Bull in a China shop

In our system of governance, the office of Speaker of the House of Assembly calls for the utmost impartiality and implies that the holder of the office is capable of relinquishing his political affiliation to any party.
The Speaker has to resolve the dilemma of his political affiliation and the simultaneous need to show neutrality in carrying out his functions. He is first and foremost supposed to act as an arbitrator who never appears as the sectarian representative of a party. This explains the moral authority attached to his decisions. Because of the foregoing, taking up the functions of Speaker is rarely a task for novices in political life. On the contrary, it usually requires a person of advanced years or at least someone with long experience.
During the last year, it is obvious that in our Parliament, the Speaker has lost all claims to impartiality. The question is whether there is any point in the executive going forward with trying to execute its programme through a legislature not only controlled by an opposition, but under a Speaker who is determined, as he openly declared, “to stamp his authority over Parliament.” We would note that in Guyana, “Parliament” includes the President of the Republic. The president is already on record declaring that he has lost confidence in the Speaker.
When the present Speaker was elected in contravention of the tradition that the previous Speaker be returned to office unopposed if he so desired, this was a precursor of what has followed. It appears that too many debts had to be repaid. While there were several other acts of partiality to the opposition that sponsored him, the present imbroglio in Parliament stems directly from the motion of ‘no confidence’, he allowed to be moved against the Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee and through which the opposition sought to gag the minister.
After seeking his own legal advice on the matter, the Speaker had ruled: “I can find no provision within the Standing Orders of the National Assembly, the Constitution and the laws of Guyana which restrains an elected member from fulfilling his functions as a minister of home affairs of Guyana in the National Assembly. As uncomfortable and as unpleasant as it is for me to make a ruling in this instance, I must stand by the side of the rule of law and applying my own deliberate judgment and adopting the opinion of counsel, I find in the absence of a resolution in this august Assembly which specifically sanctions the minister and direct that he be restrained from speaking in any or more capacities, I am by law, duty bound to rule that he must be allowed to speak.”
He then allowed the opposition to prevent the minister from speaking on the floor of the house by creating such a din that he could not be heard. Rather than follow the clear instruction under such circumstances and expel the rambunctious opposition, he adjourned the House.
His confession that his ruling was “uncomfortable and unpleasant” to him was a signal of the partiality in which he gave clear instructions to the opposition on ‘other ways to skin the cat’. He later enforced the opposition’s gag order by committing the matter to the Privileges Committee, even though the minister had violated not a single privilege.
The Speaker’s partisanship could also be seen in his response to the attorney general’s comment that his ruling was “unconstitutional”. Asserting that the AG had a penchant for “bland statements”, he sneered, “We practice law together, I know his style, he likes flair and language but not much of it has substance. There’s a lot of froth at the top like a beer but I need to deal with the substance.” The final straw has been the Speaker’s refusal to acknowledge the courts as the arbiter of the Constitution.