DE POLITICAL LICK DOWN over who sits in the Speaker’s chair during the life of the current parliament has ended with the installation of Alliance For Change Leader Rapahel Trotman. If the choice was not altogether shocking the AFC co-Leader was very much a compromise candidate, APNU and the AFC having been engaged in an arm-wrestling match over whether Moses or Debbie should get the job. Thank God it’s over! The whole thing was descending into the kind of tenement yard political behaviour, an area in which our politicians have garnered considerable experience over the years.
Whatever the intention behind Brigadier Granger’s attempt to evaluate Moses Nagamootoo’s credentials/qualifications for sitting in the Speaker’s Chair, it was definitely ill-advised. It is just those kinds of inputs that might have resulted in a longer-term political standoff between the two opposition parties. Don’t forget Brigadier, politicians have long memories and you never know when these utterances might come back to haunt you. REAL LIFE POLITICS 101.
After the hullabaloo between the two opposition parties over who the Speaker should be you have to wonder whether there is not more gridlock up ahead and whether we SERIOUSLY can look to APNU and the AFC to bring home the political bacon as far as bringing a sense of BALANCE and ACCOUNTABILITY to our parliamentary democracy is concerned. They have to bring a greater sense of discipline to their own modus operandi first. The truth is that knowing politicians as we do and having watched the cat fight between APNU and the AFC on the issue of the Speaker we are fully entitled to remain far from convinced that the window of political opportunity which some people seemed to think has been opened for Guyana might well not be what we think it is.
What about Trotman as Speaker? Not much wrong with Raph in the area of competence though, perhaps, the opposition parliamentary majority might have been hoping to have him on the parliamentary benches and in the thick of political things……so to speak……..particularly in circumstances where APNU’s parliamentary list, particularly, includes a bunch of political greenhorns who will now have to find their feet pretty quickly if they are to make an impact in what promises to be a lively National Assembly, to say the least. Hire a Coach, APNU! Maybe Hammie, since he might be on the job market soon, anyway. For God’s sake, whip those rookies into shape………and quickly.
It’s a bit of an inauspicious beginning to the new Parliament. Once the bickering over who got the Speaker’s job had started the PPP/C tried to move itself above the affray and to present the whole thing as signs of a stillbirth as far as an effective APNU/AFC parliamentary alliance is concerned. Perhaps what the PPP/C expected – and it did actually suggest that this might be the case – was that the two parties would hold out for their respective candidates, part ways over the issue thereby allowing for their own Ralph Ramkarran to be re-elected Speaker.
Trotman’s name was a turn up for the books and gave the PPP/C a ‘bad turn.’ APNU and the AFC had been able to reach an understanding after all and the rumours that Trotman had become sufficiently fed up of the bickering to drop a hint that he was leaving politics altogether proved to be just those………..rumours.
Everyone seemed suitably chastened during the opening of the National Assembly. Trotman appeared energized; Former Speaker Ramkarran, frankly, appeared somewhat miffed and some of the new MPs bore expressions of babies seeing the inside of Infant School for the first time. No Norton………a few people muttered under their breath. Looking at the faces on the Opposition side the team seemed to lack depth in terms of parliamentary experience and Gail Teixeira, particularly, arguably the PPP/C’s best parliamentary debater these days, seemed well aware of that. We mustn’t forget the Leader of APNU himself is wet behind the ears as far as parliament is concerned.
It was always likely that the PPP/C would HUFF and PUFF once they did not get the Speakership and that they did. They accused the opposition of what one might call BAD FORM, their argument being that the custom in parliamentary democracies is that the government gets the Speaker’s chair………….as though there is anything wrong with setting a precedent. But that was not the worse thing they did. Once it became clear that it was going to be Trotman NCN radio suddenly began to refer to the AFC’s co-Leader as “the former PNC STRONGMAN.” Low blow! Foul! Pity there is no way of red-carding NCN. People have long been suggesting that those NCN people READ MORE and (while we are on the subject of reading) READ BETTER. By whose definition of the term – as it is used in politics – does Raphael Trotman qualify as a “POLITICAL STRONGMAN.” A STRONGMAN” for the information of NCN’s political neophytes is a political leader who rules by force of will and presides over a dictatorial regime. That means men like GADDAFI and SADDAM HUSSEIN and BASHAR AL ASSAD. Trotman does not come close to qualifying as a STRONGMAN and just in case he wants to demand a formal apology from NCN the reference to him as being a POLITICAL STRONGMAN was made on at least two occasions on NCN radio………the 6 pm news on Thursday January 12th and the 8am news on Friday January 13.
Wish one could say All’s Well That Ends Well as far as the first post-elections sitting of the National Assembly is concerned. But that’s far from the case. The government’s sore about its loss of the speakership. It was the first time that they had lost anything in Parliament since 1992 and it would hardly come as a shock if their response takes on a sort of we-aint-tekkin-it-suh posture. As those of us (like Fenty, for example) would say, DE TING IS NOW!