AFC Member of Parliament Cathy Hughes has come in for public ridicule over her attempt to cast judgment on the conduct of Minister of Home Affairs, Clement Rohee.

It is widely felt that Hughes has no moral authority to address the minister’s conduct because of the many allegations of legal and ethical violations committed by her and her husband, Nigel.
The public ridicule she attracted threw the spotlight on the dubious character of the Hughes couple, noting recent charges by Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) against her husband for tax evasion.
The GRA obtained two judgments against Harvest Company Ltd, a company under the legal stewardship of the AFC Chairman, for failure to remit PAYE and one judgment under Section 44 of the Value Added Tax Act No.10 of 2005.
The Commissioner-General, Khurshid Sattaur, flayed Hughes for accusing the entity of being politically-motivated in seeking to redeem the taxes his company defaulted on. In upbraiding him, he said Hughes was seeking to engage in a publicity stunt, noting that the company has defaulted in remitting workers’ VAT and PAYE to enrich themselves.
There are several other allegations against the Hughes family that border on illegal behaviour, violation of moral and ethical principles.
Other members of the AFC executive have been accused of demanding contracts from companies engaged in large-scale projects in Guyana, failing which they become a target for the AFC onslaught. A case in point was ‘Fip’ Motilall, the contractor of the Amaila Falls Road project who had the tide of negative publicity reversed when Hughes was contracted as his public relations consultant.
The opposition AFC and APNU are in a gang-up to remove Rohee since the July 18 protest in Linden, Region 10, during which three persons lost their lives. The parties used their one-seat parliamentary majority to pass a no-confidence motion in parliament which the Speaker Raphael Trotman has since ruled cannot prevent the minister from participating in parliament.
During the last sitting of parliament, the opposition’s despicable behaviour, believed to be condoned by the Speaker, came in for widespread condemnation from the public at large.
The opposition continues to show its defiance against the Speaker’s recent ruling on the effect of the no-confidence motion against Rohee. The ruling was based on a legal view expressed by Senior counsel Rex Mc Kay and Mr. Steven Fraser.
‘’ The Speaker of the National Assembly of Guyana, I so rule, has no power to restrict or deny the right of the Honourable Clement J. Rohee, Member of Parliament from speaking or fulfilling his ministerial duties and responsibilities insofar as they relate to this House of Assembly’’, Trotman declared at the last sitting.
Since then, the opposition declared it would stop at nothing to remove Rohee from Parliament.