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Mar 03, 2013 Letters
Dear Editor,
I think that is wrong for anyone to rule that Clement Rohee should remain a Member of Parliament (and Minister of government) just so that he can represent the people who elected him.
Under the PR (Proportional Representation) electoral system, used in Guyana, it is impossible to say how many electors/voters (zero or many) elected a particular representative in the House. Even if a person swears who they voted for, it cannot be proven because of secret balloting. The entire country is treated as one constituency and each contesting political party field a slate of candidates/politicians who they want to win and occupy the seats in parliament and form the ruling party in government.
After the votes are counted, reconciled and declared, one can only know how many popular votes each political party secured, not how many votes individual candidates received.
Therefore, no one should argue that an MP should be in parliament to represent the people who elected him since that is an unknown number.
It would have been different with the first-past-the-post electoral system. In this system, the country is divided into many divisions/constituencies. On Election Day there are several (matching the number of divisions/constituencies) concurrent elections taking place in which the voters/electors within each division vote.
The ballot would have the name of one candidate from each party (and the presidential candidate if he is elected separately countrywide). The winning candidate will then become the area/division/constituency representative and guarantee a seat in the House.
Everyone will know how many votes each candidate (winner and the rest) received. In this situation one can argue that the winner has a right to be in parliament because s/he was directly elected by the voters to represent them. Usually s/he cannot cross the floor and if, perchance, s/he dies or resigns, a by-election has to be held within that division alone to elect a replacement, the new people’s representative for that area. Guyana does not have this system.
Under the PR system in Guyana, no MP (or anyone else) knows how many votes they received. Therefore, it is misleading to argue that Rohee must be in the House to represent the people who elected him. After the no-confidence vote, the President should have replaced Rohee with someone else (because Rohee would not do the proper thing and resign).
The President would not do so because over the years Rohee has done more party work in the front lines than him (practically a hand-picked dark horse).
Also, separation of powers among the three branches of government has been compromised overtime with many in the judiciary acting in their positions at the whims of the executive.
The result is that many persons who are supposed to be in independent, high-ranking positions have become enablers of the executive.
It is up to the combined opposition to do something, other than talking, about the situation.
As Jane Jacobs rightly said, “It is not ideas alone that can stop injustice, oppression and idiocies. It is people who have to do that.” And as I said before, without other strategies the executive will let you have your say indefinitely, but they will continue to have their way……..indefinitely.
Karan Chand
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