THE cuts to the National Budget that were imposed on the nation in contravention of the Constitution, so ruled by the Chief Justice (ag) Ian Chang, twice, is having severe deleterious impacts on the nation’s working-class, with utilities being cut off, mortgages unpaid, resulting in dire threat to loss of homes; and even feeding children has become a challenge in many homes because many workers cannot be paid as a result of cuts to their agencies or departments.

Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall has been vindicated by the verdict of Chief Justice (ag), Ian Chang, who reinforced his 2012 verdict in the cutting of the 2012 Budget (in a 2014 ruling that upheld his primary findings), that the National Assembly has no power under the Constitution to reduce the National Estimates.
Immediately after exiting the first hearing AG Nandlall informed the media corps that had been encamped for hours outside the deliberative chambers on the verdict of the preliminary ruling, whereby the Chief Justice stated that the National Assembly “performs a gate-keeping function and that a power of disapproval is not contemplated by the Constitution” relative to the National Estimates.
Government was forced to make application to the Supreme Court for an Interim Order to allow the Minister of Finance to access monies that was cut from the National Budget by the political parliamentary Opposition, which the CJ’s pronouncement now facilitates.

However, the Opposition, which comprises lawyers au fait with the constitution and whom are astute enough to be aware that the budget cuts in parliament had breached the constitution, were prepared for just such a ruling and immediately subsequent to the pronouncement on the matter in the first instance by the CJ, Senior Counsel, Rex McKay submitted an application for a stay of execution for the amended order.
However, Nandlall’s objection to McKay’s was allowed by the CJ, after hearing arguments on both sides.
Speaking to the media at the High Court immediately after the ruling, the AG expressed his pleasure at eventually being vindicated by the Court’s ruling.
He explained that the CJ’s verdict ruled that in cutting the 2012 National Estimates and Expenditures, the National Assembly acted outside of the Constitution.
The AG informed that the CJ’s ruling determines the right of the Minister of Finance to form an opinion as to whether or not he needs additional monies relative to the estimates and to withdraw the money and then seek Parliamentary approval if he forms that opinion. This, he said, is outlined in the Constitution and the Financial Management and Accountability Act.

These were the contentions upon which the Attorney General had premised his arguments, and the Court justified and upheld his pleadings. As Nandlall explained: “…the court proceeds to say that the Minister of Finance is resided with the power, under the Constitution and the law, to withdraw from the Contingency and the Consolidated Funds, whenever the minister has formed the opinion that there is a need to do so, and that is what the law says.”
He drew attention to page 17 of the judgement, reading verbatim: “Applying that doctrine to the interpretation of article 218, it does appear to the court that it was not permissible for the National Assembly to cut or to reduce the estimates and expenditures to any particular figure since, in so doing, the National Assembly was both determining and approving such estimates. If the drafters of the Constitution had wanted the National Assembly to exercise such a power, they would have easily conferred such a power on it in the Constitution in express terms as was done in India – see Article 113 (2) of the Constitution of India; or Australia.”
The preliminary pronouncement of the Court that the reduction is unconstitutional was underlined by Nandlall, “….the minister (of Finance) is now free to exercise his statutory and constitutional powers which allow him to withdraw from the Consolidated and/or the Contingency Funds for the purpose of funding agencies where he feels that there has been an insufficient allocation made.”
The Court is the supreme adjudicator of any nation and it is incumbent upon the citizenry to heed the laws of the land: but how can it be justifiable for criminals to be punished when the framers and makers of those laws are intent on disregarding those laws for self-empowerment and self-aggrandisement agendas, despite the devastation it would visit upon the lives of the citizens of the land, including their own constituencies?
But this question was answered by one Opposition leader who said that the victims of the unconstitutional Budget cuts are merely “collateral damage.”
So when babies go hungry and children become homeless the explanation is simple: They have become collateral damage to the collective Opposition’s un-constitutional budget cuts.