The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

In the dispute on the motion for closure of the budget debate Prime Minister Perry Christie is reported as saying:

“It has been done on many, many occasions before and yes, the argument has been put on fairness before, but the government, Mr Speaker, has to arrogate unto itself the responsibility to manage the affairs of the House.”

Mr Christie cannot be accused of not knowing the English language. In fact, he takes obvious pride in his command of the language. Neither can Mr Christie – a lawyer and a Member of Parliament for most of his life – claim ignorance of our Constitution and parliamentary practices and conventions. So we have to assume that he knew exactly what he was saying and that he said exactly what he intended to say.

The Oxford Dictionary defines arrogate as follows: “take or claim for oneself without justification”.

So Mr Christie made it crystal clear that he intended for his government to take over management of the affairs of the House of Assembly without justification, in contravention of the constitutional principles of separation of powers and in naked usurpation of the powers and responsibilities of the Speaker of the House.

Mr Christie’s colleagues feign annoyance because some people refer to him as delusional but that is a fair characterisation of his premiership based on many of his own statements. Mr Christie has also made statements bordering on arrogant, but this one is the height of arrogance. It is arrogant and in its intent it is unconstitutional and unlawful. It is an egregious error on the part of the Prime Minister.

Mr Christie is quite aware that our Constitution provides for the establishment of three separate branches of government: Parliament, the Executive and the Judicature – and in that order.

The Prime Minister and the Government have no right and no authority to take over management of Parliament. They have a right to manage the Government’s business in Parliament and they have designated persons for that purpose in both houses.

The responsibility for the management of the affairs of the House of Assembly lies in the hands of the Speaker. This PLP Government has done things to diminish the Office of Speaker – one of the highest in the land – including having nominated for election a person with no parliamentary experience whatsoever, albeit a fine gentleman.

This correspondent has criticised Speaker Kendal Major for allowing MPs to abuse the rule relating to points of order at every meeting of the House, something he continues to do. Furthermore, his ruling on the Public Accounts Committee, apparently on the advice of the Attorney General, has done great discredit to his record.

Yet, in the matter of closure of the budget debate, Dr. Major was clearly correct and quite in order when he refused to put the closure motion. There are good reasons for the closure motion such as when a member or members indulge in filibustering or deliberate obstruction of the business of the House.

Rule 33(3) of the House Rules of Procedure reads: “If it appears to the Speaker that such motion for closure of debate is an abuse of the rules of the House, or is an infringement of the rights of the minority, or that the matter under debate has not been fully aired, he shall not allow the motion to be put.”

Clearly, the motion for closure was meant to deny Dr Andre Rollins the right to make his contribution to the budget debate and for no other reason. That would have been an abuse and grossly unfair.

Clearly too, the matter at hand had not been fully aired because three senior members of the Cabinet had not spoken. One of them was, incredibly, the Minister of Finance who is expected to wrap up budget debates. It was obviously the intention of the other two – the Minister of National Security and the Minister of Works – to speak and it can be reasonably assumed that the public was quite interested in what they had to say.

The motion for closure under these circumstances was nothing but a cheap political trick, a crude attempt to abuse the rules and to bring Parliament into public contempt. The Speaker had no alternative but to rule as he did and that may go down in history as his shining moment.

FORMER MP

Nassau,

June 24, 2015.