Opposition moving to gag Rohee in National Assembly

The AFC will be tabling a motion to prevent Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee from addressing the National Assembly, party leader Khemraj Ramjattan announced yesterday, as the opposition attempts to give effect to a no-confidence motion passed against the minister.

Ramjattan said that the motion has already been crafted and has been approved by main opposition APNU. “So there is going to be some action again [next Thursday],” he said, referring to the date when the next sitting of the National Assembly is scheduled.

The last parliamentary sitting was prematurely adjourned by the Speaker Raphael Trotman, after opposition members chanted loudly toprevent Rohee’s second reading of the Firearms Amendment Bill 2012.

At an AFC press conference yesterday, Ramjattan said that it ought to be understood that the opposition was not seeking to have Rohee removed from the National Assembly but rather to bar him from speaking during sessions in his capacity as Home Affairs Minister.

He said that Rohee is a duly-elected assemblyman and therefore cannot be prevented from being in the National Assembly. He, however, added that the convention of ministerial responsibility demands his resignation or his dismissal by the president. Ramjattan said that since Rohee is not going to be resigning and since the president is not going to dismiss him, the opposition will take the necessary action. “Our whole contention here is that since he has a no-confidence motion against him as minister, he ought not to have been allowed to speak in the National Assembly,” he explained.

The combined opposition, APNU and AFC, had used their one-seat majority to have the no-confidence motion passed in July, and it has been trying to give effect to it.

Ramjattan told reporters that Trotman had indicated that Rohee cannot speak in Parliament if a substantive motion is passed directed to that objective. “To that extent, the AFC, in its quest to ensure that the no-confidence motion is given meaning, will support a motion to that effect that Rohee be disallowed… from speaking on any matters as Minister of Home Affairs,” he said.

“…Because of the convention—which we want to instil in our parliamentary culture—that is across the Commonwealth and even in America and even in countries in eastern Europe, that once there is a no-confidence motion they have to go. Our fight is not against Rohee per se as a minister but it is getting down to a larger fight, the principle,” he emphasised.

Ramjattan also said that in the absence of action, it would mean that the opposition motions would have no effect. “…And that is something that we in AFC, as part of a majority opposition, cannot stand. We feel that we have to start cultivating this culture in parliament that the National Assembly has certain powers, has certain privileges, and has certain immunities and we intend to ensure that they are exercised in this parliament,” he said.

Meanwhile, AFC MP Cathy Hughes said “it is worrying” that the core issue of competence was starting to be ignored.

“I think it is best explained in the question, when is enough, enough?” she said, while saying the evidence is clear from the number of killings by police from 2000 to present, including the high-profile killings of  teenager Yohance Douglas and more recently Dameon Belgrave.

“How much longer are we to accept that clearly Rohee, despite whatever he may think are his best intentions, despite the fact that the government may think that he is the best minister that they have, at the end of the day it is not acceptable and do we as a nation continue to have individuals that abuse their position?” she said, adding that “it is quite worrying when we get distracted with all the semantics of a motion.”