…says Presidential Adviser on Governance Gail Teixeira
The new composition of the Committee of Selection is a travesty and does not reflect a balance of the political parties in Parliament. Presidential Adviser on Governance, Gail Teixeira, made this observation yesterday, mere minutes after the 10th Parliament was adjourned, as she was reacting to the appointment of the Committee of Selection and its most recent amendment.
During the sitting of the National Assembly yesterday, Leader of the Assembly, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, proposed that the Committee of Selection should have ten members, in keeping with traditional Parliaments.
Chief Whip for the Opposition, Amna Ally, subsequently tabled an amendment to the motion put forward by the Government side of the House, proposing that the Committee of Selection be amended to nine members.
The National Assembly then carried a motion for the amendment of the Committee of Selection to comprise nine members, as was proposed by the Opposition Parties.
In response to this, Teixeira reminded that that there were attempts among the three parliamentary parties with the President earlier this week, to address the issue of the composition of the Committee of Selection, at which time the PPP/C proposed to the APNU and AFC based on proportionality of the individual parties, that the composition of the committee should reflect the balance of the strengths of the parties in parliament.
During these engagements, the PPP/C proposed as a compromise, that with 49.023 percent of the votes, they would have five seats on the Committee, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) would get four, and the Alliance For Change (AFC) one. The two opposition parties refused to agree to that and wanted a nine member committee in which APNU would hold four seats, AFC 1 and PPP/C 4, making the PPP/C a minority in the Committee of Selection, she continued.
She explained, “This is the mother committee that sets up all the other committees of the house, and appoints them. In the last Parliament, we had six seats and they (opposition) had four, based on proportionality of seats. The PPP/C is the largest party in parliament with 32 seats. We oppose this because it is distorting the proportionality of the party’s strength in parliament, no matter which way you cut it, 49 percent is not 40 percent of the vote, which is what APNU had and 10 percent AFC had..”
The Adviser on Governance pointed out that there is no provision in the Constitution or the standing orders for a combined opposition in relation to the Committee of Selection.
Teixeira also pledged that the PPP/C will continue to work along with the parties in the interest of the Guyanese people, as they have been doing for the past 19 years, and expressed the desire to continue to test the sincerity of the comments made on the opposition side about cooperation and working together.
She said, “We tried and we did not succeed; and despite the fact that all these comments were made by the opposition parties about cooperation and working together, this is just a sham, as far as I am concerned.
“It’s about power and making sure that they are going to be completely uncooperative in this parliament. We have tested it on two occasions, the selection of the speaker and deputy speaker, and now the Committee of Selection; I leave the Guyanese populace to decide who are the people who should never be in government in this country, the APNU and AFC.”