IT IS A Fact that habits die hard, despite what the relevant political party to which such assertion is ascribed may want us to believe.
And the naked, brutal grab of both the Speakership and its Deputy of the nation’s National Assembly, supports this truism.
There is no doubt that this unprecedented situation of both chairs going to the Opposition had been orchestrated by the People’s National Congress(PNC) segment of the A Partnership For National Unity(APNU). This is evidenced by the fact that although, in the first instance, both offices were seemingly divided between the Alliance For Change (AFC) in the person of Mr. Raphael Trotman and PNC’s Mrs. Debra Backer – the underlying factor of mental comfort for the latter party was its perception that Trotman had still been perceived as an “old party man” with sympathies.
This configuration means that the PNC, the significant bloc in the APNU coalition, ensures that it is in a position to dictate the deliberations of the Assembly through its combined one seat majority along with AFC.
This platform has from that time set the stage for a series of acts that bears the unmistakable blueprint of the PNC cum APNU – acts that have been carried out without any recourse to the  declarations of ushering in a new political culture, consensus as a way of arriving at decisions in the larger interest of the nation, and of course, working for national unity. These were mantras that would have clearly been recalled by Guyanese, and which had been repeated on every Opposition campaign platform, during 2011.
What the nation would have been treated to, thus far, in this peculiar dispensation of the Tenth Parliament, is the classical re-play of the well known authoritarian ideology of the PNC, where it has arrogated to  itself all of the instances as presented in the House. This is indeed inimical to any State, especially given the unprecedented circumstances existing in the House after the 2011 polls, where only working together and cooperation by all the stakeholders could ensure a smooth passage of legislative issues and other related matters for the good of the nation.
After all, the PPP/C Government was elected to govern, in keeping with the declared electoral results at the end of the 2011 elections. This means that although its majority would have been reduced, it is still the Government because it has received the single largest bloc of votes. In any plateau, despite its changed parliamentary circumstances – it is the most important part of the governance equation because of its constitutionally elected position.
This fact, the APNU has deliberately forgotten, for it ought to have known that any piece of legislation ought to have been undertaken jointly with the Government, rather than its diktat approach to such critical issues.
How could the PNC have believed that it could usurp the function of the Executive by, for example, demanding to participate in the crafting of the national Budget? All this amounted to an orchestrated plan that attempted to prevent the Government from performing its constitutionally mandated function.
Of course, the AFC has been lending support to this undemocratic use of the National Assembly, and is therefore as much culpable as its senior Opposition colleague for the display of authoritarian ideology, designed to revert this nation back to a past that is too painful to remember.
No Assembly, elected in the name of the people, with such a circumstance, can ever progress through such a challenge without all parties thinking of the national interest, first and foremost.