Was whether people or Parliament is supreme

THE EDITOR: Reference is made to the editorial in the Sunday Newsday, titled “A ruling on value,” regarding the CCJ ruling in the so-called Guyana third-term case.

Your editorial supports term limits. So do I. But the issue before the CCJ was not whether there should be term limits. The issue was whether the people are sovereign over Parliament or whether Parliament is sovereign over the people.

To make it even more simple to understand the issue, the case was whether term limits could be approved by Parliament or must be approved by the people.

The Guyana Supreme court and Court of Appeal ruled that people are sovereign and must approve term limits in a referendum. The CCJ overturns that ruling granting sovereignty to the Parliament saying it towers over the people.

The matter of sovereignty could have been settled very easily by the Guyana government holding a referendum rather than spending tens of millions on dollars on legal fees and other costs to overturn a ruling.

The issue also took on a racial character as it was seen in Guyana as a government seeking to deny the popular Indian leader Bharrat Jagdeo to run for another term. The racial composition of the CCJ also came to the fore as it has no Indian judges and just a few Indian staff. The people could have been empowered to decide the issue eliminating the issue of race in the case.

As experience around the world has shown, government must never be trusted. People should have ultimate power and not their governments or the legislature (Parliament). In countries where people are empowered, the countries do well. For comparison, in the US where hundreds of thousands of diaspora Guyanese and Trinidadians and Tobagonians live, the US Supreme Court ruled in precedent-setting cases that the people are sovereign.

The US Congress (parliament) cannot make amendments to the constitution on its own. Many attempts to amend the constitution by Congress failed. The Supreme Court would have none of it with the people’s role. The American people play a leading role to meddle with the constitution.

In the US, the people can also directly amend the constitution without any role from Congress or the president by holding conventions state wise (statewide) and nationally. Congress or the US government cannot play any obstructionist role in preventing the people from amending their constitution.

For Guyana, parliament towers over the people. Guyanese are in effect powerless.

Why can’t the Guyana government allow Guyanese voters to decide on constitutional amendments or in altogether drafting a new constitution that addresses its unique situation including enshrining term limits?

VISHNU BISRAM via e-mail