Two weeks ago (“PPP/C has an historic opportunity …..:” SN 25/01/12) I promised to address what it is that politicians can mean when they claim that their policy or actions are based on ‘principle.’ This interest arose from what appeared to be an unusual amount of reliance on this concept in our recent political discourse.
For example, you will recall that in the recent debate about the allocation of the speakership of the National Assembly, the PPP/C claimed that it was basing its demand for it on the ‘principle’ that in hung Commonwealth parliaments the government side gets the speaker. Similarly, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan told us that the AFC proposed Mr. Moses Nagamootoo on ‘principle’, only for us to hear that Mr. Nagamootoo had been rejected by Mr. David Granger on ‘principle’ as “APNU set out the principles for selection to prevent the matter from degenerating into a popularity contest or being serialised as a soap opera in the press. We separated principles from personalities.”
However, as the negotiations proceeded, we were then told that the AFC had accepted the proposal to share the speakership in ‘principle’ and then somewhat later that the election of Mr. Raphael Trotman fulfilled the ‘principled’ position of the
