Opposition Chief Whip Amna Ally yesterday said that since the Parliamen-tary Management Commit-tee meeting last Wednesday she has proposed multiple dates to government Chief Whip Gail Teixeira for Parliament to be reconvened but to no avail.
Ally said “we have been proposing dates, the 30th of October and I have asked for the week after … and I am yet to get a response.” Despite numerous attempts by Stabroek News, Teixeira could not be contacted for comment yesterday.
The opposition chief whip stated that she was ready to discuss the next sitting of the National Assembly, “we have been talking all this time, but that is something she (Teixeira) will have to answer,” Ally said in reference to why the government has not seen it fit to respond to the dates proposed.
“Even though I am proposing these dates it is the government who has got to say that `yes they will call the sitting’”, Ally, MP for A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) said.
Stabroek News questioned Ally on APNU’s position to not press for the Speaker of the House, Raphael Trotman to intervene in the process. She noted that any comment on the interpretation of the Standing Orders fell to the Clerk of the National Assembly, Sherlock Isaacs.
Previously Isaacs had written to APNU stating that setting a date for the sitting of the House cannot be forced by lobbying. He had also told Stabroek News prior to that disclosure by APNU that the Standing Orders support that only the government is capable of setting a date for the reconvening of the National Assembly.
Standing Order 8 (2) states that “If, during an adjournment of the Assembly, it is represented to the Speaker by the Government, or the Speaker is of the opinion, that the public interest requires that the Assembly should meet on a day earlier than that to which it stands adjourned, the Speaker may give notice accordingly and the Assembly shall meet at the time stated in such notice.”
Isaacs told Stabroek News on Wednesday that it was not possible in his view for the Speaker to set a date and that the Speaker only had the authority to adjust a date that had already been set should the public interest arise. When it went into recess, the Assembly was adjourned without a date for its reconvening fixed.
In a letter in today’s Stabroek News, Isaacs reiterates that two precedents have backed this up.
Former Speaker of the House Ralph Ramkarran is of a different view. He stated in the last Sunday Stabroek that the National Assembly is adjourned to the “next sitting day” when no date is named upon its adjournment and also considering the fact that there is no procedure to reconvene the assembly outlined in the Standing Orders.
He wrote that “…the Speaker was obliged to have convened the National Assembly on October 11 [the day after the parliamentary recess ended], pursuant to the authority of S.O. 8(1),” continuing “Having failed to do so, he should lose no further time and should convene the National Assembly at the earliest possible opportunity… Every day that goes by without a sitting of the National Assembly constitutes a violation of the Standing Orders. This is a matter, simple as it might appear, that is fundamental to our parliamentary democracy. There should be no dispute about something as basic as how and when the National Assembly can and should meet. This needs to be resolved now.”
Following the conclusion of the parliamentary recess which ended on October 10, the Donald Ramotar-led government has been accused of deliberately stalling the convening of parliament to stave off the Alliance For Change’s no-confidence motion from being put to a vote.
The AFC has been pressing for the sitting to be convened immediately and that the no-confidence motion be one of the first issues dealt with.
The combined opposition’s one-seat majority is enough to see the passage of the motion which would trigger new elections within three months.
