OPINION: Seminal Speech by Anil Nandlall – Part II

Last Updated on Wednesday, 31 January 2024, 9:03 by Denis Chabrol

By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus

In The Concept of the Political, Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), famously theorized politics as a set of power relations between friends and enemies. The distinction between friends and enemies is the essential criterion in delineating the lines of political conflict, and the boundary line of political communities. If you do not understand this as a politician, you will be consigned to obscurity, if not oblivion. Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall (SC), brought to life this political maxim in his 2024 Budget speech to the National Assembly.

Part I of my analysis of Nandlall’s speech focused on the substantive and performative dimensions of his delivery. Today, I continue with his presentation of policies, but I also examine the discursive and narrational strategies in defining friends and enemies. As used here, discursive is derived from the noun discourse, which refers to the structured totality that emerges from the practice of articulation. Put differently, a discourse is a way of bringing together seemingly unconnected information into a holistic picture. The most effective way of constructing a structured totality, a holistic picture, is through narration, or in simply language, storytelling. This is what Nandlall proved to be especially adept at on January 26, on the floor of the National Assembly.

Part I ended with the following observation – “Well, every time an achievement was noted, a massive chorus of construction rose up, and then like a maestro, Nandlall turned, acknowledged his colleagues, only to move on to the next salvo.”

The next salvo began thus – “This Budget Debate, perhaps more than any other, has illustrated for all to see the mammoth divide between the Government and the Opposition. A difference in leadership, depth, vision, competence, and track record. There is simply no basis for comparison.” Did you see it? If you didn’t, just replace the words “Government and Opposition” with “Friends and Enemies,” and there you have it, the constitutive delineation between the PPP defined by a history of democratic leadership, against the APNU-AFC, that motley assemblage of political operatives, propelled as they have been, by authoritarianism.

Narratives always have agents, in this category, the Attorney General found even greater narrational form. Hon. Coretta McDonald worries about too many schools; Hon. Vinceroy Jordon whines about Bath Settlement or Fort Wellington; Hon. Shurwaye Holder “bizarrely declares the oil and gas sector is in turmoil,” Hon. Annette Ferguson is worried that the eastern side of  housing scheme is being developed faster than the western side – and she produces two photographs to establish her case”. The best was yet to come.

The AG mopped his brow, angled his posture a little to the right, and issued a (political) Exocet Missile – “While we are speaking about refurbishing 350 sports grounds across the country, and we are building 5 stadia across Guyana, the Hon. Flue-Bess complains bitterly about the cancellation of a dancing class at the National Cultural Center!”

By now, Nandlall, knowing he had all his FRIENDS locked and loaded as they might say north of the Rio Grande, proceeded to administer the final dose. “While in the agriculture sector we are preparing Guyana to offer food security to the entire Caribbean region, thereby creating tens of thousands of jobs, and earning millions in US foreign exchange, one member lambastes the agriculture minister that one black belly sheep distributed in Region Five is barren!

In case you think these shockingly inadequate and petty deposits by the Opposition were individual instances of incompetence, Nandlall reminded the audience that “these examples characterize the divide between the two sides in this debate and in everything else.” Note very well the words – “characterize the divide.” Humiliation of the Opposition is not good parliamentary conduct. Attorney General Nandlall knows this. Apropos, he found a way around the norm, without violating it. He had begun the operation at the very start of the speech when he spoke about the accommodation for “12 donkeys, 10 horses and 13 vagrants at Durban Park – as a major accomplishment of the APNU-AFC. The Opposition was lampooned into ignominy.

Just when the APNU-AFC might have thought the AG would offer them a graceful, face-saving exit, he took a long pause, rearranged his notes, and embarked on a sustained “Repudiation” of lies, half-truths, and misrepresentations. He began with Hon. Coretta McDonald who had attempted to invoke some far-fetched constitutional principle to ruin the prestige and, therefore, the findings of the COI related to the Mahdia Fire. The Hon McDonald had to be reminded that Guyana has its own constitution!

Next on the list were Hon. Roysdale Forde, Hon. Christopher Jones, and Hon. Sherod Duncan. Nandlall was now on aviation fuel, and this not least because the issue with this trio was their propensity to talk about constitutionality. Here is Nandlall on the attempt to rig the 2020 National and Regional Elections – “For five long months, they tried and they tried, and they failed and they failed, and in the end, the ballots of the people prevailed. And when they left office, they tried again with two Elections Petition and they failed and they failed, and the Rule of Law eventually prevailed.”

The indiscretions of former President David Granger received full and proper treatment. Nandlall pointed to President Granger’s ‘interference’ with the work of the Public Service Commission; the Police Services Commission; revocation of the leases of 50 rice farmers; constitutional impropriety by trying to revoke the lease of the Cheddi Jagan Research Institute; and constitutional skullduggery by rejecting 18 nominees of the Leader of the Opposition, and the unilateral appointment of James Patterson as the Chairman of GECOM.

By now, the APNU-AFC had absorbed quite a lot. Mahipaul and a few others had tried once in every little while to heckle, but to no avail. Sadly, even the quality of heckling had deteriorated. Their sorties were quickly repulsed by the always alert and ready – Ministers Kwame McCoy, Charles Ramson Jr., Sonia Parag, Deodat Indar, and Joe Hamilton.

To be cont’d.

Dr. Randy Persaud is Adviser, International Affairs, Office of the President.