In a surprising dramatic political development in Guyana on Monday, President Donald Ramotar proclaimed the prorogation of the nation’s parliament (National Assembly) amid spreading speculation of a likely snap general election.
The prorogation effectively put an end to the combined opposition’s declared objective to use their one-seat majority in the 65-member Assembly to pass a no-confidence motion against the president’s ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPPC), currently in its fourth successive five-year term since October 1992.
Previously a long-serving general secretary of the PPP, Ramotar had warned the opposition – comprising the main People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) and the minority Alliance For Change (AFC) – that should they persist with their no-confidence motion, he could be compelled to arrange for new general elections.
The PNCR – which leads the main parliamentary opposition under the umbrella of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) with 26 seats to the Alliance For Change’s seven – seems to have been outfoxed by the head of state.
After manoeuvres over recent weeks to concretise arrangements, including with the office of the Speaker Raphael Trotman (a former defector of the PNC and first leader of the AFC), the opposition decided to move the no-confidence motion at Monday’s meeting of the National Assembly.
They didn’t get the chance to do so.
Hours before the Assembly was scheduled to meet on Monday afternoon, the president resorted to a pre-emptive strike with a national broadcast.
He informed the nation that he had exercised his constitutional powers to advise the suspension of the National Assembly.
The opposition’s political gamble had apparently overlooked this vital alternative available to the president.
The crucial difference is that, constitutionally, prorogation of parliament is effectively a temporary suspension in contrast to a dissolution in preparation for fresh elections.
According to established parliamentary norms, prorogation and dissolution have become a way of multiparty political life across the entire Caribbean Community, with the latter associated with readiness for new elections – as is happening currently in a few states of CARICOM.
New general elections are not due in Guyana before November 2016. At the November 28 poll, the incumbent PPPC has been accustomed to securing outright parliamentary victories – other than the quarter century period (1968-1992) under PNC rule.
The November 2011 poll produced the surprising results that gave it 32 seats to 33 for the combined APNU (read PNC plus) and AFC.
Outfoxed, APNU’s chairman and PNCR leader David Granger, a former brigadier of the Guyana Defence Force during the rule of the late President Forbes Burnham, was to declare President Ramotar’s prorogation of parliament as “the darkest day for democracy in Guyana”.
He had also urged organised picketing demonstrators outside parliament building on Monday to be ready for mass protests against the government.
For his part, the president was to link his prorogation broadcast statement with an assurance to use the dissolution period to engage the opposition for “a return to normalcy” prior to moving for “early general elections”.
Question is, for “whom the bell tolls”?
With the combined opposition having much homework to finish and the Guyana Elections Commission still to become completely ready for a snap poll, new national elections should not be realistically expected before the first half of 2015 – if that soon.
And they could well be combined with a much overdue local government poll. So stay tuned.
• Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean journalist.