Dear Editor,
AN indomitable English Law Lord named Reid said: “The law can sometimes be an ass, but it cannot be so asinine as that.” By way of analogy, I commend such clarion truth to veteran politician Gail Texeira, MP, and all other PPP/C agitators who preach to their gullible supporters the damn lie that the APNU/AFC Government is now “illegal”, and by extension, the Presidency of David Arthur Granger. And yet, by a somewhat Texeiran illogicality or absurdity, this same President, who they preach is “illegal”, is being critised, and asked (indeed demanded) by those very preachers of illegality, to appoint a date for General and Regional Elections. Can legality come out of illegality?

Editor, it seems obvious to us, on the other side of the argument, that our constitutional law could not be such an ass as to suppose that it permits, and requires an “illegal” President to dissolve and appoint! It seems to us on this side of the argument that in law, and fact any dissolution of Parliament by President Granger and appointment, is conclusive evidence of the constitutionality of his Presidency. Were it otherwise, then in lawyer’s language- ex nihilo nihil fit (out of nothing can come nothing) and reductio ad absurdum (an argument reduced to absurdity). But, what a blinkered misrepresentation of the constitutional truth is happening. Put with brutal frankness, the truth, the whole truth, is this: If this government was “illegal”, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), having been invited by the Opposition’s battery of lawyers at the No-Confidence Appeals, to so find/declare, would have told us so, when it delivered its “consequential orders” ruling on July 12 (some four months after March 21). The CCJ did not; it could not. It declined that invitation. So, what Constitution is the PPP/C agitators preaching their sermon of illegality from; and the Guyana Bar Association, in its latest diatribic press release, referring to? Not the 1980 Constitution. The PPP/C agitators are preaching voodoo constitutionalism.
Editor, I digress briefly. From “kangalans in the Parliament” (the memorable phrase of Professor Ken Danns), we witnessed on Thursday 19 a disgusting demonstration of kangalans inside/outside the Pegasus. But on the positive side, in the face of such naked hooliganism under guise of a right to protest, we witnessed at the other extreme, and were reminded of, the Grangerian statesmanship of a President (Obama-like). I hope the ABC emissaries have taken notice. One more digression: I would argue, telescopically, that the first item on a reelected APNU/AFC government legislative agenda must be the alteration (perhaps even the abrogation) of the No-Confidence Article 106 (6) and (7), imprudently inserted into the Constitution in 2000 on the recommendation of constitutional quacks. Look how much mayhem, political asininity and brutish betrayal it has caused. There will, with the lure of oil money, be other Charandasses lurking. We retain Articles 106 (6) and (7) in their present form at the Nation’s peril.

I return to the asininity of the PPP/C illegality argument. I anticipate that my learned friend Anil Nandlall, with his accustomed defiance (at his own peril of pious argumentation) of the biblical injunction in the Book of Matthew (Ch. 6 V. 24) that no man can serve two masters (in his case Jagdeoite politics; and the jealous Law) would seek to present some argument about some doctrine of necessity validating and making legal President Granger (who they say is “illegal”)’s dissolution of Parliament and appointment of a date for GREs, legal. Readers, the doctrine of necessity has no place, or relevance, in this matter. The Granger-headed government and his presidency is, and remains (in spite of its self-imposed interim status) as valid, legal, effectual and constitutional as it became on Saturday May 15, 2015. No Court; not the High Court; not the CCJ, has ruled it is illegal. Protests (in whatever form) does not make what the courts have refused to declare illegal, illegal and extra-judicially, no interpretation of the PPP/C or GBA is authoritative; much less compliable. This you might think is so elementary. Politics 100. If President Granger is “illegal” and is not the President, then who, in law, is. For every country must have a government, and our supreme law, the Constitution, requires and mandates that that Government be headed by a President (see the deepest entrenched and, pro tanto, amongst the eleven most valuable, articles 89, 99). I have searched our Constitution for an answer. Inter alia, what I have found enforces and strengthens our arguments; as it rubbishes the Texeiran talk about “illegal”. Relevantly, article 177 (6) of our Constitution (entrenched at the second deepest level) which when given a purposive generous interpretation provides as to the conclusivity (at any point in the 5 years term) of the validity of the Presidency reads thus:
“… an instrument executed under the hand of the Chairman of the Elections Commission… shall be CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE that the person so named was so elected and no question as to the validity of the elections AS THE PRESIDENT… shall be enquired into by any Court”. And we know that when after the dubious GRE in 1997 of Janet Jagan, the PNC executive member, Aubrey Norton sought to have her Presidency quashed, Chief Justice Bernard (as she was then) ruled, rightly in my respectful view) that the court had no jurisdiction to do so as article 177 (6) was “aimed at insulating and shielding the person elected to the office of President from inquiry by the Courts” (see Application by Aubrey Norton for Writs of Certiorari and prohibition, 1033/97-unreported). By such constitutional shield, as I have argued above, the Granger Presidency is as good and valid as it became on May 15, 2015. Norton was good law for the PPP/C in 1998. It remains good law now (article 106 (6) and (7) cannot undermine or subvert article 177 (6), entrenched in our Constitution at the second deepest level.

The legality of President Granger’s Presidency is unassailable (because of space constraint readers are referred to my letter published in March 2019 in both the GC and KN under caption “If the APNU/AFC Government will be ‘illegal’ who then will be he legal Government” (Tuesday, March 19); “The no confidence motion Frankenstein cannot be permitted to devour our Constitution” (Thursday, March 21). I have no reason to disavow anything I wrote in that letter. Indeed, the CCJ has vindicated me. To my learned friends in the GBA, as regards their diatribe and criticism of the President’s sensible approach of being guided by GECOM’s intimation/advice of its readiness to conduct credible GRE, I say to them: given the postponement power of Gecom under article 162 (2) which begins with the words “NOTWITHSTANDING anything to the contrary in this Constitution…” can it be constitutionally sensible for the President not to be guided by GECOM’s readiness?. The Law cannot be so asinine.

I end with this: Political sensationalism blinds us to logic and common sense. Illegality cannot be cherry picked. Illegality is not severable. In our constitutional architecture and scheme an opposition exists only when, and if, there is a government and Parliament (see article 51). If there is no President, there is no Parliament, and by a logical step in the argument, no opposition because if there is no President there is no National Assembly, as there can be no National Assembly if there is no President, who is, a constituent part of Parliament; the other constituent part being the National Assembly. If the President is “illegal”, then, so is the Parliament and Leader of the Opposition and all the Opposition MPs, incurably tainted with such illegality. So, which is it Texeira, MP- illegal or legal?

Regards,
Maxwell E. Edwards