By supporting Raphael Trotman for the Speakership of the National Assembly A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) is first out of the blocks in demonstrating that it is prepared to give and yield in the new dispensation in parliament, new Deputy Speaker Deborah Backer has said.
Backer, whose name was withdrawn for the position by APNU following Trotman’s nomination, said APNU must be given credit for having the capacity and the interest to move things forward by supporting the AFC’s candidate.
The new Deputy Speaker, who has been a member of parliament since 1998, told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview that while disappointed at a personal level about not becoming Speaker, since she knows she has the capacity, she needs to move forward.
“Although I was disappointed at the personal level at not being the Speaker, the bigger picture is if you are talking about shared governance you are going to have to yield sometimes when you feel you are right and know you are right, and sometimes even have the greater… numerical strength.”
She added that while the many who supported her to become the Speaker, including the Guyana Association of Women’s Lawyers which placed an advertisement in the newspapers in support of her, were also disappointed when she was not elected, they too must look at the bigger picture.
While thanking them for their support Backer pointed out that it was not only women who supported her for the position, and even though she was not elected it brought the issue into the public domain and both men and women accepted that she had the capacity as a woman to become Speaker.
She noted that politics is a “difficult thing; you have to give and you have to take and you have to yield at times, and many times yielding is the person who is in the stronger position.
“I would hope that the message that it should send to people is that one, the sky is the limit for women and two whatever career… you take you will have stumbling blocks along the way but the important thing is to stick to it and keep pressing forward,” she told the Sunday Stabroek.
Meanwhile, she threw cold water on the government’s argument that by being denied the Speakership their parliamentary agenda was in jeopardy.
“It is [as though] having the office of the Speaker reposing in the government is a condition precedent to parliamentary business going on. The Speaker does not vote, the Speaker does not introduce legislature in the house…” Backer said.
The Speaker is in charge of the National Assembly to maintain order and to guide the house and chair in impartial way, she continued, calling the government’s argument a red herring.
And Backer said former Speaker Ralph Ramkarran had done himself a grave disservice by becoming engaged in an issue where he was of the contestants.
“He should know as a lawyer… that you should never advise yourself, you should never be involved in things where you have an interest; as we would say in law you should recuse yourself.”
Ramkarran last Tuesday had told the media 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.”
He had said by doing so the opposition had violated the most hallowed of parliamentary conventions by elevating Trotman as Speaker and Backer as deputy.
Meantime, asked about the Youth Coalition on Transformation (YCT) announcement that they were willing to march on the street to support her for the Speakership, Backer said she did not believe that the issue standing on its own would have merited such a move.
“I don’t think that that issue… standing on its own is an issue that you should march in the street for, but I do not have issue with them feeling so and expressing that view, and I think when those things happen people have to engage with them and talk,” Backer said.
However, she went on to say that contrary to what many thought prior to last year’s election, the YCT has shown that young people have an interest in what is happening in the country. She noted that while they may have said a few things that some did not agree with, it should be understood every age group tends to think differently.
“I think the important thing is to marry the thoughts, because at some level they would feel that the more senior people in the party are perhaps getting a little too complacent…”
Backer said it is unfortunate that there seems to be a view that marches on the streets are a bad thing, and observed that they happen all over the world.
‘Prepared to talk’
And the attorney-at-law said that the beauty about the new dispensation is that one does not know the outcome of parliament beforehand and parliamentarians have to be prepared to talk.
No single party has the majority in parliament, so it gives them an opportunity to really work together for the betterment of Guyana, she said. “I want to say, and I am mirroring the views of APNU…that our programme will not be one of obstructing the government for obstruction’s sake.”
Backer said some felt that because the opposition showed its parliamentary strength by voting for Trotman as Speaker, they would continue on this same path: “But we would only do that – and I am speaking for the APNU because we have no coalition or agreement with the AFC – if we feel that we have made very legitimate and reasonable amendments and they refuse to even look at [them] which is what they used to do in the past.”
Unlike what happened in the past Backer noted, for anything to pass, everyone in the National Assembly would have to feel comfortable, regardless of which side the motion comes from.
“Nothing can pass unless two of three parties agree to it; that is the bottom line because none of the three of us has a simple majority.”
She said that the new dispensation would force parliamentarians to become mature and to realise that you have to give and take, and that this is something both the PPP and the AFC will have to understand.
Backer said the government feels that to yield on anything is a sign of weakness, but for her to yield on something is a sign of strength.
In the past she said the government parliamentarians argued that the people gave them a mandate and trusted them, so they did not have to get the support of the opposition to go ahead with their agenda, and she wondered what they will say now. “They have to learn that it is not going to be business as usual and they have to come to the table with humility and we are already at the table with humility,” she told Sunday Stabroek; “if all three parties do that the people of Guyana will benefit.”
She noted that APNU campaigned on shared governance since the present system where the winner takes it all is not the way to go if the country is to be moved forward in unity. Backer said she is a strong advocate for shared governance and revealed that she was a member of the first group in the PNC which was given the task by the late Desmond Hoyte to look at the issue and come up with proposals.
And Backer noted that the Deputy Speaker does not have a separate function, but acts for the Speaker whenever he is absent, and has whatever power he has while she is in the chair. As an elected member of the house Backer says she will continue to function in that capacity.
She said she and Trotman have met with the employees of Parliament and “we spoke about certain housekeeping issues that we both have views on.”
