FINDING A SPEAKER

Jan 08, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The sincerity of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) towards power sharing has been put on test. And the results have not been at all consistent with what APNU has been preaching.
APNU says that it is committed to power sharing. Yet when it comes to the question of the Speaker of the National Assembly its positions are inconsistent with a movement which is interested in national unity.
On the one hand, it refuses to accede to the request of the Alliance for Change for APNU to have the position of Leader of the Opposition and the AFC, the Speaker.
The AFC says that Moses Nagamootoo is its candidate. APNU responds by claiming that it cannot support him because of his long association with the PPP. So if APNU is disqualifying someone from holding the position of Speaker because of his association with the PPP, how can they ever be taken seriously when they claim that they are interested in a government of national unity?
You don’t want someone as Speaker because of that person’s past affiliation with the PPP, but yet on the campaign trail, APNU was saying that it was willing to work with the PPP in a government of national unity.
If APNU was ever serious about power sharing and national unity, it would have long recognized that its holding out for the position of Speaker is inconsistent with its campaign rhetoric of wanting a government of national unity.
What APNU wants is power. It wants both the position of Leader of the Opposition and that of Speaker. It refuses to even involve the ruling party in its negotiations over the Speaker, even though the PPP has offered to nominate the former Speaker, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran. By tradition and convention, when a Speaker agrees to serve again he is usually not opposed.
But we are not in the United Kingdom or Australia where such conventions and traditions mean something. We are in Guyana, and we have a dynamic situation, one in which the opposition, long felt to be locked out of executive power, now have a chance of flexing their political muscles. And what better way to begin to do so by ensuring that it gobbles up the position of Speaker.
But why is the post of Speaker so important that both APNU and the AFC would not engage the PPP/C?
The position of Speaker of the National Assembly is of little significance in tilting parliamentary debates. The Speaker has no voting powers in the National Assembly.
While the opposition may be concerned that the Speaker may rule on matters in a way that could deny it having certain matters debated, it should by now recognize that there is a body of parliamentary precedents to guide such decisions and it is now hardly a case of a Speaker being able to exercise his or her own personal discretion without regard to these precedents.
The significance of the Speaker of course comes into play if there is a motion of no confidence in the government. But does APNU or the AFC really feel that given all the circumstances involved that this is a major factor?
The PPP would love nothing more than to have a no confidence motion so that it can go back to the electorate and get that additional 1.5% of the votes cast to get a majority in the National Assembly. The PPP may have floundered on November 28, but you can get your bottom dollar that is not going to happen again.
Both APNU and the AFC need one another to have their respective candidates selected. To achieve the 33 votes necessary for election, both APNU and the AFC would need to support one candidate.  The PPP obviously has been left out in the cold and is going to be a spectator in the process of electing a Speaker.
At this stage there is a deadlock between the AFC and APNU. But this is what negotiations are about. These things take time. And this is why so many are uncomfortable with the idea of executive power sharing because if a simple issue as agreeing on the choice of Speaker of the National Assembly is going to take so long and be so contentious, imagine the confusion and gridlock within a government of national unity.
A government of national unity requires a common or at least a dominant ideological commitment. Without this, a government of national unity is a recipe for chaos.
APNU of course has shot itself in the foot. It first said that it was proposing Deborah Backer as Speaker. But then it later undermined Mrs. Backer’s candidacy by naming Mr. Cammie Ramsaroop another person as a possible choice.
Why would APNU do this? Mrs. Backer would make a good Speaker. She has the legal background as well as the parliamentary experience and is not someone that cannot get along well with the other side of the House. As a woman of course, she would create history if elected as the Speaker of the House.
Why with all of this was it necessary for APNU to throw Mr. Cammie Ramsaroop into the picture? Why would Backer be any more objectionable to the AFC than Mr. Ramsaroop?
The Speaker of the National Assembly has come to symbolize the existence of a system of parliamentary democracy and this is one of the important values of the position and for this alone it should be degraded by proposals such as a rotating Speaker. This can only undermine the image of such an important symbol of parliamentary democracy. The office of the Speaker of the National Assembly should not end up being a game of musical chairs amongst the opposition political parties. We should have one Speaker and one Speaker alone.
If the AFC and APNU cannot agree on a candidate from amongst those whose names are already in the hat, they should at least consider allowing the old Speaker to return, and if this is objectionable then find someone suitable from outside of the political camps.
There has been a lot of talk about the need for a non-political Guyana Elections Commission, meaning that the commissioners should be non-partisan.
Well how about non-partisan Speaker for the House? How about a consensus candidate from all the political parties?
One name has been thrown out so far, Justice Donald Mr. Trotman. He looks like someone who can find acceptance by all the parties. So how about giving him the position if there is no breakthrough soon?

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