AMID thunderous desk-banging and a lone cry to “Let the lion loose!” Attorney-General and Legal Affairs Minister Basil Williams rose last evening in the National Assembly to throw his weight behind the 2015 Budget presented recently by Finance Minister Winston Jordan. In what could only be seen as strategic planning between the Government and Opposition Chief Whips, who are tasked with organising the list of speakers for the debates, Williams’s speech was followed by that of his predecessor, Anil Nandlall, allowing for an exchange that has long been in the making between the two legal luminaries.
Williams challenged both Nandlall and the former People’s Progressive Party/Civic Government for being tight-lipped about the arrangement regarding law students of the University of Guyana being admitted to the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad, as well as the then Government’s reluctance to pay considerable sums of court-ordered money in damages.
On the law students’ matter, Williams said there were no files to be found in the office he now holds relating to that issue. Nandlall, heckling from the Opposition benches, attributed Williams’s dilemma to the new Administration’s “knocking off the staff” who supposedly had knowledge of the files.
Paying his colleague MP no mind, Williams reassured the House that the new Government will continue to make representation for the law students from Guyana who are now faced with a 40 per cent hike in their tuition fees at Hugh Wooding in Trinidad, from the already hefty $2M per year to a revised $2.8M per year for two years.
On the issue of the revision of laws under a programme referred to as the “Nandlall Law Revision,” Williams challenged his predecessor for producing revisions that were “costly and mediocre,”
He particularly bemoaned the fact that after spending more than US$420,000, “the revision as replete with errors; gaps in subsidiary legislation and regulations were left undone.” He said too that in some cases, “entire acts and provisions had been left out though they were repealed.”
Rising immediately after Williams to pronounce on the recently presented budget, People’s Progressive Party (PPP) MP, Anil Nandlall chided his successor for using his time to vaguely address matters regarding the 2015 Budget.
“I have the honour, or dishonour, of speaking after the Honourable Attorney General,” Nandlall said, adding: “My friend, in his presentation, has made not a singular [reference] to this document… to the budget. What he did was simply give us information that was available in the office of the Attorney-General without telling us what he has planned for the justice sector of this country.”
Nandlall challenged that the Finance Minister’s speech was “conspicuously silent” on matters concerning the administration of justice. “For the next five years,” he said, “the Honourable Minister of Finance has written some 70 pages, and not a single sentence is dedicated to the administration of justice; to the rule of law; to the fundamental rights of our people that we keep hearing about. And that must be a worrying thing.”
Nandlall said of the budget, “It’s an expensively and exquisitely wrapped receptacle, but when you open the content, it’s very insubstantial.” He said he had come expecting Williams to address the shortcomings he saw in the budget, but all he did, instead, was to praise Jordan as his adviser.
Indeed, during his presentation, Williams credited Jordan with having “prepared every budget speech between 1981 and 2007,” with the exception of one or two years.
That endorsement did not go down well with Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo who served as Junior Finance Minister and then Finance Minister from 1992 to 1999, before his ascent to the presidency.
“Ask Winston how he got the job? Did he tell y’all that?” he could be heard heckling as Williams spoke glowingly of Jordan’s many accomplishments over the years.
Williams went on to disclose that his increased knowledge on economic matters was largely due to what he said was sound advice given to him by Jordan, who had operated as budget director at the Finance Ministry for many years.
“When it was discovered that that was my adviser, the services of my adviser, who was budget director at the time, were terminated,” Williams said, as cries of “Shame! Shame!” emerged from the Government benches.
“When they buried him, he burst forth from under the earth. And he has ascended in glory, and that is why he is here seated,” Williams said of now Finance Minister Winston Jordan.
Moving to matters of constitutional reform, for which there was a recent meeting among Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, Attorney-at-Law Nigel Hughes, and Governance Minister Raphael Trotman discussing the way forward for constitutional reform which was a promise from the A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) before the May 11 polls.
Nandlall cited the Constitution which stated that the National Assembly must establish a Parliamentary Standing Committee for Constitutional Reform, with periodic reports made to the National Assembly.
Nandlall went on to say that President David Granger had chaired this very Committee during the 10th Parliament from 2011 to 2015, of which there was one meeting held with Committee members.

By Derwayne Wills

(Photo by Derwayne Wills)