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Our Parliament, our Speaker 

Mar 14, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyana’s Parliament has grown from strength to strength in a downward direction. Thanks to the Speaker of the House, Mr. Manzoor Nadir today’s house of the people, their parliament of deliberations and decisions, has deteriorated into a dump.

Guyana’s Parliament amounts to nothing more than a site of ill-repute, like some bawdy house that pretends to be a place of the pure, noble, patriotic. The Speaker has stood at the gates, and barred any such things from passing under his watch.

Guyana’s Parliament is now so bad that it stands for little that is good. Many Guyanese Members of Parliament on the PPP/C Government’s side of the aisle nowadays function as compelling lobbyists for ExxonMobil’s oil interests. They attempt to be sophisticated and wise, but they betray their naked lack of integrity, the deep dishonour of their presences in parliament. These parliamentarians represent not the interests of the people, not the visions of Guyanese, but their own cheap, sleazy, ambitions. It is widely suspected that these twisted ambitions, these soiled hands, where Guyana’s oil wealth is at stake, are not limited to only PPPC parliamentarians, but extend also to some in the APNU+AFC Coalition Opposition side of the benches.

They think that their fancy language is not understood by ordinary citizens, but they fool themselves. Many Guyanese have already come to their own conclusions regarding who is for them, and who is against what is best for them. Both the PPP/C Government and the Coalition Opposition APNU+AFC do not come out of this looking rosy, or smelling clean. Many representatives from the two sides are not convincing, give off a smell that they have sold, that they prefer to be on the side and good graces of the oil companies, the robber barons given free rein to run amok in our oilfields and in our governance of ourselves.

If there is any Guyanese who thinks that many of our parliamentarians are the worst of disappointments, then they are still to recognise the biggest disappointment of all. It is the Honourable Speaker of Guyana’s Parliament. The record is there, as compiled in his time, under his hand. His decisions have blocked most things that have to do with oil. The Speaker hears a word beginning with an ‘O’ and he shivers, runs to his counsel for guidance on what he should do, what he could take a chance on, should let pass into the realm of open debate.

What the Speaker has settled for, after trying futilely to give the impression that he has carefully weighed the pros and cons of oil issues tabled before him, is to virtually block anything and everything that has oil or gas as its name from moving past his commanding gavel. Motions cannot see the light of day, not even for information purposes. Questions are snuffed out before they can be articulated in fullest form. In the rare instances when debate is allowed, the Speaker is clever enough to limit the time, so as to limit any possible exposure of the PPPC Government, and minimise any embarrassment to ExxonMobil and its partners.

When all of this is taken under consideration, it is now beyond doubt that what Guyanese have is a puppet Parliament, and a court of deliberation over oil that even a kangaroo would disown. The Speaker has done his work in a manner more distressing than any other Speaker in the history of Guyana’s Parliament, and there have been some forgettable ones, known for their unmoving, noxious partisanship. On the nation’s biggest stage, Guyanese are not permitted to speak a frank word, perhaps not one honest one, about this great oil wealth that is on the lips of the world. The world is gushing about Guyana’s oil, and Guyanese cannot speak to it. The Speaker is owed a medal for his efforts.

Considering the state of the nation’s Parliament where nothing on oil is allowed to breathe, isn’t time that it is closed down?  Considering, the ways of the Speaker of the House, isn’t time that he presides over one that is empty of human presences? The interests of Guyanese may still have to distill in the open air, the remaining free spaces of Guyana.

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