Dear Editor,
The Speaker of the National Assembly is on centre stage. He draws the spotlight on himself, by what is construed as his ways re his very sensitive responsibilities. For myself, the Speaker has manifested zeal and vigor to inflict the harsh and unacceptable on Opposition MPs; but supportive of the Government’s interests, and protective of its wayward parliamentary representatives. Guyana’s Speaker has forgotten that he is part mediator, part referee, and part peacemaker. As much as he is the captain on the bridge, he also can be compared to a floorwalker in a department store. There will be cheerful, cooperative customers, and there will be aggressive, obnoxious ones. All must be shepherded with an even hand, while continuously working overtime at maintaining an even keel. Regrettably, the Speaker’s record has not reflected such attributes; he has taken sides and in glaring ways; when strength was needed, he has been weak and the wrong man.
In earlier days, there was a vulgar fiasco, collapse of order, national embarrassment in Guyana’s House of the People. For an eternity, the Speaker was ineffectual and lost control, when rowdy, raged-filled parliamentarians from both sides descended into the gutter before a national audience. They all were so much at home there, that they lingered forever with vileness hurled at each other. In that forgettable episode in the National Assembly, it was as if the Speaker was not there. His feebleness was showing, and the nakedness of the incumbent was on display for all to behold in openmouthed disbelief. He was not the right man when matters got to such a wrathful obscene head. Guyanese felt sorry for him in his frailness, his weak-kneed spinelessness. I did. Given what followed subsequently, as directed against the parliamentary opposition, it was the last time that he gathered any sympathy from any corner not rabidly pro government. He hasn’t from this corner. For he deteriorated in the quality of strong, independent leadership that is the essence of the role of the Speaker, as he went from bad to worse, then worse still. He forgot that ‘Speaker of the House’ means not on behalf of Government people exclusively, or the Opposition’s alone, but all Guyanese people.
Because there were two revealing instances that exposed the Speaker for who he is, what he is about, and how he interprets his touchy responsibilities in a particularly partisan way, even when the interests and welfare of all Guyanese are involved. The Opposition’s Shadow Minister of Oil and Gas tabled motions related to the controversial gas to shore project. It is the biggest thing that Guyana has ever dreamed up in its endeavours. The Speaker did the jaw dropping. He gutted vital points of contention that called for enlightenment in the Shadow Minister’s paper, then insulted him in the process. The Shadow Minister rolled with that, but the import of what the Speaker did cannot be limited to the Shadow Minister alone. He represents over 200,000 Guyanese citizens. All of them have been diminished by the Speaker’s words declaring that he did not have to provide reasons. The Standing Orders afford him leeway, but in a bitterly divided society, the Speaker lost civility, then credibility. The gas to shore project is not a PPP/C Government pet project to be squired by the Speaker, but one with great national consequence if not handled right. The Speaker cannot be pardoned for what was a clear and dangerous breach of his expected neutrality, sagacity.
But he was not done. For when the Shadow Minister’s amended motion was allowed resurrection, it was still diluted, thanks to the Speaker’s scalpel. A patriotic, bipartisan Speaker shrinks from such, recoils from such unseemly shenanigans. It is as if he was working double-time and sneakily to give one side an unfair advantage, to the severe detriment of Guyanese. The Opposition was not the side benefitting from the Speaker’s generosity. Whose side he is on, how he intends to go about the business of the Speaker of the National Assembly needs no further subtitles. Last, there was the rushed, controversy-filled Natural Resources Fund Bill, where debate degraded into verbal brawls. Opposition MPs took matters to a low level, profaned the Chambers of the National Assembly. They had company. But now they are the only ones being singled out for possible disciplinary action(s). Government MPs were not passive, serene choirboys and girls during the ruckus, but they are given a pass. Again, he is protective of government, but warlike to the Opposition. Whichever way turned, however charitably viewed, the bias and wounding partisan have come to characterize the thinking, decisions, and actions of the Hon Speaker. He besmirches the office.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall