No confidence motion set for debate next Friday

Dec 14, 2018 News

When most Guyanese will be focused on preparations for Christmas, Members of Parliament will face off in one last political contest before the Christian holiday – a no confidence motion against the Coalition Government.
The Government clings to a one-seat majority, controlling 33 seats in the 65-member House, and has fixed next Friday, December 21, to debate the motion brought by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
If the motion is to be successful, the PPP will need two members on the Government side to be absent or abstain from voting, or attract a ‘yes’ vote from the Government benches while maintaining their full 32 votes.
Leader of Government business, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, said that even the fact that the Opposition is holding on to the possibility of having a Government Member abstain from voting is absurd.
He said that in such an eventuality, the vote would be tied and the motion would be defeated. According to Nagamootoo, the motion has no reasonable prospect for success in the House.

MPs will debate the no confidence motion on December 21.

Nagamootoo had said that the Opposition, however, feels, “wrongly”, that the recently concluded Local Government Elections (LGE) has passed judgment on the government. He said that it is as if the Opposition is using the result of the LGE as a referendum.
Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, in whose name the Motion stands, had said that in democracies around the world, no-confidence motions take precedence over any other business of the House.
However, Government determined that the motion would be heard following the passage of the 2019 budget estimates. That process wraps up today.
Jagdeo has stated that the motion is a win-win for the people of Guyana, noting that the Opposition aims to protect Guyanese from Government excess perpetuated by the coalition Government in the past three years.
The Opposition leader pointed to growing debt, taxation and wanton overspending .
In 2014, the PPP led by former president Donald Ramotar prorogued the 10th Parliament to avoid a no confidence motion brought by the Alliance For Change (AFC). Elections were called one year later and the PPP lost after 23 years in office.

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