Attorney-General flays APNU for trying to railroad the President

–into establishing COI into December 2011 shootings

ATTORNEY-General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Mr. Anil Nandlall, has taken Leader of the Opposition, Brig. (Rt.) David Granger, to task for flouting the law in an attempt to force the President to establish a Commission of Inquiry into the December 2011 shootings by the Guyana Police Force.

Opposition, Brig. (Rt.) David Grangerani

The Minister, in his objection to the Motion raised by the Opposition Leader in the National Assembly on Thursday, asserted that the combined opposition should not continue to demand that the President establish commissions of inquiry without the President acting of his own volition.

“We cannot, with the alarming frequency that I see repeated in the Order Paper and discussions in the House, keep requesting the President to hold commissions of inquiry one after the other,” he said.

DELIBERATE JUDGEMENT
Minister Nandlall drew his objection to the Motion from Article 111 (1) of the 1980 Constitution. He said the constitutional provision states that the President, in the exercise of his functions under the Constitution or any other law, may act in accordance with his own deliberate judgement.

Similarly, the President may act on the advice or recommendation of any other person or authority only in cases where he is required to do so by the constitution, or by any other law.

He further contended that, in accordance with Section 2 of the Commission of Inquiries Act, Cap.19:03 Volume Six, the decision to establish a Commission of Inquiry and the ability to appoint a Commissioner or Commissioners vests with absolute discretion of the President. And the matter being inquired into must be deemed to be in the best interest of the public welfare by the President.

The AG noted that the legislative drafters did not provide for a situation where the President has the power to act on his own judgement, but only under the constitution.

He said, “The Commission of Inquiries Act and the Constitution concatenate to give to the President a power that he should exercise in his own deliberate judgement”.

Minister Nandlall, however, bemoaned the fact that the Opposition Leader was asking for a commission of inquiry into a matter for which he had already provided the answers, based on the strong, condemning language of his presentation. He similarly noted that the Opposition Leader is once again attempting to undermine the powers of the President.

“You are effectively denying that deliberate judgement that the law and the constitution vest in the President”, Nandlall asserted.

SHIFTING POSITIONS
The Legal Affairs Minister, referring to a speech made by Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr. Basil Williams, during the budget debate, recalled that the position of the APNU was made clear when the party recognised the right of Mrs. Walter Rodney to have closure with her husband’s death.

The Minister, in citing the submission by Williams, underscored the APNU position: “We (APNU) do not accept that she (Mrs. Walter Rodney) has a role in determining the formation and the operation of the CoI (Commission of Inquiry)”.

“APNU regards this as the sole preserve of the person (in) whom Parliament has reposed that power, that person is the President”.

The National Assembly, in sittings past, had conferred the power to establish a commission of inquiry and to appoint a commissioner or commissioners in the President.

The Minister chided the APNU on the question of principle for requesting, once again, that the President abdicate his responsibility, since, according to the statement by Basil Williams, “the acceptance of the advice from Mrs. Rodney to exclude WPA (Working People’s Alliance) and the PNC (People’s National Congress)” was an abdication of the responsibility given to the person in the Act (Commission of Inquiry Act), meaning the President.

“You are saying that the President should have never listened to Mrs. Rodney; he should have never been counselled and procured by Rodney, but how can you say that he must be counselled and procured by the Leader of the Opposition or by the National Assembly? It is the same principle?” Minister Nandlall stressed.
VIOLATIONS NOT CONDONED
AG Nandlall denounced the notion put forward by the Opposition Leader during the background to his motion that there existed an institutional policy to condone violations by the Police Force in shooting citizens who were protesting.

“I cannot lend credence to any violation, or allegations of violations of the law; I cannot stand here and defend the violation of people’s constitutional rights; I cannot condone the abuse of power; I will not do so”, the AG stressed.

While Minister Nandlall underscored that he is in agreement with the sentiments of constitutional violations which drives the Opposition Leader’s motion, he disagreed to the mentions in Granger’s speech of there being a policy that allowed for violations to continue without the administration addressing them.

In an attempt for clarity in the Opposition Leader’s presentation, the Minister indicated, “I didn’t get the impression…that there is some systematic or institutionalised policy driven by the executive to perpetrate and perpetuate these types of violations; because if he says that, I will part company with him absolutely. I don’t think he is saying so.”

‘You are saying that the President should have never listened to Mrs. Rodney; he should have never been counselled and procured by Rodney, but how can you say that he must be counselled and procured by the Leader of the Opposition or by the National Assembly? It is the same principle?’ Attorney-General, Mr. Anil Nandlall

By contrast, Nandlall recalled, it is the intention of the Government to establish various measures, training programmes, and policies which are applied and imposed daily with the view to creating a professional law enforcement agency.

The Minister pointed to former Commissioner of Police and present APNU Member of Parliament, Mr. Winston Felix, who could give testament to the policies of the Government designed to avoid the types of incidents that are mentioned in Granger’s motion.
“Police shooting civilians is something that the constitution outlaws and the government abhors and will always reject”, Nandlall affirmed.

LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY
Additionally, Minister Nandlall urged that conclusions should not be made that the police are solely at fault. He observed that Granger, in his presentation, alluded to the fact that there are reactions to every action, and therefore there should be a level of consciousness in the awareness of legal responsibilities in the decision to exercise the constitutional right to protest.

He urged that it is not the police, on the one hand, that should be blamed, but instead, the history of protest actions should similarly be taken into account. Such history, according to the Minister, “resulted in violence and a lot of political damage to the PNC (now the majority bloc in the APNU), and perhaps that is why protest action is not an option they would like to resort to, in recent times.

Nandlall conclusively alluded to the ‘slow fiyah, moh fiyah’ campaigns and the burning of Regent Street, which would have occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “We have that history, we came from that, and we cannot turn a blind eye to these things. The police would have been reacting to situations that are at hand”, he said.

(By Derwayne Wills)

extracted from Guyana Chronicle