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Govt ignoring the concerns of Parliamentary majority – Harmon
“By and large in a regularly democratic society when the legislative branch passes a motion or some law, the Executive branch sees it as an obligation and responsibility to ensure that action is taken on those things.”
APNU’s Executive Joseph Harmon
This is the assertion of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU)’s Executive, Joseph Harmon.
He was commenting on the view that the government was not paying heed to what the opposition, which has the Majority in the Legislature, is advancing.
According to Harmon, “The combined opposition has a majority in the National Assembly and you have an Executive that has taken no steps whatsoever to try to include some part of that legislative branch to ensure that you have a broad-based government. To that extent you will always have gridlock.”
He said that APNU has looked at various models where you have minority government “but the minority government in those countries we have looked at make concessions and arrangements in the legislature so that the legislative programmes can go on.
“You always have compromises that are made in the legislature so even if you had a minority government the action of the legislature continues because you have compromises made on issues that are of consequence to the nation.
“We have a situation where you have a minority government and then they refuse to make compromises in the legislature where these things are concerned, even though they don’t have control there. It’s a hard nose type of politics that is doing the country no good and I think the earlier or sooner this administration recognizes that, it will be better for the country altogether,” said Harmon.
According to Harmon, the government feels that the current political configuration is unworkable “and they are doing as much as they can to make the Legislature dysfunctional and irrelevant so you have a minority rule which I term to be the onset of a dictatorship.”
“We are seeing it in the way they deal with the award of contracts; we are seeing it in the way they respect constitutional provisions, etc. These are all signs of a rising dictatorship in this country.”
He outlined that the days of one party rule in the political life of this country are gone and the Peoples Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) are not recognizing that. “You will never have a situation here again where one party thinks they can rule this country. We have gone into a new era, a new thinking; we have a population of people who are more sensitized to the issues and you can’t rule people the way they use to rule them long ago.
“You can’t fool people anymore…you can’t fool them with a lack of information; you need to have fresh ideas on how you move this country forward.”
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