Grandstanding

The puerility of the opposition was on display for all to see last Thursday in Parliament. Carl ‘Barry’ Greenidge, fighting desperately to raise his profile for his upcoming battle for leadership of the PNC, brought a raft of motions. Now before motions can be placed on the Order Paper of Parliament, they have to be vetted by the Speaker and the clerk to ensure they are in order. They were allowed to pass. Unbiased Speaker? Ha!!

Government spokespersons immediately informed all and sundry that the motions were flawed – fatally so. Some of the motions sought information when the opposition already had the power to ask questions directly. But it was the motions that sought to alter existing legislation that raised the issue of opposition motive, not to mention competence, most starkly.

The latter could either be challenged in the courts – as APNU’s MP Desmond Trotman had done with the Pensions and Benefits of the former President Jagdeo – or new legislation could be introduced. For what it is worth it, on that specific challenge, even parliament cannot retroactively alter the benefits of President Jagdeo – they can only do so for future presidents. And on that bit of vindictiveness towards Jagdeo, who had bested them so many times, that they just had to ‘try a ting’, the government pointed out that all the ‘big time’ lawyers like Ramjattan were ignoring the rule that they could not comment on the substance of a case that was sub judice!

But the wankers in the opposition went ahead. The first motion that came up was the one where the opposition was grandstanding to imply that the Judiciary was being bought out and controlled by the Executive! The funding for the judiciary, they screamed “must come directly from the Consolidated Fund”! Greenidge is obviously confused with his old PNC days when he and the rest of the dictatorship flew their party flag over the Appellate Court.

Anyhow Speaker Trotman, who had been educated by the government on the matter, immediately ruled that even though the motion would be carried, it would have no effect. As the government had argued, amendments to an Act must be done through legislation and not a motion! So after all the hot air and verbal diarrhoea they passed, all the opposition did was to have at best, a ‘bowel’ motion! And it must be quite debilitating because they declared a recess till the end of the month!

Partisan press

The opposition is very vociferous in claiming that the state media is not sufficiently critical of the state. Well what about the opposition media and their criticism of the opposition? Why haven’t they even published the shocking expose by the AFC councillor of the alleged corruption of the AFC MP Ramayya and the cover up by Ramjattan? What a bunch of wankers!!