AFC Member of Parliament Moses Nagamootoo has moved to ensure that his party’s no-confidence motion against the government be given priority on the order paper for the earliest sitting of the National Assembly, now that the annual parliamentary recess is over.
“I kindly request that you place the aforesaid Motion on the Order Paper as a matter of priority, to take precedence over all other business of the House, for debate at the earliest Sitting that I expect to be on Thursday, the 16th day of October, 2014,” Nagamootoo wrote in a brief letter sent yesterday to Clerk of the National Assembly Sherlock Isaacs.
The dispatch of the letter, which was also copied to Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman, coincides with the end of the recess as of yesterday’s date.
Nagamootoo is the mover of the motion, which if passed by a majority vote would force the resignation of the government and the holding of new general elections within three months. The main opposition APNU, which has the votes needed to ensure the passage of the AFC-led motion, has already signaled its commitment to support the move.
Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman had indicated that the no-confidence motion could remain on the agenda for quite some time as there are a number of other important items to be dealt with, of which some like the Telecommunications Bill have been waiting for years.
While agreeing with Trotman, Ramjattan said that the AFC believes that the no-confidence motion should take precedence over all other items as it is of “utmost importance.” He charged that the PPP/C-led administration has committed a number of constitutional violations and should it be allowed to continue, would lead the country into a crisis.
“If it [the PPP/C government] continues to do the nonsense it has been doing, we are going to head into a constitutional crisis,” Ramjattan warned.
He said that the government should be stopped in its tracks and according to him, the only way this could be done is by a vote of no-confidence which would force the administration to return to the polls. “The process [the government’s alleged unconstitutional actions] has to be halted and this would be done when the no-confidence (motion) is approved,” he asserted.
When the AFC submitted the motion in August, it was believed that government would have likely called snap elections in an effort to avoid the embarrassment of being forced to face a no-confidence motion but Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon later dispelled this notion.
