– denies public the right to be heard in Parliament

THE Political Opposition again showed their disregard for the public’s voice, denying sections of the public their right to petition, and to be heard in the National Assembly.

The Opposition, on Thursday night, voted against a petition presented by Government Member of Parliament (MP) Odinga Lumumba on behalf of the Constituent Members and stakeholders of cricket, which requested that the National Assembly expedite the passage of the Guyana Cricket Administration Bill 2012-Bill No 31 of 2012.
The petitioners, who numbered more than 30, said they were convinced that expediting the bill was the only solution to resolve the cricket crisis, and to preclude the possibility of cricket being used as a conduit for laundering money.
However, before the motion was even presented, A Partnership for National Unity, MP, Carl Greenidge standing on a Point of Order, objected to it being allowed in the National Assembly, as the wording was offensive to Standing Order 15-4A.

The Speaker of the House Raphael Trotman said he too was concerned with some of the wording, but pointed out that it is the duty of the Clerk of the National Assembly to veto a motion’s appropriateness before it is presented to the House, and conceded that the Clerk in allowing the motion must have deemed the motion appropriate.
Government’s Chief Whip Gail Teixeira, who also rose, noted that it was the Clerk’s role to determine whether motions can be allowed in the National Assembly. She pointed out that several other petitions had come before to the National Assembly with ‘loaded’ language, and were allowed to be read and carried.
Teixeira, said she feared that the National Assembly was going down a road whereby only petitions that both sides read and deem as having appropriate language will be heard, which she pointed out would diminish the right of the people to come to the House with their concerns.
She warned too that defeating the bill will be saying to people of Guyana, to ignore the Parliament as it does not want to hear you.
In the end, the motion was read, and following dissention, it was put to the vote with 32 for and 32 against and was therefore not carried.
This was the second time that the Opposition has stifled the voice of the stakeholders in the National Assembly.
A motion presented by Government MP Manzoor Nadir on behalf by the Private Sector Commission at the November 8, sitting of the National Assembly, was also denied.
The motion which urged  the members of the National Assembly, to pass the Anti-Money laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill  as a matter of national and economic priority was voted down on the grounds that it was full of inaccuracies, prejudicial in favour of the Government, malicious and vexatious.
Meanwhile, a former Director of the West Indies Cricket Board has expressed disappointment over the shooting down by the Joint opposition of a petition seeking to expedite the passage of the Guyana Cricket Administration Bill.
Mr Claude Raphael who was also a former Chairman of the Guyana Cricket Board Selection panel was one of several signatories of the petition to Parliament urging the expediting of the passage of the Bill in the interest of local cricket.
In an invited comment about the rejection yesterday, Mr Raphael stated that the intention had merely been to get Parliament to speed up its work on the Guyana Cricket Administration Bill in the interest of local cricket.
“The stakeholders who signed the Petition are very disappointed over its rejection.
He added that the Petitioners will continue to struggle for what he described as the restoration of order and legality within the sport in Guyana.