House Speaker stonewalls PPP’s question on pardoned prisoners

Speaker of the National Assembly, Dr Barton Scotland has again come under fire by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/Civic), for his seemingly ‘beck-and-call’ posture to the David Granger-led A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Administration.

The criticism now facing the House Speaker stemmed from his refusal to allow the parliamentary Opposition the opportunity to seek answers on the list of prisoners so far pardoned and those set to be pardoned by President David Granger.

The Party has again called on the coalition Government to be accountable to the Guyanese populace and release the names of prisoners who were pardoned.

The call was made again by Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo on Wednesday, who said Government was mandated to let the country know the names of persons being released from prison.

A similar call was made by former Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, but his was for the names of those women who the President said would soon be released from prison.

Jagdeo, addressing a news conference on Wednesday, said his Party, through the National Assembly, has been trying to get the list of names for those persons who were released by President Granger last year. This has not been forthcoming.

Some 71 persons, male and female, are said to have been released by the President, since he took office.

Jagdeo said while the Head of State has the power to make such decisions, it is still the right of the public to be in the know.

“Not that we are questioning his authority to pardon, but the country has a right to know,” Jagdeo stated.

He said the matter was being treated like a “state secret”, defying the Freedom of Information Act.

“First of all, we raised this question, hoping that public pressure would cause the President [to] … direct his staff to do so. We tried almost eight months raising questions at press conferences; (however), it failed”.

He said the Party then sought to use the Freedom of Information Act for the Commissioner of Information to release this data. However, this was unsuccessful, and a recent attempt to get the information from the Ministry of the Presidency was also futile.

“We recently placed a question in Parliament, requesting this information. Now Parliament is supposed to be the supreme body for transparency. Questions asked of Ministers and the President should be answered there. Just received a notice from the Speaker that he will not allow our question,” Jagdeo told the news conference.

The Opposition Leader said the Speaker has demonstrated a pattern of behaviour, whereby he seemed to think that he had to take his lead from every act of the President, and not be accountable to the stewardship of the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, Nandlall stated that “something must be fundamentally wrong in a democracy when a non- elected member of the House seeks to prohibit an elected member of the House from asking questions that are indisputably of public importance and for which the public crave answers”.

He recalled that he submitted to the National Assembly certain questions directed to Public Security the Minister Khemraj Ramjattan in relation to convicted criminals pardoned by President David Granger.

He said on Wednesday, he received an “astonishing response” from the Clerk of the National Assembly informing that the Speaker had disallowed his questions on the ground that those questions were “an abuse of the right of questioning”!

“The transgression is compounded by the fact that the questions have been deemed “an abuse” without any reason provided for such a conclusion. Of course, this is not the end of the matter. You will hear more from me as I continue the battle against a creeping dictatorship,” Nandlall said.

President Granger on Saturday evening had told Guyana Times that he intended to release some more prisoners, particularly women who were mothers and who had committed minor offences.