Dear Editor,
In ‘Future Notes’ of July 24, I made the following request for information:
“… it must have been realised that, Member’s Day or not, attempting to question the government’s traditional right to set the order of business in the National Assembly would have been controversial. Can someone please explain to me why, if local government reform and elections are as important as all the parties claim they are, the opposition sought the passing of the bills in a context that involved questioning the government’s right to set the parliamentary agenda? The PPP/C and the opposition are involved in some kind of a tug of war over both sets of bills. Rather than courting controversy and thus providing the regime with a reasonable excuse for not supporting the bills, would they not have had a better chance of passing if the opposition had simply voted against the hydro project bills and left the PPP/C, if it so chose, to expose its anti-local government position?”
With reference to your editorial of July 28, which extrapolated from the linkage I believed I observed above, Mr Ronald Bulkan in a letter captioned, ‘The government has shown itself as not wanting these local government bills passed’ (SN, July 29) stated, “You go on to make reference to a recent column by Dr Henry Jeffrey in which he proffers an erroneous view … or interpretation of what transpired in the National Assembly at its sitting of 18th July, 2013 but which will not detain me now.”
I am not certain what message is intended when a request for information based upon a given perspective is simply dismissed as “erroneous”! Arguing by assertion has become something of a national pastime, so in the interest of the new transparent and open dispensation that Mr Bulkan and his colleagues keep claiming Guyana needs and that they represent, I am hoping that he soon finds some time to deal with my request!
Yours faithfully,
Henry Jeffrey
