PPP anxiously awaiting final court ruling on budget cuts case
Written by Telesha Ramnarine, Monday, 24 June 2013 23:24, Source - Guyana Chronicle Online
SPEAKING yesterday at a press conference at Freedom House on Robb Street, Georgetown, Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall said the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is anxiously awaiting the final court decision in the case involving the budgetary cuts by the political Opposition. In the presence of Minister within the Ministry of Finance, Juan Edghill; Executive Secretary of the PPP, Zulficar Mustapha; and Media Coordinator Mahendra Roopnarine, Minister Nandlall said the case in question is intended to settle the fundamental question of whether the political Opposition has the legal power to reduce national estimates presented by the Executive arm of Government in the National Assembly (NA).
“This question is one of pure law, and its determination exclusively involves an interpretation of the relevant provisions of the Guyana Constitution. Once this question is determined finally, one would expect that it would bind all, because the ruling is expected to be in the form of a grant of declarations as to what powers the NA has or does not have in respect of national estimates,” Nandlall explained.
Until the court has finally ruled in this respect, the PPP retains the view that the preliminary ruling should be respected and obeyed.
During the 2013 budget presentation, the issue of cutting the budgetary estimates again arose, and government’s position was that the opposition had no power to reduce the estimates, based on the preliminary ruling by the Chief Justice to this effect.
The political opposition and the Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Raphael Trotman, however, feel this preliminary ruling was not binding upon them.
“Our contention is (that), whether it is a preliminary ruling or not, it is a ruling of a court, and therefore it must be obeyed. They, however, proceeded with cutting the budget,” Nandlall recalled.
He accused the Opposition of playing politics with matters of national importance, and noted that what the party finds extremely disturbing is the fact that, instead of appealing the ruling, the Opposition chose to embark upon a course of action in which the judge and the judiciary were subjected to disparaging and scandalous remarks.
“The civilized and democratic thing to do is to use the legal process available to seek to overturn the ruling. We view these kinds of approaches as ominous and dangerous to a democracy, and we ask the nation to take note, and the international community as well.
WHY NO APPEAL?
“When the preliminary ruling was handed down, though it was appealable, no appeal was filed against it; and we must ask ourselves why,” Nandlall said.
Meanwhile, he disclosed that Khemraj Ramjattan, the lawyer for Speaker Raphael Trotman, has agreed to work out a statement of agreed facts with him before proceeding with the hearing of the legal argument.
“I have already submitted that statement to Ramjattan, and I extracted from his defence most of those facts. So we ought not to have any great disagreement in terms of what the agreed facts are going to be.
Hopefully, we can sign on to that document, and we will be ready on July 5, the date to which the case is adjourned, for us to proceed with the legal arguments. And, hopefully, we can have a speedy resolution to this matter,” said Nandlall.