– AG raps Bar Council’s doomsday prediction about Guyana’s future if Parliament not convened by April 30

By Svetlana Marshall

ATTORNEY-General and Minister of Legal Affairs Basil Williams insists that Article 69 of the Constitution is more directory rather than mandatory, as has been established by the Court of Appeal back in 2006.

He made the foregoing observation in dismissal of the Bar Council of the Guyana Bar Association’s dire warning that Guyana is headed for a ‘Constitutional abyss’, should Parliament not be convened by April 30.

In a statement issued recently, the Bar Council, in urging the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to be quick about the execution of the National Recount, said the Constitution mandates that Parliament be convened no later than four (4) months after its dissolution.
Said the Council in its statement: “Article 69 of the Constitution of Guyana mandates that, on dissolution, the next session of Parliament must commence no later than four (4) months from the end of the preceding session. The last session of Parliament was dissolved on December 30, 2019. The next session of Parliament must therefore begin no later than April 30, 2020.” Warning that the Constitutional clock is ticking, the Association urged the Elections Commission to declare the results of the 2020 Elections “within the shortest possible time”, so that the next session of Parliament can commence, as constitutionally prescribed, no later than April 30, 2020.

Begging to differ, the Attorney-General said that the Bar Council has presented nothing but “half-truths” to the people of Guyana. “The Bar Council had a duty to fully disclose that, though Article 69 of the Constitution provides that on dissolution, the next session of Parliament must be convened no later than four months from the end of the preceding session, the Court of Appeal of Guyana, in 2006, upheld the decision of Chief Justice Carl Singh that the four-month timeline was directory and not mandatory,” Williams said on Saturday.

The case at reference, Civil Appeal No.79 of 2006, was appealed by the Leadership of the Alliance for Change (AFC), challenging the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C)’s convening of the new Parliament, not on September 2, 2006, but on September 28, 2006, almost five, and not the prescribed four, months later.

NARY A WORD
The Attorney-General is contending that back when this occurred, the Bar Council did not make an issue about its constituting a constitutional abyss.

The Civil Appeal was occasioned by a decision by the then elected President, Bharrat Jagdeo to convene Parliament weeks after the constitutional timeline. The AFC had argued back then that the 9th Parliament should have been convened by September 2, 2006, on the grounds that the 8th Parliament was dissolved on May 2, 2006 to pave way for General and Regional Elections in August that year. “In the 2006 elections,” the AG reasoned, “there was no pandemic that required social distancing, nor Court challenge before the declaration of the results of the elections as at present, and the evidence showed a deliberate intention on the part of the PPP/C to ignore the four-month timeline in Article 69.”

He added: “Jagdeo had thrown the kitchen sink at Article 69 at the 2006 elections.”
The Attorney-General also pointed to the fact that Jagdeo was sworn in as President on September 2, 2006, the very date on which Parliament should have been convened. He’d even appointed his Ministers even before their names were extracted by the Representative of the PPP/C’s list, and before the first session of Parliament commenced.

“Despite this blatant noncompliance with Article 69 by these actions coming after the four months required therein,” AG Williams said, “the Court held that they were valid and Constitutional.”

The Attorney-General expressed the hope that GECOM’s lawyers would respond to the “vituperation and abuse” directed towards the Elections Commission and its Secretariat by the Bar Council. Nonetheless, he urged GECOM not to be distracted from its constitutional mandate, as envisaged in Articles 62 and 162 of the Constitution, to independently supervise and conduct elections in Guyana, in order to deliver credible elections.

The Attorney-General made it pellucid that Guyana would not, in 2020, descend into any constitutional abyss, were GECOM, in all the prevailing circumstances in the pursuit of democracy, unable to meet the April 30, 2020 timeline.