The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A TOP Bahamian historian says the conduct of House Speaker Halson Moultrie is “unprecedented” in the history of the Bahamian Parliament.

House Speakers usually strive for neutrality, hoping to remain above the fray while avoiding commentary on public issues.

Speaker Moultrie, however, has taken another path during his tenure. He has often lamented the power the executive branch of government has over the legislative branch and has not shied away from offering critical commentary of the governing party while planning to run as an independent candidate in the next general election.

He recently told reporters the Minnis administration’s latest budget revenue projections are an “unrealistic political mirage” and “an illusion”.

Dr Christopher Curry, a professor of history at University of The Bahamas, said such comments are unprecedented from a Speaker of the House, even if Speaker Moultrie is not the first independent Speaker.

“Alvin Braynen, the former UBP member who was disgruntled with that party, was independent,” Dr Curry said yesterday. “In order to form the government in 1967, Pindling made an agreement or alliance with Braynen and the Labour Party candidate Randol Fawkes; that’s how he was elected. But Braynen never lost his neutrality. So Moultrie as an independent Speaker is not unprecedented though it is somewhat unusual.

“His conduct, certainly I think it’s unprecedented. When Woodes Rodgers was governor, he and the Speaker at the time, John Colebrooke, were at odds with each other. There was lots of acrimony. A similar thing is happening here where the executive is definitely at odds with the Speaker. But the Speaker, because of the position he holds, everything runs through him and he has used it as an opportunity to espouse his own ideas about the budget and other things. He has strong opinions on a number of matters and is using his position as a licence to engage in his own kinds of politics which is interesting.”

Speaker Moultrie resigned from the FNM in February. He has repeatedly advocated for the executive to take up his draft bill that would create a Parliamentary Service Commission. The commission would control the budget and administration of the Senate and the House of Assembly.

In April, he abruptly adjourned parliamentary proceedings after accusing the executive of failing to act on his concerns about a COVID-19 exposure in the lower chamber.

Last month, he pointedly invited Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis to publicly address his claims about the executive branch’s “disrespectful” treatment of Parliament, prompting the abrupt suspension of proceedings.

Members of the governing Free National Movement Party are particularly weary of his behaviour, but they, in private, decry that he has all the power.

Dr Curry said as unusual as his conduct is, Speaker Moultrie is not breaking the rules of the Westminster system of government.

“He’s using a loophole here because there isn’t a rule about the place of the Speaker,” he said.

“So it’s not that he’s a rule breaker. He’s using the voice of the Speaker I think to insert his own views in a way that gives him a platform that other people don’t even have because he gets to speak more frequently, more often than other people. Reece Chipman, for instance, is an independent member of Parliament, but he doesn’t have the power to speak that the Speaker does.

“Some see what he is doing as dangerous. They see him as having his own soapbox, his own platform to preach from, unencumbered from anything that would hold him accountable. “It’s bending the rules or moving it in an interesting direction. The executive has also bent the rules in that respect, going back to 1973 by appointing cabinets within the legislature that are increasingly large and enforcing the rule of the whip.

“Here we have a prime minister now since 2017, he has an enlarged Cabinet. Such a large Cabinet of loyalists won’t speak out against you and you also have a smaller backbench. There is no rule that says how many people (maximum) you could have in a Cabinet, but early on in this period the Cabinets were much smaller. Both parties in the last 20 years have had larger Cabinets than they needed to have.”