Gov’t moves motion to reduce Opposition dominance in Parliament Committee
PRIME Minister Moses Nagamootoo moved a motion in the National Assembly yesterday for an amendment to the number of persons in the Parliamentary Committee of Selection to reflect the results of the May 11 election.The Prime Minister’s motion sought to amend Parliamentary Standing Order 81 (2) which was amended in February 2012, following the 2011 general elections.
In 2011, the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) had gained a combined majority of 33 seats in the National Assembly.
The rationale of the two parties, now the coalition Government, in 2012, was that the composition of the Committee of Selection should reflect the composition of the National Assembly, where the APNU and AFC together had one seat more than the then-governing People’s Progressive Party/Civic.
As such, the Committee on Selection was reduced from 10 members to nine members in 2012, when the governing PPP/C was granted four seats and the other five seats were given to the APNU and AFC.
The motion moved by the Prime Minister yesterday was to amend the arrangement from 2012 to grant the APNU+AFC Government a total of five seats, and the remaining four seats to the Opposition PPP.
That rearrangement would reflect the results of the May 11 elections, whereby the APNU+AFC won both the Government and a majority in the National Assembly.
Speaker of the National Assembly, Dr Barton Scotland, was ready to move for a vote on the motion, but Opposition MP Gail Teixeira rose to object to the move, requesting a debate on the motion, as is customary.
Teixeira then rose as the first speaker on the motion, declaring that she is not against the re-shuffling arrangement but, instead, wanted to remind the House that she had warned in the 10th Parliament against what she said was the “arbitrary willy-nilly behaviour of the last Parliament.”
That behaviour, Teixeira reminded, came because of “exuberance to ensure that everything was locked down tight, and to ensure that the illusion of the one-seat… would lead to this situation.”
“Mr Speaker, I am not opposing the motion, but I am saying that unwillingness of the then Opposition to listen to us in relation to the Standing Orders and upholding the Standing Orders, and being able to reach consensus on issues were thrown out of the window in the last Parliament,” Teixeira said.
“They have had to come back to Parliament to reverse what they have done, and they will have to reverse it for all of the Committees,” she continued, while heckling to the Government side of the House that she will not be muzzled because she is not a member of the governing coalition.
Governance Minister Raphael Trotman, who served as Speaker of the National Assembly during the 10th Parliament (2011-2015), also spoke to the motion since he would have presided over the Committee on Selections, as Speaker of the House.
Responding to Teixeira’s comments, Trotman said, “At the commencement of the last Parliament, the exigencies of the situation and the realities of the situation dictated that the Committees be adjusted to reflect the majority of the Opposition.”
Trotman said the measure to re-adjust the seats was taken in the House. But the matter was taken to the High Court by then Attorney-General Anil Nandlall against then-Speaker Raphael Trotman and the then-Leader of the Opposition, now President David Granger.
“The High Court, through a ruling of the Honourable Chief Justice, ruled that this House was within its right to make the adjustments,” Trotman recalled, adding that “the pronouncements about predictions and things coming to pass is quite disingenuous.”
Trotman declared that as a “matter of right”, the adjustment had to be made in 2012, and so it has to be made again now. “It was done because it was necessary for the conduct of business in the House. And so again, as a matter of necessity, the adjustment has to be made.”
Trotman said, too, that Teixeira’s concerns were raised also in the court ruling he referenced, where the Chief Justice ruled in favour of the then majority of the National Assembly.
Attorney General Basil Williams also rose to speak against Teixeira’s comments, since he had represented both the then-Speaker of the National Assembly and the then-Opposition Leader in the case cited by Trotman. “The point was emphasised [that] the court had no jurisdiction because this was an internal matter for the Parliament.”
Williams maintained the independence of the Parliament, warning that even now, “there is an attempt to disrespect the decisions and the procedures of Parliament and of the majority in Parliament. We are quite in order, on a majority vote, to make decisions in this honourable House.”
Teixeira rose once again to declare that she never raised a legal argument, but that she is “talking politics.”
“These are matters that are politically dealt with and we had warned the last time that were the situation in Government were to change, then we would have to go back to change the composition.”
Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, as the mover of the motion, rose to speak again on the motion. Nagamootoo said,
“Today, it is a simple straight-forward arithmetical equation. One has the majority, one has the minority, and any child will know that the majority should have the right to have more representation on a particular committee,” the Prime Minister continued.
“While the arithmetic of four versus five may appear that it empowers one side against the other, most of the work of these Committees would have to be dealt with by consensus,” Mr Nagamootoo added, calling for both sides to work together rather than considering which party has more representation than the other in the Committees.
“I ask that we not allow bitterness and acrimony to frustrate us going forward into these Committees as presently being asked by the motion,” Nagamootoo charged, as the motion was approved in the National Assembly.
By Derwayne Wills
