The move by the Government to reduce the time for the PPP Opposition to scrutinise the Budget, line by line, from seven days to three days has been criticised by even commentators considered friendly to the APNU/AFC Government. What made the change even more egregious was that in the last Parliament, when the now Government was in opposition with a majority, they had changed the schedule for their budget scrutiny to seven days. If it was good for themselves in opposition, why is it suddenly now “bad”? The excuse offered that they need the four days to “get going” cannot hold water.

Whatever the real motives, the effect of the action to truncate examination of the Government spending more than $200B will have a chilling effect on the institutionalisation of democracy in Guyana. The PNC Government had rejected the notion of an effective Opposition by dubbing the latter as the “Minority Party” even as they declared the “paramountcy” of the governing “majority” party over the Government.

Back at the beginning of the millennium, when the PNCR had bludgeoned the PPP Government to the table, they insisted on the importance of an Opposition scrutinisingGovernmental operations. Subsequent constitutional changes instituted four Sectoral Committees to perform that function from an operational standpoint. The Budget-scrutiny process, was also strengthened by creating an Office of the Opposition staffed to assist the Opposition in this process, much as the staff of the various Ministries do for the Government.

It is now clear that combined with the move to deny Governmentspeakers’ time-extensions to make presentations while routinely granting them for the Government’s speakers, violates the democratic maxim – auditor et alters pars – “the other side must be heard”. The concatenation of this stifling of the Opposition in Parliament with the mass firings of individuals identified as “PPP supporters” in the Public Service and replacing them with loyalists of the APNU/AFC coalition, further signals the return of the old PNC “party paramountcy”.

Many of the firings, after all, were done by fiat of Ministers, rather than going through the administrative procedures established to ensure justice and due process. The cleansing, whether “ethnic” or “political”, has gone beyond quasi-autonomous agencies and has percolated into Governmental corporations such as GuySuCo and GPL. Even though the previous Government had been trenchantly criticised by the newGovernment when in Opposition, they imposed the same 5% increase on Public Servants without consultation with the trade unions. To rub salt into the wound, the increase took effect only from July 1st rather than Jan 1st as was customary under the PPP.

What makes the actions of the Government even more alarming to a democratic culture is that they are diametrically opposed to the statements of the major partner in the coalition on the need for a “more inclusive” Government for Guyana given the fractured nature of the society. The insistence of the PPP for more “trust” to be developed between APNU and the PPP before they would sign on to discussions of power sharing, now appear very prudent given the peripheralisation of the AFC from any real power and authority in the Government.

The largest partner in the APNU is the PNC and both the WPA and to a lesser extent the AFC has been at odds with that partner in the decision making process after they won the elections. The WPA went on record to point out that they could not even secure a meeting to articulate their concerns about strategy. The Cummingsburg Accord between the APNU and the AFC has been so clearly violated that no further comment is necessary.

As is inevitable with the development of party paramountcy, even within the PNC there has been a centralisation of power to a core of ex-army officials. Citizens of all political persuasions must insist that the drift from democratic norms to party paramountcy be halted forthwith.