Guyana: Budget tangle
FEBRUARY 2, 2014 · Stabroek News – Editorial
Nothing is straightforward in Guyana. Last week Chief Justice (ag) Ian Chang issued his ruling on the cuts to the government budget made first by the opposition political parties in 2012, which will almost certainly be appealed to the Court of Appeal and the Caribbean Court of Justice. And in the meantime, potentially speaking, there could be all manner of travails in the local political universe that would acquire their own dynamic.
Whether that happens or not would in the first instance depend on timing, viz, how long it takes for any appeal action to be lodged and heard, and a verdict rendered, in addition of course to how soon the 2014 Budget will be presented.
It was in April 2012 that the combined opposition parties in the National Assembly used their one-seat majority to cut $20 billion from the government’s proposed budget on the grounds of a lack of transparency and accountability in the explanations for the allocations. While President Ramotar did give his assent to the Appropriations Bill, Attorney General Anil Nandlall moved to the courts to challenge the constitutionality of the opposition’s action. In the first instance the Chief Justice handed down a preliminary ruling in July of that year where he declined with one exception to restore funding which had been cut from the budget, but more important for our current purposes, he said that it was outside the remit of the National Assembly to reduce the Estimates of Expenditure presented by the Minister of Finance; it could only reject them in their entirety.
That interim decision was still the position when the 2013 budget rolled around. On this occasion Speaker of the House Raphael Trotman ruled on April 16 that the National Assembly had the power to amend budgetary allocations; in fact it had the power to amend any bill which came before it, and there was no compulsion or duty on the House to accept a ruling by the High Court. In any case, he said, the House could not be bound by a preliminary ruling. The opposition subsequently cut $35 billion from a $208 billion budget.
In the meantime, on April 18, the Attorney General appealed to the Chief Justice in writing to issue a final ruling on the matter. Before that was eventually handed down last week, however, Justice Chang had struck out the names of Leader of the Opposition David Granger and Minister of Finance Ashni Singh as defendants in the case. Mr Granger had appealed that decision after the matter had been taken to the Full Court, and the appeal still had not been heard when the Chief Justice issued his final ruling on the budget cuts.
But it is not just the opposition parties which are unhappy with the budget decision; the Parliament Office in a statement last week said, “The right of the National Assembly to approve, including the budgetary estimates is a long established right. This Ruling by the Hon. Chief Justice is an interpretation that would have far-reaching ripples and effects throughout the Commonwealth parliamentary systems and procedures.”
The ordinary citizen has no idea what the legal merits or demerits of the Chief Justice’s ruling are (the legal intricacies are set forth in Ralph Ramkarran’s column on page 7 today) let alone the niceties of the esoteric debate on the separation of powers which that ruling has inspired; all that can be said is that from a layperson’s point of view the decision flies in the face of common sense. In a letter to this newspaper which appeared yesterday Mr Eusi Kwayana put it best when he wrote that following the ruling it was now “open to us to conclude that the whole budget debate and the days and process of Committee of Supply are high farce.” If Justice Chang’s decision is upheld by the higher courts, therefore, then clearly the constitution would need to be amended with some expedition to restore the powers of the National Assembly in relation to reducing the Estimates of Expenditure, in conformity with standard practice, which in our case dates back to 1966.
As things stand, however, the way forward is a trifle murky. Presuming there is no final decision at the appellate level before the budget, or if there is, the Chief Justice’s ruling is upheld, the opposition has already gone on record as indicating how they propose to proceed. While they consider that Justice Chang’s decision is flawed, they nevertheless are of the view that they will be in conformity with the ruling if they ‘disapprove’ line items even if they cannot reduce them. According to Mr Ramjattan, whom we report on the subject today (see page 3) “…the Estimates are made up of a huge number of individual estimates, each properly line-itemed for an individual vote on each, respectively… In accordance with any proper construction of Chief Justice Chang’s ruling, since we cannot ‘reduce’ the individual estimate under the various line items, as we did in the 2012 Budget, we will proceed to ‘Not Approve” line items [as] we see fit.”
The government – as Mr Ramjattan has recognized ‒ inevitably will argue that this is a breach of the ruling, maintaining, no doubt, that approval or otherwise had to be directed at the whole budget, not a part of it. The AFC Leader is of the view that this can be answered, but it is yet to be seen how the government will respond should the opposition go their planned route.
If it ever did come to a question of having to reject the entire budget on account of a one line item which the government refused to change, then we are into constitutional crisis zone, as both opposition leaders have observed. Apart from anything else it would bring government work grinding to a halt, since no money would have been voted to do anything. Mr Granger said ‘disapproving’ the entire budget would trigger a general election, which, it might be noted, is not something the electorate would be overly enthusiastic about at this stage. In any case, the country could not go through the strain of that once a year every time a budget was presented.
One thing which can be said about the Chief Justice’s ruling is that its timing was less than felicitous. It leaves very little space for the appellate process – and Justice Chang should have had little doubt that his decision, whatever it was, would be appealed by one side or the other. At this point, to avoid political muddle, as well as the tension and shrillness which inevitably accompany it, one hopes that the judiciary acts with some celerity. As soon as there is an appeal (hopefully sooner rather than later), one trusts that no matter what the workload, the court in question treats the case as absolute priority, so that a final ruling could be forthcoming before Minister Ashni Singh rises in the House to present his 2014 Budget. This time, extricating the nation from yet another tangle lies in the first instance with the judiciary, not with the politicians.
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