Amidst wrangling on a date for a sitting of the National Assembly, there will be no sitting this week as, even if the political parties reach agreement on a date, members have to be given at least six days’ notice.
Following weeks of bickering among the parliamentary political parties, Speaker of the Nation-al Assembly Raphael Trotman is expected to put something forward to both sides of the House today. However, a parliamentary source told Stabroek News that even if a date is set, there can be no sitting this week because of the requirement for parliamentarians to be given six days’ notice of the sitting.
Since the parliamentary recess ended on October 10, there has been no sitting of the House. Over the past weeks, there has been a debate as to who has the authority to reconvene sittings at the end of a recess where a date has not been fixed for sittings. Clerk of the National Assembly Sherlock Isaacs has said that the government has to call the sitting. Former Speaker Ralph Ramkarran has said that the current Speaker is obligated to convene a sitting of Parliament soonest and has the authority to do so. Trotman has said that he has consulted with former House speakers and was considering the way forward.
On Friday, Teixeira, who is the government’s chief whip in the National Assembly, said that she is awaiting the outcome of the ongoing engagement between President Donald Ramotar and Opposition Leader David Granger before setting a date to reconvene Parliament.
However, General Secretary of APNU Joe Harmon told Stabroek News that it is not for the President and the Leader of the Opposition to set a date for the sitting of the National Assembly and for Teixeira to suggest that reconvening of the House is dependent on the outcome of their engagement, is “disingenuous.”
The Alliance For Change (AFC) has been calling for a sitting to be held at the earliest opportunity so that its no-confidence motion against the government can be debated. Last week, AFC leader Khemraj Ramjattan wrote to Trotman urging him to do all in his power to arrive at the earliest possible opportunity for a Parliamentary Sitting.
“In view of my suspicion that the PPP will want to maximally delay this most important public business, and in view that there must be an avoidance of any further delay in commencing the work of the National Assembly, I urge you to do all in your powers, to do that which is right for our country at this its cross-road moment, to ensure that the Legislature is not subverted or compromised by the Executive,” Ramjattan wrote.
“You being the head and leader of this branch of
Government, the Legislature, must be that guiding hand that must work through this political thicket, and the subterfuge sprinkled all over it, to arrive at the earliest possible opportunity for a Parliamentary sitting,” he said.
Ramjattan noted that the Parliamentary recess ended on the October 10th and he was hoping that by this time, Members of Parliament would have been served with an Order Paper for a sitting to be held on a date identified. “However, it does appear that from all that I have seen and heard in the press, this first sitting after the recently concluded recess is not on the horizon,” he said.
The AFC leader said that he is aware that “as a matter of course,” the Leader of the House, the Prime Minister, would identify the date of this resumption. “He having not done this to date, and having seen now an opinion from the Clerk on the issue, have been most unsettling. I am distressed and troubled by this development,” Ramjattan said.
He asserted that he has no doubt that the underlying reason is the government’s fear of the AFC’s no-confidence motion which has been properly tabled by AFC vice-chairman Moses Nagamootoo and which the AFC and APNU have agreed to support.
Ramjattan urged Trotman to arrive at the earliest possible opportunity for a Parliamentary sitting.
APNU Chief Whip Amna Ally had accused Teixeira of stalling in setting a date for the resumption of parliamentary sittings. Ally had said that she was unable to ascertain why Teixeira was not committing to a sitting of the National Assembly even though dates into the beginning of November have been suggested. “I don’t know why she (Teixeira) is dilly-dallying, we have come out of the recess I don’t understand why the wait… She is not rejecting the dates but she is telling me that the Leader of the Opposition and the President need to make that decision. As far as I know the Parliament Management Committee mandated that the whips agree on a date,” Ally had told Stabroek News.
Teixeira said that they had several discussions regarding suitable dates for the sitting to resume and there was no agreement for October. “We, then, had a tacit understanding that it would be held in the early part of November. I reminded her and reiterated on more than one occasion that once there was an opening and the President and Leader of the Opposition were engaged in some kind of dialogue that this process should be given a chance to evolve. I told her I would await the outcome of this engagement and advised her to do the same,” Teixeira had said.
The first sitting of Parliament following the end of the recess is expected to see the AFC no-confidence motion – which APNU has pledged to support – being debated in the House. The joint opposition can pass the motion using their one-seat majority and this would trigger the collapse of the government and general elections in three months.
However, with APNU meeting with government on issues like local government elections and the approval of bills passed by the opposition-led House, observers have said that this could stymie the passage of the no-confidence motion if APNU’s demands are met by the government. Observers say that the government appears desperate to stave off a sitting until it has exhausted the available options.
