everything that, from their perspective, is wrong with the force, while (wink! wink!) calling for more spending. Well, next week Rohee (who, they declared they won’t recognise) will be presenting a supplementary appropriation for the GPF in Parliament.
The opposition will be between the devil and the deep blue sea!