..Gov’t assures 34 votes needed for no-confidence motion
…to ask speaker to review decision at next sitting

PRIME Minister Moses Nagamootoo said the opposition is in a quandary now that it has come to grips with the reality that it needed at least 34 votes to win the no-confidence motion against the government and not a mere 33. And he insisted that the law was on the side of the government as it moves to challenge the results of the motion.

He said there are also legal implications if it found that Charrandas Persaud was bribed by the opposition to vote against his own government. And while he did not detail the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change’s (APNU+AFC’s) decision on the way forward in treating with the outcome of the motion, Nagamootoo assured that the government will do its work and allow the process to take its course.

In an interview with the Guyana Chronicle on the sideline of the Swearing-in Ceremony for Mayors and Deputy Mayors at the Ministry of the Presidency on Friday, Nagamootoo said there is a strong case which suggests that the opposition required 34 votes to secure a majority in the House to allow for the passage of the no-confidence motion and not 33.

On December 21, 2018 when the motion was put to a vote, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Dr. Barton Scotland announced that the motion was carried after MP Persaud broke ranks, and voted with the opposition. It was noted that 33 persons voted in favour of the motion and 32 against in the 65-Member National Assembly. Dr Scotland in his closing remarks, although stating that the motion had been carried, said that the “consequences” will be dealt with at another time.

Prime Minister Nagamootoo said there was a reason why the Speaker told the House that the “consequences” would be dealt with subsequently. He said it is clear that the opposition, despite an additional vote with the support of Persaud, did not meet the threshold under the Constitution.

For a no-confidence motion to succeed Article 106(6) of the Constitution requires the vote of a majority of all the elected members of the National Assembly.

In making his case, the prime minister reasoned that there is mathematical formula that is applied. “The formula has been ½ plus one. So if you have 64 members of the parliament, your half would be 32 and a majority would be add one, 33. How come do you have 33 as a majority for 65, unless you can prove that 64 is equal to 65,” he reasoned.

Nagamootoo said a simple analysis of the initial formula used would reveal that the conclusion is absurd but made it clear that crafters of Constitution would have never contemplated the creation of absurdity.

The mathematical means being suggested that 34 votes constitute a “majority” in the House is not unfounded as the United Kingdom (UK), just recently, used the same formula although at the end, Prime Minister Theresa May won by several votes clear.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May won the confidence vote regarding her leadership after it was challenged by a number of Conservative Members of Parliament. However, prior to the vote, international news agencies widely reported that May needed “at least 159 out of 315 Conservative MPs” to win by a simple majority.

Similar to Guyana’s uneven number of 65 sitting members of the National Assembly, when the UK’s 315 total is divided, it arrives at 157.5 members. This figure was rounded off to158 as what represents half of the total number of members while an extra vote [159] would represent a majority.

When the motion, in the case of Guyana, was passed with a mere 33 votes, the Government Members of Parliament led by Nagamootoo, accepted the outcome, and called on Guyanese to respect the decision of the National Assembly.

ACCEPTING THE RULING
However, the prime minister on Friday said government, at the time, accepted the ruling to avoid any confrontation, noting that the opposition days ahead of the debate had been spreading rumours of planned mass protests and riots.

“We accepted the ruling of the Speaker, because as an attorney-at-law, when a judge makes a ruling you accept the ruling until you are able to have that ruling redrawn or set aside or recall, those are things that a court would do if it found that it made an error,” the acting President said.

It is believed that now that the Constitution has been thoroughly analysed by a corps of legal luminaries, the government on January 3, 2019 will ask the Speaker to review his decision that the controversial motion was carried.

“It is too serious an issue to be treated as a trivial matter,” Nagamootoo stated.
He said the too that the manner in which the motion was presumably passed has given rise to another serious issue—the issue of bribery and compromise. Persaud, who was expelled from his party – the AFC – and evicted from Parliament, during a video recording on a popular social media platform said “if I had taken a bribe, so what.” Nagamootoo said Persaud’s admission is a serious one with serious legal implications.

“So he is not discounting that he was compromised, he was bought, and if a vote in the National Assembly was procured by an unlawful means to overthrow an elected government, a constitutionally elected government that would have serious implications and the Speaker will have to address that issue,” Nagamootoo said.

He also endorsed the argument which was put forward by US-based Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy (CGID) that Persaud breached the constitution when he assented to the no-confidence motion without first declaring his intent to the Speaker.
Article 156:3 of the Constitution states that a Member of the National Assembly elected on a list shall cease to be a member only under certain conditions.

These include that “he or she declares in writing to the Speaker or to the Representative of the list from which his or her name was extracted, that he or she will not support the list from which his or her name was extracted,” or that “he or she declares in writing to the Speaker or to the Representative of the list from which his or her name was extracted, his or her support for another list.”

CGID said further that article 156:3 safeguards against the government “bringing itself down” and therefore stipulates “public withdrawal” or “public declaration of support” for any list.

The acting President said if Persaud knew that he had lost confidence in his government, he should have made it known to the Speaker. There is a lesson to learn from all of this, he said.

“The Guyanese people would understand now that it is dangerous to give a party a one seat majority because it creates instability and therefore you have to go back and renew your mandate and reelect the coalition with a stronger majority to ensure stability in the country,” he posited.

His statements were made at a time when the Opposition Leader, the mover of the Motion Bharrat Jagdeo has called for the Government to resign, insisting that the motion was effectively carried.

But Nagamotoo made it clear that the Government will continue to do its work. “It knows that it has a job to do, it has to work every day, and to deliver on the promises that have been made and to be able to carry out those projects that it has planned for under the budget already voted for,” he stated.

If at the end of the day, elections are called, the APNU+AFC is prepared, he assured.
“We have been through elections before, it is not for me an election, it would be to go back and renew your mandate, it is a renewal of your mandate,” he posited. If the matter is placed before the court, the Judiciary, he said, should be allowed to do its work and not be preempted by the opposition.

“Guyana is a democracy and it is this coalition government that had ensured that the democracy is strengthened, and that we have respect in the work of our democratic institutions. Parliament is a democratic institution and we must respect what Parliament is doing, we must not preempt it and try to create a situation outside to shut the parliament from doing its work. The judiciary is an independent autonomous institution under the constitution, and therefore the judiciary must be able to do its work,” Nagamootoo urged.