Former Speaker of the National Assembly, Ralph Ramkarran last evening expressed disagreement with the argument that 33 votes cannot be considered a majority in the National Assembly, saying that it cannot stand up to scrutiny.
Ramkarran told the Stabroek News that if one applies the ‘literal’ rule of interpretation, which is one of the rules recognised in law, the conclusion would be that majority means at least one more.
“33 is one more than 32,” he said before adding that it has to be determined what Parliament meant by the use of the word ‘majority.’
The `yes’ vote from government MP Charrandas Persaud last Friday has sent the Granger administration scampering to examine all legal options. Persaud has since said that he was fed up with how government was running the country and as such decided to vote according to his conscience and not along party lines as he has been doing for the last three and a half years. He denied that he was coerced or paid by the opposition PPP.
Ramkarran in his comments to this newspaper, questioned whether Parliament would have likely considered that there cannot be half a person and as such 33 is the half of 65. “Not at all. Parliament would have most likely considered that 33 was the majority where one party got one seat more,” he argued.
Ramkarran who still practices law in the courts, pointed out that it has to be considered that since 2011, 33 was consider a majority. “Since 2011 all the laws opposed were illegal and since 2015 all the laws passed were illegal. This false argument cannot stand scrutiny,” he stressed.
Nigel Hughes, a prominent attorney is insisting that an absolute majority is half plus one. “Half of the National Assembly is 33 members not 32,” he said in a Facebook post on Monday.
In another post, he contended “There are sixty five members of the house. Mathematically one half of the house is 32.5 members. There is no such thing as a half member so half of the house is 33 members. This is because you have to round up to identify half of the house. For a no confidence motion to pass and be valid the motion has to enjoy more votes that one half of the full house i.e. 34 votes. The house voted 33:32. 33 is a rounding down of what constitutes half of the house. The motion consequently was not carried. But in classic Guyana style we have embarrassed ourselves again.”
There have been mixed reactions to Hughes’ analysis but he continues to insist that his interpretation is correct.
The Guyana Bar Association on Wednesday said that the motion of no-confidence against the government was validly passed last Friday and called on all to accept the results.
The Association also took aim at Hughes’ position.
“The Bar Council has noted various attempts to argue that the motion was not validly passed in the National Assembly, including from Nigel Hughes, a prominent Attorney-at-Law who contends that a positive vote of 34 members of the National Assembly was required for the passage of the motion.
“The Bar Council rejects as erroneous such contentions that the motion was not properly passed or that the vote is, for any reason, invalid.
“The Bar Council urges that the results and consequences of the motion be accepted and that urgent preparations for elections by the Elections Commission be started.”
The constitution states that following the passage of a no confidence motion government must resign and hold elections within 90 days.
There have since been reports that government plans to take the issue to court.
Asked about this last evening, Ramkarran stressed on the time sensitive nature of the matter and highlighted that the court will be required to move expeditiously.
Noting that everyone has a right to bring a case to court, he said that in this situation “the court would want to consider the time frame. The court can give hours instead of days to file affidavits and hear the case day by day. In the Barbados election case the CCJ did the same and sat on a Sunday to complete the matter as elections were a week or so away.”
Ramkarran did see any issue with how the Clerk, Sherlock Isaacs handled the voting process.
Persaud in a 25-minute video uploaded on Facebook on Christmas Day, had criticised the Clerk for stopping the count and giving his fellow government MP’s time to try to persuade him to change his mind.
“Sherlock Isaacs stopped the count. Why did he stop it when I said yes? [He] created enough room or space for commotion expecting that it would have ended there with no complete count of the votes,” he said on the video while adding that before the counting was allowed to continue he was verbally and physically abused by some of his fellow government MPs
In response to this, Ramkarran pointed out that the Clerk stopped because of the uproar, as he cannot take a vote during noise “because he would be accused of not recording the vote correctly.” Also he said the Clerk had to stop because the Prime Minister shouted at him saying that he had called Persaud’s name wrongly and as such he was forced to call it again using the full name.
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo lodged the motion with parliament office on November 15 declaring no-confidence in the APNU+AFC government. The motion was debated on Friday and five MPs from each side made arguments which, in total, lasted more than six hours.
When it was time to vote, the 32 Opposition MPs duly declared their support for the motion while the first two government MP’s Audwin Rutherford and Haimraj Rajkumar, both of the Alliance for Change (AFC) strongly declared their dissent.
As Clerk of the National Assembly Isaacs called for ‘Mr C Persaud’ to cast his vote, shock and shouts of disbelief reverberated through the chamber when Persaud voted ‘Yes’.
Stunned government ministers Volda Lawrence and David Patterson, who were sitting directly in front of the AFC backbencher spun in their seats. Recognising that he had incorrectly addressed the member, Isaacs called for the Honourable Charrandas Persaud, who, after calmly sipping from a glass of water, softly intoned “Yes”.
He subsequently repeated ‘yes’ three times.
Persaud who is presently in Canada has since been expelled from the Alliance for Chance (AFC) and has received a letter informing him that he is no longer a parliamentarian.
