KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – Opposition Leader Dr. Ralph Gonsalves says he disagrees “profoundly” with the decision of the Speaker, Ronnia Durham-Balcombe, regarding the “inadmissibility” of three questions to government ministers at Thursday’s sitting of the Parliament.
Gonsalves said the questions were directed at Prime Minister Dr. Godwin Friday, his National Security Minister St. Clair Leacock, and the Minister of Health and Wellness, Daniel Cummings.
In a January 25 letter sent to the Speaker, Gonsalves said the three questions were posed for oral answer and is requesting that she reconsider her original decision, which “I disagree profoundly with…”
“In the alternative, I suggest that you permit the questions to be listed on the Order Paper and, in the interest of parliamentary democracy and an alive constitutionalism, you invite the honourable gentlemen to whom the questions are posed to answer or decline to answer; there is ample sound precedent in this regard going back in excess of 30 years in our House of Assembly,” Gonsalves wrote.
Gonsalves said, among the questions, those relating to the employment status of the son of Prime Minister Friday, given that the “Prime Minister has publicly acknowledged that one of his sons has been, or is, his assistant or aide who receives no salary from the Government”.
Gonsalves, the only successful candidate of the Unity Labour Party (ULP) that lost the November 27 general elections last year after 25 years in office, wants to know “what are the specific roles and duties” of the prime minister’s son in the public administration or governance of our country.
Gonsalves, one of the longest-serving heads of government in the Caribbean, said the opposition also wants to know “by what authority” the prime minister’s son was appointed and engaged, and that his son has been attending private or formal meetings concerning the conduct of public affairs.
Gonsalves also wants to know whether the prime minister’s son has “been privy to official documents touching and concerning the public administration or governance of our country, and has he taken the requisite Oath of Secrecy,” and whether “any stipend, allowance or in-kind benefit” had been paid.
Gonsalves told the Speaker that, while in any event, the Standing Orders of the House of Assembly afford her “the discretion that each question be ‘entered in the Order Book with such alterations as the Speaker may direct,” I thus suggest that you reflect on this option.
“ If your directed alterations do not meet with my approval, I may choose, as the elected member for North Central Windward, to demur in posing the question(s) as altered,” Gonsavles said, acknowledging that “the chief characteristics of the Speaker, as Presiding Officer of the House, are authority and impartiality.”
He said formal rules and conventions fortify the authority in the Chair and that “confidence in the impartiality of the Speaker is an indispensable condition of the successful working of procedure, and many conventions exist which have as their object not only to ensure the impartiality of the Speaker but also to ensure that her impartiality is generally recognised”.
He said that one of the principal means of holding a government to account in a parliamentary democracy is “question time” exercised by the parliamentary opposition and that during the tenure of his administration, “ was fully recognised”.
Gonsalves said in a House of Assembly with a lopsided majority for the government “a Speaker who comes from an activist NDP (ruling New Democratic Party) stable ought to be alert to the real possibility that an overly-restrictive interpretation of “the general rules” would inevitably engender a not unreasonable impression, in the public sphere, whether correct or not, that the Speaker’s “impartiality” is at least suspect”.
Gonsalves wrote that whether or not the Speaker accedes to his requests, suggestions, and representations, “these matters will be ventilated fully in and out of the House of Assembly in one form or another.
“Finally, I ask you to consider this: What would the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Organization of American States (OAS), the Commonwealth, the United Nations, and most of all the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines think about any attempt to muzzle the lone opposition Representative in the Parliament of our country through your adverse rulings which I have respectfully addressed?”
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