Dear Editor,

UNTIL Friday, 21 December, 2018, no motion of no-confidence had ever been debated in Guyana’s National Assembly.
The constitution demands a majority of all the 65 MPs to pass such a motion.
The big debate is what is a majority?
There seems to be different majorities for different situations. After the May 2015 elections, the APNU+AFC coalition was allotted 33 seats as against 32 for the PPP/C. The coalition therefore won by a majority of one seat.
Then, under the rules of the National Assembly, certain motions and bills require for approval a simple majority of members present and voting, even when several members are absent. No one has ever questioned this simple majority.
But to pass a confidence motion, the constitution of Guyana says that there should be a majority of all the elected members of the National Assembly. This is a special or clear majority. Some refer to it as an absolute majority.
The vote on the no-confidence motion resulted in 33 for and 32 against.
The question is whether the 33 votes meet the demand under the constitution for a clear majority, and whether it has been calculated under the generally acceptable formula.
A majority under this formula is more than half of the votes plus one. Therefore of the 65 members, one half would be 32.5. When one is added, it will be 33.5 members.
This is where the problem lies. There is no half member in parliament, so parliaments in other countries would round up the fraction to make 33 as one-half of the MPs, and then add 1 to make 34 the majority.
Everyone knows that one-half or 50 per cent is not a majority, except Professor Dr. Asquith Rose.
Tearing up the constitution which limits the composition of the National Assembly to 65 MPs, he cited as “objective fact” (SN 30.12.18) that we really have 66 MPs. He then divided his invented 66 into half, and got 33. He boasted about “basic arithmetic”, that “50% of 66 is 33”. But from where did he get the 66 seats? Besides, the professor wants us to swallow that 50 per cent equals majority and half equals majority.
He then juxtaposed his fictitious 33 from his manufactured 66 MPs and sized it up against the actual 65 MPs in the House. Worse yet, like an illusionist, he portrayed 66 as being the same as 65. He then inserted his 33 into the 65-member House, and concluded that “33 is a larger quantity than 32 and therefore is a majority”.

It would have been so easy to round up the fraction 33.5 into 34 to make a majority, but I guess that Dr. Rose was determined to turn “basic Arithmetic” on its head.

Regards,

Troy Douglas