-as business community urges compromise
President Donald Ramotar yesterday said that government will be taking the necessary steps to defend embattled Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee, in light of a decision by Speaker Raphael Trotman to limit his participation in the National Assembly pending the result of an inquiry on a motion to gag him.
Ramotar suggested the decision was premature and in effect presumed the minister’s guilt, whereas Trotman stood by his ruling and said it would pave the way for other parliamentary business, which has so far been held up by the impasse between the government and the opposition on Rohee.
Very little parliamentary work has been done at recent sittings as a result of the impasse and the situation has again attracted criticism from the business sector, with the Chairman of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) Clinton Urling yesterday calling for compromise, while declaring that parliamentarians were acting in a manner that bordering on immature and idiotic.
The National Assembly on Thursday saw hours of bitter acrimony between both sides over an attempt to prevent Rohee from speaking through a motion, tabled in the name of Opposition Leader David Granger, which was later sent to the Committee of Privileges by Trotman to be examined. Trotman yesterday emphasised at a press conference that Rohee is not before the committee. Instead, he said, it is the issue of whether he could be sanctioned. He added that there is no gag on him speaking in the National Assembly, but he would not be allowed to table any bill as minister until the committee reports its findings.
The Government Informa-tion Agency (GINA) yesterday reported President Ramotar as saying that government would move to defend Rohee, who had done nothing wrong but has been restricted without a chance to defend himself, thereby implying a presumption of guilt.
He stated that Trotman’s decision to refer the matter to the Privileges Committee is not only a violation of parliamentary norms and Standing Orders, but is total disregard of the legal advice that was given to him, since the ruling has, in effect, gagged Minister Rohee. Trotman had previously been advised by private counsel that a no-confidence motion previously against the minister was unenforceable as the president was not obliged to obey it and the minister could continue to perform his functions.
“To take Minister Rohee before the Privileges Committee is totally wrong. To be taken before that committee you have to commit an offence and Minister Rohee has committed no offence to be taken before that committee,” Ramotar was quoted as saying, while adding that all established principles continue to be trampled upon in the National Assembly.
He added that the Constitution is the instrument that has established the Parliament, and should therefore be regarded as supreme, but the opposition continue to disregard it and in the process it demonstrating its callousness and disrespect for the rule of law and procedures.
“I am very surprised at the ruling of the Speaker, because he, despite his political affiliations, should be guided by the Constitution and the Standing Orders, and he has disregarded both of these important principles. He made a political ruling and had clearly sided with the opposition,” Ramotar also said.
The PPP also yesterday reiterated its support for Rohee, while saying that the opposition is desperately looking for distractions to hide its inability to discharge its own responsibilities.
In a statement, it also accused Trotman of doing an about-face on his previous ruling that he could not prevent Rohee from performing his functions as minister in the National Assembly.
“To further compound his dilemma Speaker Raphael Trotman is quoted in the media as saying that Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee has not been sent to the Committee of Privileges, but rather it is the issue on whether the house has the powers to sanction Rohee,” it noted, adding that it was therefore astonishing that the minister was prevented from speaking and tabling bills.
Consumed
Meanwhile, Trotman said that Rohee has the right to give his opinion on the issue at the Committee of Privileges or have persons on his behalf give their views as to his status. However, he emphasised that Rohee himself is not before the committee as he has not been summoned and had not been sent to the committee for punishment.
“The committee is to examine what powers the Assembly has to take away the privileges of a minister,” he explained, reiterating that what happens to one member affects the privileges and rights of all members and brings the entire House under the microscope.
Asked how long the matter may be in front of the committee, Trotman said it could take as long as the members fail to agree on anything. He is the chair of the committee and he intends to convene it within the next 10 days to start the process.
The committee has nine members, five from the opposition and four from the government. A report is expected from the committee which may have a dissenting aspect to it and as chairman, Trotman said he may have a say. He added that even if the issue comes to a vote, the committee still has to report to the National Assembly, which would examine whether or not the motion should go
forward, what are the sanctions and how they should be implemented.
The Committee of Privileges, the Speaker said meets very rarely but all eyes would now shift to it and he said while these deliberations take place, it allows for other parliamentary businesses to be dealt with.
He admitted that the view that the 10th Parliament has not achieved much is “justifiable.” “I don’t think the nation wanted us to become so consumed with the Rohee issue to the point where other important things are swept away or were not considered. We have to consider issues of whether we are going to reduce VAT, whether we are going to give old age pension as an increase, are we going to do something for youths… there are a number of things out there that people think we should be addressing,” Trotman pointed out.
He said he did not arrive at his decision easily but a decision had to be made to pull both sides away from the brink and to send a message out to the country that “we can be responsible in our actions even though we might have opposing views and opposing positions… that, at the end of the day, we can apply a rules-based system.”
Asked whether him offering to resign from his post if any side called for his head following the ruling reinforced the view that Parliament is unstable, Trotman said he wanted to make “the point very clearly that I am not making decisions to feather my own nest but I need to move things forward, I need to get the full confidence of the House, not of one side or one part of the House.”
He added that by making this clear, it would avoid people calling him or meeting him and reporting what others might have said and warning him to be careful, which he does not need to be since he is a public servant who needs the support of all.
“I thought it best to say to them, ‘look, either you support me or you don’t and if you don’t say it and I would vacate my seat, I have no problem if there is no confidence in me stepping aside,’” he said.
He stressed that as Speaker he has a responsibility to ensure that the country’s democracy is strengthened every day and not shattered over an issue which in his view is not one that should see daggers drawn.
“We all have a duty to be responsible, not to run on emotions but look to see what is in the best interest of the National Assembly or Guyana because the minute the privilege of one member is under the possibility of sanction, it means that all of us can look bad if we don’t handle it properly and bring the House into disrepute,” he said.
Trotman said he is prepared to become the target of attack following his ruling, which he said is not a bad thing because rather than have the two sides fighting each other, he “would draw the fire and become the target for a while and defuse what was heading to a crises.”
‘Compromise’
At a news conference, Urling urged parliamentarians to “live up to a logic of compromise as oppose to a logic of confrontation,” in keeping with a recent call by the Private Sector Commission (PSC).
Urling, who also called for the authority of the Speaker and the parliamentary process of Parliament to be respected, said the GCCI is deeply worried about the situation that is prevailing in the National Assembly. He stressed that the parliamentarians should move away from the impasse over Rohee and focus on more important issues, such as tax and constitutional reforms.
So concerned is the business community that its umbrella body, the PSC, is devising a plan which includes engaging all the political parties in parliament. He said this discussion is ongoing and this could be done “in a matter of weeks or even days.”
The PSC had held a luncheon on the issue if Parliament last month at which its President Ronald Webster had described what is happened in the House as “dog fighting.”
“I can only describe the actions of our parliamentarians on all sides… [as bordering] on alarming immaturity and I would call it idiocy also,” a very blunt Urling said yesterday.
He stressed that there is much substantive work that needs to be done in the interest of citizens, naming constitutional reform, local government reform and elections, the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) review and budgetary preparation for next year’s budget presentation as “pertinent issues” that need to be addressed.
“There is a myriad of economic issues to be discussed, issues such as oil and gas regulation, legislation for that. Those are issues that concern the ordinary people and specifically the members of the private sector,” he said.
“We need our parliamentarians to be talking about these issues, discussing and ventilating these issues and not get caught up in petty discussions about who can and cannot speak in Parliament, which unfortunately took up two sessions to do,” Urling added.
He pointed that the work of the Parliament should get on and get done as opposed to the bickering and infighting, which do the country more harm and do no good for the image of any side.
“I don’t care if he [the Speaker] supported the opposition, supported the government side, I don’t care. If the speaker rules, I believe our parliamentarians should be mature enough to respect the process,” Urling stated. He added that the issue was moot as government could replace any minister with someone else “and the position would be the same government position.”
The confidence in the parliamentarians is at an all-time low, he declared, saying that it is an issue that needs to be looked at. “We need an expansion of political cooperation and not conflict,” he added. “In the parliament you [are] hearing about next general election, snap elections and all these sort of things. These things are not good for our country. It is not good for investment confidence. It is not good for the economy,” he said.
Pointing out that the new dispensation is a good one as it presents a situation where debate and discussions could prevail, he said that instead the country has seen externalities, grandstanding, egos taking over and persons holding up the real work of Parliament just for political mileage.
Urling added that GCCI meets with investors often and they want stability for their investments. He explained that they all state that the biggest constraint to doing business in Guyana is the political situation, which he dubbed the biggest threat to the country’s economy.
“Today I cannot definitively tell any investor that I am confident one hundred percent in the political situation or the political environment, which is an unfortunate development,” he said.
No investor, he added, wants to invest millions with the fear that at any time “some political disturbance or some uncompromising position from our policy makers, who should be more responsible, could affect that investment. So, they wait and see.”
