-says pressing issues being ignored
Members of the AFC’s parliamentary team will be absent from the National Assembly today as the new term starts.
The party said that when it looks at the ‘business as usual’ approach of the government in the National Assembly in the face of a number of pressing issues and situations, it sees that “the National Assembly is not being used by the administration as a place to conduct the people’s business,” an AFC release stated yesterday.
In that light, the AFC is maintaining that its engagement in the National Assembly will be done on a more strategic basis and its team will dedicate more time towards meeting the people to ensure better representation in the Assembly, whenever it sees the need to address pressing national issues.
The party also noted that the 98th sitting of the Assembly marks the third anniversary of what it called “the ignominy visited on the party and the people of Linden” because the parliamentary seat for Region Ten remains “wrongly and shamefully occupied by the Prime Minister of Guyana as the AFC battles in the High Court for just a wisp of the elusive concept of justice to appear.”
Meanwhile, the AFC said that it remains firmly of the view that “the Administration is paying lip service to the practice of inclusionary democracy and is using the hallowed institution of parliament as a ‘rubber stamp’ to push its agenda whilst being unmindful and uncaring of the issues that affect hundreds of thousands of Guyanese.”
According to the AFC, the contents of the Order Paper reveal that it is ‘business as usual’ matters that will be debated while completely ignoring the more pressing and topical issues such as the Ramsammy affair, the McKoy affair, GPL’s continuing failure to provide a stable and continuous supply of electricity, and fires destroying people’s property from bad GPL service.
The party also listed other pressing, topical issues as the increasing cost of living, problems in the rice and sugar sectors, the worsening crime situation, which is now out of control as seen in the recent killing of Dweive Ramdass and the sloth in solving the case of the missing child Ricky Jainarine to name a few examples, and the continued inability of the people of Region Ten to enjoy television of their choice and to find dignified jobs to sustain themselves and their families.
Added to these, the AFC continued, is another act of ‘sleight of hand’ practised against the media which cannot be condoned with the latest one being in the guise of a public promise and pronouncement that on the resumption, Freedom of Information and Broadcast Legislation would be tabled for passage into law.
