People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) Leader, Aubrey Norton says that the main parliamentary opposition intends to challenge last December’s controversial passage of the National Resources Fund Act 2021.
The bill was passed amidst an in-house protest that included the forcible removal of the mace by an opposition Member of Parliament (MP) on December 20, 2021, at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara, where sittings are being held due to the pandemic. Live video footage of the said date showed Opposition MPs and Parliament staffers in a vicious tug-o-war for the mace.
While not unprecedented, the incident has led to the Opposition’s relegation to the receiving end of intense criticism. The party has however managed to shrug off censure by excusing its actions as necessary and tantamount to expressing the “will of the people” by doing what was necessary to “stave off” a “thieving” bill.
The Opposition has maintained that the mace’s removal and the Speaker’s use of a replica symbol constitute an illegal passage. The government and the Speaker, however, maintain that despite the ruckus, appropriate procedures were adhered to and that the bill was legally passed.
Today, Norton revealed what many political commentators have predicted. He said that the main Opposition, the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) will mount a legal challenge.
“We believe that the National Resources Fund (Act) was rammed through the Parliament; we believe that there weren’t adequate consultations. We also believe that with the absence of the mace, it could not have been passed legally. Therefore, as far as I know, the work is still being done to put together the entire case to challenge it,” he said.
While the APNU+AFC coalition remains adamant about the bill’s passage, it is still scrambling to fulfil a requirement of the same instrument that has now become law. The party said it will take part in a process to make appointment(s) to the governing body of the NRF.
Quizzed about this apparent unbalanced position, Norton said that the two stances must not be seen as contradictory, but rather, one political move.
He explained, “We are also politicians who live in the real world. The PPP is not a democratic party that will be responsive to the concerns of people, so they are going to go ahead. Now, in the circumstances, we have got to ensure that we have people there to scrutinize what is happening. In that regard, we’ve agreed that we will nominate people, while at the same time, doing it under protest and signalling that we intend to challenge it in court.”
Norton’s talk of imminent court action comes against the backdrop of the AFC’s Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan’s commentary about courts’ supposed reluctance to get involved in parliamentary matters.
Speaking specifically about challenging the NRF’s passage, Ramjattan on February 14, 2022, he said that mounting litigation would be futile because “courts do not venture into the precincts of the Parliament”.
However, Ramjattan’s argument clashes with what transpired in December 2018, when his coalition government challenged the passage of the no-confidence motion that crippled its legal arm and reduced it into a “caretaker” regime.
