De­spite gov­ern­ment claims to the con­trary, it has not been all “busi­ness as usu­al” in Guyana fol­low­ing the con­tentious De­cem­ber 21 no-con­fi­dence mo­tion.

The ef­fec­tive re­sult of the 33-32 vote in the coun­try’s 65-seat House of As­sem­bly re­mains en­tan­gled in suc­ces­sive le­gal chal­lenges and is due for con­clu­sive hear­ing at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) on May 10.

Cit­ing “po­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty”, busi­ness groups have com­plained of a (dis­put­ed) slow­down in busi­ness. For­eign mis­sions in George­town have been meet­ing with the coun­try’s two lead­ing po­lit­i­cal groups.

Op­po­si­tion Leader, Bhar­rat Jagdeo, holds at least one lengthy press con­fer­ence a week, and the gov­ern­ment has ac­cel­er­at­ed its “out­reach” pro­grammes to high­light gains since tak­ing of­fice on May 11, 2015.

The David Granger ad­min­is­tra­tion has mean­while been con­test­ing the one-vote mar­gin that fol­lowed the de­fec­tion of one of its MPs, ar­gu­ing that it is 34 and not 33 votes that would con­sti­tute a par­lia­men­tary “ma­jor­i­ty” in such a case.

Granger is him­self re­ceiv­ing treat­ment for can­cer and has for months been in and out of the coun­try for chemother­a­py and oth­er med­ical care in Cu­ba.

A rul­ing on the sta­tus of MPs hold­ing dual cit­i­zen­ship has, how­ev­er, not been chal­lenged and, on Tues­day, in a de­layed re­sponse, four se­nior gov­ern­ment MPs sub­mit­ted their res­ig­na­tions as mem­bers of Cab­i­net and Par­lia­ment.

The op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (PPP) has mean­while an­nounced that two of its three MPs with dual cit­i­zen­ship plan to re­nounce al­le­giance to oth­er coun­tries. The oth­er MP, Adri­an An­na­mayah, says he does not plan to re­lin­quish his sta­tus as a cit­i­zen of the Unit­ed States be­cause of fam­i­ly com­mit­ments.

Both the High Court and Court of Ap­peal pro­nounced on the is­sue in the face of a chal­lenge to the out­come of De­cem­ber’s 33-32 vote.

The rul­ings meant that both the gov­ern­ment, which used the dual cit­i­zen­ship of de­fect­ing MP Char­ran­das Per­saud as the ba­sis for one of its sev­er­al chal­lenges and the PPP would find them­selves with­out the ser­vices of sev­er­al key op­er­a­tives in par­lia­ment.

Un­der Guyana’s list sys­tem of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the bal­ance of pow­er in par­lia­ment, how­ev­er, re­mains as a slen­der 33-32 ma­jor­i­ty in favour of the rul­ing A Part­ner­ship for Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU) + Al­liance for Change (AFC) coali­tion.

The PPP is, how­ev­er, not ex­pect­ed to at­tend an April 11 sit­ting of the As­sem­bly in the ab­sence of an elec­tion date. That sit­ting is, among oth­er things, due to de­bate an in­crease in the bud­get of the Guyana Elec­tions Com­mis­sion (GECOM) to fa­cil­i­tate the up­grad­ing of the coun­try’s list of el­i­gi­ble vot­ers in time for pre­ma­ture elec­tions.

The GECOM chair­man, re­tired judge James Pat­ter­son, in a March 19 let­ter to Pres­i­dent Granger, said the com­mis­sion “would be in a po­si­tion to con­duct Gen­er­al and Re­gion­al Elec­tions no ear­li­er than late No­vem­ber 2019.”

Jagdeo has, how­ev­er, said that should the CCJ rule in favour of the va­lid­i­ty of the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion “the time­lines would not be No­vem­ber, it would have to be a short pe­ri­od there­after be­cause the gov­ern­ment would “seen the end of run­ning out of ex­cus­es.”

• Con­tin­ues on Page A11

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Un­der a 2000 con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment, GECOM com­pris­es an equal num­ber — three each — of Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The PPP-des­ig­nat­ed com­mis­sion­ers have staged re­peat­ed walk­outs of meet­ings of the body in protest at what they view as stalling tac­tics ahead of pre­ma­ture elec­tions on ac­count of the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion.

Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, Joseph Har­mon, was among those who have re­signed as MPs along with Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ser­vice Ru­pert Roop­nar­ine, For­eign Min­is­ter Carl Greenidge and Do­minic Gaskin, Min­is­ter of Busi­ness.

Har­mon spoke with Guardian Me­dia at his George­town of­fice days be­fore he sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion.

He vig­or­ous­ly de­nied claims of a “con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis” in the coun­try and said since the De­cem­ber vote, the gov­ern­ment has been per­form­ing its func­tions, al­beit un­der un­usu­al con­di­tions. The Jan­u­ary 31 High Court rul­ing, for ex­am­ple, did not of­fer a stay of ex­e­cu­tion with re­spect to the con­tin­ued pow­ers of the Cab­i­net.

The sta­tus quo was, how­ev­er, ar­guably in some quar­ters, re­stored by the Court of Ap­peal on March 22 when it ruled, by ma­jor­i­ty de­ci­sion, that 34 votes were need­ed in or­der to pass the vote of no con­fi­dence in the gov­ern­ment.

The ques­tion of an “ab­solute”, as op­posed to a “sim­ple” ma­jor­i­ty, is ex­pect­ed to be set­tled by the CCJ.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Jagdeo said his par­ty was con­fi­dent of suc­cess in court but com­plained that the gov­ern­ment has mean­while been em­ploy­ing state fi­nances in what amount­ed to ag­gres­sive elec­tion cam­paign­ing.

He al­so con­ced­ed that while his par­ty “in the last sev­er­al months” had been fo­cus­ing on the con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues and was “caught up in prepa­ra­tion for the elec­tions” it had now de­cid­ed to turn at­ten­tion to gov­ern­ment “abus­es”.

“What we are clear about, af­ter four years of ne­glect and bro­ken promis­es, that sud­den­ly there is a flur­ry of (gov­ern­ment) ac­tiv­i­ties,” he said.

PPP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, Ir­faan Ali, has, how­ev­er, not been as per­sis­tent­ly present in the me­dia and there are lin­ger­ing ques­tions over his aca­d­e­m­ic cre­den­tials. Al­so no­tably ab­sent from the op­po­si­tion cir­cuit have been for­mer Home Af­fairs Min­is­ter and PPP stal­wart, Clement Ro­hee, for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Ramo­tar, and se­nior mem­ber Frank An­tho­ny who with­drew his nom­i­na­tion as the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee in favour of Ali.

At­tor­ney and erst­while pres­i­den­tial as­pi­rant, Anil Nand­lall, has al­so been off the hus­tings, though he con­tin­ues to be a lead­ing part of the par­ty’s le­gal team on the con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues.

The rul­ing coali­tion has al­so come un­der in­ter­nal stress with the AFC con­test­ing the No­vem­ber 12 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions on its own and los­ing sig­nif­i­cant po­lit­i­cal ground. Un­der an agree­ment with its dom­i­nant AP­NU part­ner, the po­si­tion of prime min­is­ter is as­sured un­der the coali­tion.

Mean­while, in the face of sharp po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sion, both the AP­NU+AFC and PPP have main­tained rare po­lit­i­cal bi­par­ti­san­ship on the ques­tion of the bor­der dis­pute with Venezuela and the ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion of the CCJ.

The deep­en­ing prob­lems in Venezuela have wit­nessed an in­flux of asy­lum-seek­ers in bor­der ar­eas, even as both par­ties to the con­flict there – the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Juan Guaidó chal­lenge – ap­pear in­tent on as­sert­ing that coun­try’s long­stand­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al claim to the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

There al­so ap­pears to be mu­tu­al agree­ment on the in­tegri­ty of the CCJ as the fi­nal ar­biter on the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion. Pri­or to the ap­pear­ance of the CCJ, Guyana’s Court of Ap­peal was the court of fi­nal de­ci­sion on such mat­ters.

In 1970, the coun­try part­ed com­pa­ny with the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil.