-opposition
The parliamentary opposition plans to use all possible legitimate measures today to pass a motion to gag Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee in the National Assembly.
The move is part of the efforts by A Partnership for National Unity and the Alliance For Change to seek to give effect to a motion of no confidence they had passed against Rohee last July.
“We are hoping that it will be on the supplementary order paper and are going to ask that it be dealt with as a priority issue. If it isn’t, together as a majority, we will request that the motion be put and proceed to be debated and vote on it,” AFC leader Khemraj Ramjattan told Stabroek News last evening.
“Rohee should do the honourable thing and withdraw himself as national interest is bigger than his own,” Ramjattan said, as he added that if he remains, it can lead to “big trouble” such as any bill in his name being automatically rejected.
Speaker Raphael Trotman prematurely adjourned the last sitting of the National Assembly two weeks ago after opposition members refused to allow Rohee to speak, chanting loudly to drown out his voice as he stood for the second reading of a bill in his name. The government accused the opposition of trying to save face over what it said was a failed attempt to link him to the protestor killings in Linden. The government also criticized Trotman, saying he needed to take stronger action against the affront to his office.
Leader of the Opposition David Granger yesterday said that the opposition will not relent in their stance to see that Rohee does not have a word uttered in his capacity as Home Affairs Minister in the National Assembly.
“We will have to take each sitting as it comes… as we go back in tomorrow, our position remains the same since July and that is Rohee must go. We will do everything that is legitimately possible to block him [from] speaking on matters concerning public security…We have no confidence in him and we speak for the majority of the people and the majority of the house and we cannot be ignored,” said Granger. He has maintained that Rohee has failed in ensuring public security, while emphasising that it is not isolated to any one case, such as the Linden unrest.
Ramjattan blasted Attorney General Anil Nandlall, who has said that the opposition has no legal authority to prevent Rohee from addressing the National Assembly. Nandlall, in a recent interview on NCN, said that the country’s constitution and the parliamentary standing orders compel Rohee to perform his functions as minister, and his functions in the National Assembly. He added that there is nothing in law and in the constitution which would empower the Speaker of the House Raphael Trotman to prohibit Minister Rohee from speaking.
Nandlall, according to the Government Information Agency (GINA), said that the Speaker inexplicably advised the opposition to bring a substantive motion to gag Minister Rohee, although his ruling substantiated that the minister could not be prevented from participating in the National Assembly. “That I understand is what he is inviting them to do. But when you examine what his ruling says, you will find that he has placed himself in a conundrum from which it is impossible for him to extricate himself and that conundrum is this, he is saying, ‘I can find no provision within the Standing Orders of the National Assembly, the Constitution and the laws of Guyana which restrains an elected member from fulfilling his functions’—he can find none—[and] he goes on to state again, ‘in the circumstances and having regard to the foregoing as Speaker of the National Assembly I have no power to restrict or deny the Hon. member Clement Rohee from speaking or in any way fulfilling his ministerial duties and responsibilities in so far as they relate to this House,’” he said.
According to GINA, Nandlall argued that since Trotman has said “unconditionally, unequivocally, unambiguously,” that he had no power to prevent Minister Rohee from speaking, the situation cannot be done away with through a substantive motion brought before the House.
However Ramjattan said that Nandall’s opinion was without merit and if those were the arguments the PPP/C is going to use at today’s sitting it will be rubbished by the opposition.
“This nonsensical and outrageous attempt of jurisprudence by Nandlall will make them look like fools… the origins of these conventions he does not understand,” he said.
