The pendulum

Lincoln the Lout
One thing you can say about Lincoln the Lout: he can sure get his helpmate to churn out those mind-numbing letters to the press. We heard that said helpmate is MA Bacchus, who ever so often, wades in, in her own right. Now that’s service above and beyond the call of duty! But the duo seems to have lost the plot in their interminable ramblings. In matters constitutional they are oblivious to the reality that what the Constitution says and what it possibly ought to say, are not one and the same thing.
Take the authority of the president. From the articles that they quote in Lincoln’s latest letter, either Bacchus/Lewis are daft or illiterate or both. They cite Article 50: “The supreme organs of democratic power in Guyana shall be – i) the Parliament; ii) the President; and iii) the Cabinet.” So far, so good, no damage done to anyone’s intelligence yet. But in the very next sentence they assert: “Clearly the supreme authority is vested in the Parliament.” Clearly? Let’s parse that sentence – using Lewis’ own citation (finally, he noted this one!) of Art 51: “There shall be a Parliament of Guyana, which shall consist of the President and the National Assembly.” So the Supreme organs of “democratic power” in Guyana are threefold: 1) the President, 2) the National Assembly and 3) the Cabinet.
Now we know that the president has ‘supreme executive authority’ and appoints members of the Cabinet solely at his discretion – to ‘advise’ him. So here you have the president controlling two of the three ‘supreme organs’. And ‘clearly the supreme authority is vested in Parliament”? Talk about non-sequiturs!! Now we know that there have been concerns articulated over the powers of the president of Guyana granted through the Constitution. And this is after 2000 when the PNC and the rest of society had their opportunity to swing the pendulum in towards a less powerful presidency. Now this is what we were talking about when we spoke about “what is” and “what ought to be”.
If Lincoln the Lout and his colleagues in the opposition want to alter the Constitution to further reduce the powers of the president – then place it on the agenda. But they will never do this!!! They simply want to hobble the incumbent president, Donald Ramotar. They feel they can win the next elections and want to retain the powers for their own abuse. Live and die by the gun so another criminal bites the dust. In this country there are just too many people who would moan and groan that the police should not have gunned down the criminal Randy Morris. And this is so even though the police were in hot pursuit of the recidivist and were fired upon by him.
We fully expect the GHRA to issue an indignant report about how the police should have used lesser force. Nothing about all the victims that had been violated by Morris. Never mind that the police could have been killed by Morris. There is something seriously wrong with some in our society. Recently in one of our editorials, at the passing of Harvard sociologist James Q Wilson, his “broken windows” theory – which has guided policing work in the U. S. for the last four decades – was cited. Wilson simply proposed that the law and order establishment has to intercede at the first sign of disorder (“broken windows”) in neighbours and nip the perpetrators then and there. If we wring our hands and commiserate and theorise, the problem will soon get out of control. This is where we are in Guyana today.