No-confidence motion against Govt should be given priority – Guyana’s longest serving Clerk

…cannot be tossed aside in favour of Govt business – former AG
By Shemuel Fanfair

As the debate on whether or not the no-confidence motion filed by Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo should take priority in the National Assembly, Guyana’s longest serving Clerk, Frank Narain has unequivocally stated that the matter must be given priority.

The former parliamentary official who is now retired, in an exclusive interview with Guyana Times on Thursday said he agrees with the current Clerk, Sherlock Isaacs, when he said Government has to decide when the motion should be heard since Government has the majority seats in the house but noted that it must be given the highest priority in the National Assembly.
Narain, who served briefly as Deputy Clerk after Guyana gained independence in 1966, and as Clerk from 1966 until 2002, concurred with his successor that motions are put on the Order Paper whenever the Government desires, noting that Government has to decide on the business for the Order Paper. The former official explained that this practice exists since Governments usually have a majority in the House, which allows the ruling Administration to fix the timings for sittings for the National Assembly. He outlined that this was not the case under the presidency of Donald Ramotar.
“When you look at the business of the Order Paper, before Budget Day, you only have tomorrow (Friday) and the Government didn’t fix a hearing and maybe they don’t want to have a sitting,” the retired Clerk reasoned.
He told Guyana Times that in his time in office, the Government always had a big majority, noting that the Speaker of the National Assembly had always come from the Government’s side back then.
His comments come just one day after Foreign Affairs Minister and 2nd Vice President Carl Greenidge expressed full confidence that the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition will be able to defeat the Opposition Leader’s motion. Additionally, Greenidge indicated that the motion has “no chance” of being heard before the presentation of the 2019 Budget.

Govt afraid
Government, Anil Nandlall, on Thursday told Guyana Times that maybe, the Vice President is afraid to have the no-confidence motion debated before Monday’s presentation to the National Assembly.
“It is quite ironic that Mr Greenidge is emphatically confident that the No-Confidence Motion will fail but at the same time, appears mortally afraid it debated early and instead, is advocating for its delay. One would expect that with such exuding confidence, Mr Greenidge would be calling for an early debate of the Motion,” Nandlall told this newspaper.
According to him, a fundamental pillar of the West Minster Model Constitution is that the Government of the day must enjoy the confidence of the majority of the elected members in the nation’s Parliament. He said that it is for this singular reason that the Cabinet is collectively responsible to the Parliament.
“Once the confidence of the Government is being challenged in the Parliament by a confidence motion, that motion is required to be accorded the highest priority in the Parliament’s business,” Nandlall outlined.
He also pointed to Article 106 (6) of Guyana’s Constitution which “expressly provides that where a no-confidence motion succeeds against a Government, that Government must call elections within 90 days.” Nandlall is of the view that the “only way” to avoid a no-confidence motion is to prorogue the Parliament as the PPP/C Government had done in 2014.
“It cannot be ignored or tossed aside in favour of other Government business in the National Assembly. Certainly, it is required to be debated before a national budget is presented. The rationale is a pragmatic one: that if the No-Confidence Motion is dealt with after the budget, then the Government that presented the budget may not be in office to implement that budget,” the former Attorney General opined.
There had been some degree of assumption that one or two members from Government could deflect whenever the matter comes up and voting is required but Government has brushed aside such claims.
Clerk Isaacs released a letter on Wednesday evening outlining that Government has the power to determine when the No-Confidence Motion will be heard rather than the Speaker of the National Assembly.
It was after the 2018 Local Government Elections (LGE) results when the PPP/C garnered the majority of the victories that Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo filed the confidence motion. It was contended that the elections served as a referendum on the performance of the current Administration, especially at the Central Government level.
Among a host of concerns, the PPP cited heightened taxes, the loss of thousands of jobs in the sugar industry, sole sourcing of drug purchases and procurement breaches relating to the awarding of Government contracts as reasons for having lost confidence in the APNU/AFC. Moreover, Opposition Chief Whip Gail Teixeira maintained that hearing the no-confidence motion before the 2019 Budget would be ethical thing to do.