The ruling party’s unwillingness to compromise on the nominee for the speakership left no room for any negotiations, AFC Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan said yesterday.
“All this bitterness that he being exhibited now by [President] Donald Ramotar and now by Ralph Ramkarran is more or less baseless. We pleaded with Mr. Donald Ramotar to ensure that an AFC person got the Speakership. He did not want [anything] but Mr. Ralph Ramkarran. So we thought negotiating with them would be like putting your head against a brick wall,” Ramjattan told a news conference, in response to the PPP/C’s continued criticism of the AFC for collaborating with opposition coalition APNU on electing Raphael Trotman as Speaker.
The PPP/C, which has the largest single bloc of parliamentarians but no outright majority, has accused the opposition parties of going against parliamentary convention by electing Trotman as Speaker last Thursday.
But Ramjattan, who noted that the rotation of the speakership between the AFC and APNU is “not on the cards,” yesterday emphasized that his party would retain its independence but would lend its support when it is in the national interest.
“[The PPP/C] probably played their cards totally wrong when they felt that because APNU and AFC are at loggerheads they could slip it in by calling Parliament last week Thursday. They now are victims of their own actions and they vex with AFC and APNU. We were willing to consensually work it out, but when you are going to play hardball like that and say one name and don’t even shift, that’s not the arrangement we could [negotiate] with,” Ramjattan said.
“I personally made about two or three phone calls to the President pleading with him… and what he had to say about our candidates wasn’t very nice. And this is what negotiators in a charged atmosphere do, you then go to the next best [thing] and negotiate with APNU and we managed to get Raphael Trotman as the Speaker,” he added. “They did not find [Moses Nagamootoo] suitable. Nagamootoo behaved like a gentleman, withdrew his name, realizing that it indeed would be a good thing for AFC to get the Speakership and that’s what happened.”
He further added that Trotman’s election was in keeping with all the conventions well known in the Westminster democracy, while pointing out that the majority of members in the National Assembly elected the Speaker.
“They quote conveniently conventions and I want to say that they have no moral authority to talk about conventions,” he said.
On Tuesday, Ramkarran, at a PPP/C press briefing, said the party’s Central Committee observed that “in a wave of triumphalism, the opposition APNU, with the collusion of its junior cohort, the AFC, unashamedly deployed its majoritarian will in Parliament recently that it has so harshly criticized in the past.” Ramkarran added the parties violated the most hallowed of parliamentary conventions, accusing them of throwing tradition “out of the windows of Parliament Building” and taking control of both the positions of Speaker and Deputy Speaker. The PPP/C did not nominate a candidate to be Deputy Speaker.
Despite the PPP/C’s recent statements, Ramjattan was, however, confident that the ruling party will soon settle down and contribute meaningfully to the business of the 10th Parliament while accepting the political reality of the day.
He noted that the PPP/C does not have a monopoly on power any longer or control over the lives of Guyanese, including that of its own supporters.
He said all of the people of Guyana have a voice and want their voices heard and the power of the people will have to be recognized and accepted through the minority government.
“I want to make it quite clear that if there are certain things that the PPP comes forward with and are progressive and that we could support, we are going to support the PPP and every project and programme that we find is worthwhile and in the national interest,” he said. “I am not going to allow the AFC to be an appendage to PPP/C or APNU. We are going to maintain very strenuously our independence from those two parties,” he said.
The AFC, meanwhile, congratulated its leader Trotman for his ascension to Speaker of the National Assembly as well as the other members of the party that have taken up seats in Parliament.
It said that those persons categorically declare that on behalf of the AFC they are prepared to work with APNU and the PPP/C to facilitate a parliamentary agenda that serves the national interest and which brings direct and equal benefits for all Guyanese.
With a view to engaging parliamentary political parties, the party has dispatched a letter to the PPP/C identifying Clayton Hall and Gerhard Ramsaroop as the party’s representatives to tripartite engagements.
Further, it has dispatched a letter to APNU identifying Trotman, Ramjattan, Hall, Cathy Hughes, Nagamootoo and Ramsaroop as their representatives to bilateral arrangements between the two groups.
