(Videos) Partial gag on Rohee

-as motion referred to Privileges Committee

Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman last evening placed a partial gag on Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee, pending the findings of the Privileges Committee on a motion brought by Opposition Leader David Granger to censor the minister.

Trotman’s ruling came after hours of heated arguments between the government and the opposition on whether Granger’s motion to prevent Rohee from addressing the National Assembly in his capacity as minister could be debated.

I want to reply: Prime Minister Sam Hinds waiting to respond to the ruling of Speaker Raphael Trotman yesterday in Parliament. Public Works Minister Robeson Benn had risen at the same time. (Arian Browne photo)

The Speaker, who said he expected his decision would not sit well with either side and offered to resign if any party lost confidence in him, found that while Granger’s motion was properly taken before the National Assembly, the matters which it raised are ones that should be referred to the Committee of Privileges for its consideration and report.

“…Once this matter resides with the Committee of Privileges it is a matter that concerns this entire House. All of us have a duty to ensure that we take the right and proper step. I recognize the right of Mr Rohee to address the House but any bill that comes or initiated by him I would not recognize,” Trotman later explained. By that time, he deferred the second reading of the Firearms (Amendment) Bill, which is in Rohee’s name.

Trotman was forced to prematurely adjourn the previous sitting after the opposition members refused to allow Rohee to speak by chanting “Rohee must go.” He said he expects that the Committee of Privileges, which he chairs, would meet long before Christmas and he asked that both sides work with him.

Prime Minister Sam Hinds said while the government respected the ruling, its concern was that it “has put the motion into effect.”

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Hinds added, “We certainly respect your purpose and your intent but we are concerned that the motion has been already put into effect and… we still do think that whether it would have been today or when it came after the Committee of Privileges would have looked to it, we think that we certainly have a case that we wanted to put to the electorate of our country, put to the people of our country about this motion.”

Granger, meanwhile, told Trotman that his expectation that his ruling would be controversial had been fulfilled. He said he took the motion before the House in good faith and though deemed admissible, the ruling was made before he was allowed to speak.

When he enquired about the status of his motion, Trotman said it was valid and pending but referred to the Committee of Privileges and on a report from that committee, it could be debated. “So the motion is not dead, it is alive, it is extant and the debate is awaiting the report of the Committee of Privileges. I just ruled on the point of order that it was an inadmissible motion,” he added.

APNU and AFC, using their one-seat majority, had earlier outvoted the government to force the debate of Granger’s motion.

APNU MP Deborah Backer arguing yesterday for the opposition motion on Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee to be heard.

However, just as Granger was about to speak on the motion, Attorney General Anil Nandlall rose on a point of order, contending that the motion was inadmissible since, among other things, the issue was sub judice, in light of the action he had filed in the High Court challenging the no-confidence motion passed against Rohee in July. He also contended that Granger’s motion sought to deny the minister his constitutional right of freedom of expression.

APNU MP Basil Williams, who was the member that rose on a point of order just as Rohee got up for the second reading of the Firearms Amendment Bill, thereby triggering the hours of debate on the motion, said APNU accepted the ruling but questioned whether while the matter is with the Committee of Privileges Rohee could speak in relation to any matter with respect to the functions of his ministry. It was at this point that Trotman clarified that while he would recognize Rohee’s right to address the Assembly as an elected member, he could not recognize any proposed legislation in his name.

After what he referred to as a “long and wholesome debate” which he enjoyed thoroughly, Trotman did say he believed that a member who comes up for sanction in the House has a right to be heard and he dismissed the arguments by opposition members that Rohee was heard during his presentation before they voted on the no-confidence motion against him.

AFC MP Moses Nagamootoo said his party accepted the ruling, prompting many on the government side to say, “You don’t have a choice.” But Nagamootoo added that his party was unhappy that the House was caught up in a game of “Rohee roulette,” where one member “with a single bullet in the chamber” could “shatter our parliamentary democracy.”

“…We do not feel that this is an issue on which this parliament should die… We have a responsibility to the Guyanese people and we have a duty to perform on their behalf and so we want to ask that we veer off from the precipice of destruction and gridlock…,” the AFC member said.

‘Point of order’

Trotman said Granger’s motion for the first time in many decades brought to the fore the powers and privileges of the House, since what happens to one member affects the entire Assembly.

The motion, which was moved by Granger with the AFC’s support, in its resolve clause called for Rohee to be “prevented from speaking in the National Assembly so long as he is purporting to carry out the functions of Minister of Home Affairs as published in the Official Gazette,” in light of the no-confidence motion passed against him by the National Assembly.

When Williams stood on a point of order, under Standing Order 40 (a), in order to move the Assembly to debate the motion, the government members strongly objected.

Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy challenging AFC MP Khemraj Ramjattan over a remark he made.

The government’s Chief Whip Gail Teixeira submitted that Williams’ “point of order is out of order.” She said it was “highly irregular” that in the midst of the item that Rohee was about to proceed with, the Firearms Bill, that there was a subterfuge to prevent government business and to push aside a government bill that was on the order paper.

“The government’s business, sir, is ahead and this is highly irregular. This is highly irregular… and I am sure in your wisdom you would not allow that. This will set a precedent that is totally unacceptable and would not be held up in any parliament in the world,” she argued.

 

Hinds later described that move by the opposition as a “grotesque abuse.”

In response to Nandlall’s argument that the issue was sub judice, Trotman explained that when the Standing Order said that a matter that is sub judice shall not be enquired into by the House it could not have meant that members had their mouths gagged and hands tied. Instead, he said each case should be decided upon on its own peculiar set of facts and circumstances. He added that from his readings of cases in other countries, it must be proven that the debates in the House would prejudice the outcome of the matter in court. “If it goes on to try to make a ruling that the court is being asked to make at the same time, I think that would be wrong. The court is asked to set aside a no-confidence motion by this House passed in July, there is no ancillary orders being sought—not that I think they can be granted— restraining us from doing anything else,”  he said.

And while Nandlall also argued that the motion seeks to infringe Rohee’s right to freedom of expression, Trotman pointed out that Rohee is not an ordinary member but a minister and the House has its own procedures and regulations and the authority to regulate the conduct of its members.

Before the vote on proceeding with the motion—which saw Rohee saying yes instead of no at one point (which he quickly corrected) much to the amusement of opposition members—Trotman said that he had met with both sides and had suggested that the sanctioning of an MP be taken to the Committee of Privileges as a way forward to allow the business of the House to continue. However, both sides rejected the suggestion.

Teixeira later said that she did not understand the Speaker to be suggesting a hypothetical scenario be taken to the committee but rather that the Rohee issue be taken and this is what she represented to her side and that is what they refused.

Knock off each  one of you

Meanwhile, a grave and “perturbed” Minister of Transport Robeson Benn, rose to say that the 10th Parliament was “somehow ruined” after AFC MP Khemraj Ramjattan said that “we will knock off each one of you, one by one….”

Ramjattan, when questioned by Trotman about this statement during much heckling by both sides, said he did not make it “while speaking on my feet, no.”

“Mr Ramjattan… let me say this to all members, we are not running some kind of pappyshow… we are not in the business of targeting ministers because we think we have the power to target them… and so this is a matter that I have heard expressed. I have told the members of the opposition about it and I have been told they are acting responsibly and that there is no intention despite what is said on NCN sometimes or on Nation Watch or Channel Six at others times. We have to behave as responsible legislators in this House,” an obviously concerned Trotman said.

To this, Ramjattan asked the Speaker if “you hear what they were telling us?” Trotman did not entertain the question.

Ramjattan had earlier riled up many of his former colleagues on the government side when during his arguments he suggested that the opposition could bring motions against all of the ministers, which angered many of them and especially Minister of Agriculture Dr Leslie Ramsammy, who held up a book in his hand challenging him to “bring it nuh.”

PPP/C MP Bibi Shadick challenged Ramjattan to “bring it nuh and see if we don’t have snap elections tonight.”

After Trotman’s ruling, the government decided to suspend all of its business and the House stands adjourned until Monday, December 17.