I had the benefit of working with Mr. Nigel Hughes in the libel case brought by Freddie Kissoon against former President Bharrat Jagdeo in which Mr. Hughes displayed the qualities of competence, astuteness and effectiveness that make him one of Guyana’s outstanding attorneys-at-law. I therefore find his stand on the 33-32 vote in support of the No Confidence Motion perplexing, illogical and frankly, dangerous.
Article 106 (6) of the Constitution of Guyana brooks no ambiguity or misunderstanding and states emphatically that “(6) The Cabinet including the President shall resign if the Government is defeated by the vote of a majority of all the elected members of the National Assembly on a vote of confidence.”
There are rules of interpretation of all statutes, of which the Constitution sits at the pinnacle. One foundational rule states that “the only safe and correct way of construing statutes is to apply the plain meaning of the words.” Mr. Hughes is too clever a lawyer for the plain meaning of Article 106 (6) to escape him, so he decides to create his own version of Article 106 (6), thus enabling him to assert boldly that “For a no-confidence motion to pass and be valid, the motion has to enjoy more votes than one-half of the full House.”
An admonition for what Mr. Hughes has done and continues to do was given by then Chancellor Keith Massiah in the 1987 Court of Appeal case Attorney General vs. Mohamed Alli and Others in which Massiah referred with approval to the words of an English case that “it is a strong thing to read into an Act of Parliament words which are not there, and in the absence of clear necessity it is a wrong thing to do.”
As the Chairman of the APNU+AFC’s aborted Constitutional Reform Committee, Mr. Hughes must know better than I do that there are two instances in the Constitution – Article 160 (2) and Article 180 (1) – in which the word “half”, or its variant “one-half”, is used in relation to the number of elected members of the National Assembly. These along with Article 106 (6) are all part of the Year 2000 amendments to the Constitution and Mr. Hughes must not only presume but must know that the distinction was not accidental. It was intended. In fact, Mr. Hughes was the Chairman of the AFC when it brought a no- confidence motion against the Ramotar Government in 2014. I know about the AFC’s calculation of the 33-32 because then Party Leader Khemraj Ramjattan discussed the matter with me extensively prior to the actual motion being brought.
In his own way, Mr. Hughes may be attempting to frustrate what Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo referred to on the night of the vote as “democracy at work”. In so doing, Mr. Hughes clothes his attempt in a way more elegant but probably more dangerous than his AFC Party Leader Raphael Trotman sought to do during the vote in the National Assembly when he encouraged Ms. Volda Lawrence to ask for a “time out” in the middle of the vote. To his eternal credit, Speaker Barton Scotland would have none of it and called on the Clerk to resume the voting.
What Trotman (a former Speaker of the House), Ms. Lawrence, the vulgar Figueira, and others knew when Charrandas Persaud said “yes” was that the APNU+AFC had lost the vote. Such a result triggers the resignation by the Cabinet including the President, while the Government resigns after a (new) President is sworn in following elections mandated to be held within three months.
Both Messrs. Trotman and Hughes are/have been leading members of the AFC which has been not only a disappointment but a lesson of opportunistic politics. No wonder then that the AFC was the recipient of its own no confidence card by the people of Berbice in the recent Local Government Elections while Trotman showed his own no-confidence in Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan with a secret and successful campaign to unseat him in the AFC internal elections.
Collectively, the leadership of the AFC has done considerable but hopefully not permanent injustice to the concept of a third force in Guyana’s politics. To restore any decency, the leadership of the AFC must now emphatically reaffirm its position that it accepts the vote on the No Confidence Motion as a done deal to prevent the discord and confusion engendered by the crusade of its former Chairman.
Three months is a short time in which to move from the arrogant and inefficient governmental mode to the popular and humble handshaking and baby-kissing campaign mode. The efforts by Mr. Hughes are likely to be counterproductive to the APNU+AFC in the long run. The earlier the adults and the democrats in the APNU, the AFC, the WPA and the Justice For All Party realise this the better it will be for them collectively, as separate political parties, and as individuals.
Sadly, as I close this letter, I read in the Stabroek News that sources have indicated to them that the “Government is likely to move to court over confidence motion.” If this is true, then duplicity and dishonesty will triumph over democracy and decency. But at least, Mr. Charrandas Persaud would have exposed and will test every member of every party in the APNU+AFC Coalition.