IT WOULD seem that the combined APNU/AFC opposition coalition consider parliamentary debates on the national budget as prime-time occasion to engage in a mix of fun politics, reckless behaviour and sheer contempt for all and sundry, including the Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Raphael Trotman.A continuation of last week’s debate on the 2014 budget again highlighted that the Opposition MPs, including APNU’s leader, David Granger, are bent on making the highest forum in this nation, the 65-member National Assembly, a laughing stock. In preference, that is, to cooperating with the Government’s Chief Whip, Gail Teixeira, as well as Speaker Trotman, and to encourage and sustain an atmosphere of decorum and dignity without necessarily diluting accepted norms in parliamentary behaviour.
For last week’s sittings of the National Assembly, not only was there a return to what occurred during the debate on the 2013 budget, including some nasty moments of shrill divisive talk flavoured with immoral innuendoes. But Speaker Trotman himself once again had to contend with defiance and gross disrespect from the Opposition benches to his rulings.
The latter manifestation pertained to the APNU/AFC parliamentarians refusal to abide by a decision of the Speaker for the Minister of Education, Priya Manikchand, to make her contribution. She had been earlier interrupted from doing so for jeering comments seemingly directed at APNU’s then MP, Jaipaul Sharma, son of CN Sharma, leader of the Justice For all Party (JFAP).
Subsequently, as is now public knowledge, the Education Minister apologised for her relevant remark and the Speaker ruled on her right to continue addressing the parliament.
By then MP Sharma had already tendered his resignation as an APNU parliamentarian, blaming the coalition for failing to rise to his defence “when it mattered.” He also made it quite clear that neither he nor anyone else from the minority JFAP would be named to fill the vacancy created by his resignation. His father, CN Sharma, was to speedily confirm his stand.
However, the APNU/AFC coalition continued with their hilarious obstructionist politics by refusing Education Minister Manickchand to make her contribution on the 2014 budget debate, consistent with the Speaker’s ruling.
When politically immature and grotesque defiance by the combined Opposition—temporarily without their one-seat majority—proved unbearable, the Speaker felt compelled to adjourn the Assembly with the understanding to resume debate on the 2014 budget tomorrow afternoon.
We await, along with Guyanese people at large, to learn what develops in the National Assembly tomorrow when the Education Minister is expected to continue with her contribution, as already ruled by the Speaker. Naturally, the JFAP’s Sharma must also be keen to know the choice of his APNU successor, having vowed to maintain his resignation as an MP and quit the fold of the Opposition coalition.
So far as the Speaker’s ruling is concerned, there is no way the APNU parliamentarians could seriously expect him to reject his own ruling on the right of the Education Minister to continue to speak on the budget. There is, after all, a limit to even political farce for which the Opposition coalition seems to have a very big appetite, even as it now seems to be faced with a survival challenge for an expected snap general election.