ST. VINCENT-Opposition lawmaker predicts showdown with Speaker.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC -An opposition legislator predicts the continuation of a “constant war” on Tuesday with the Speaker, Rochelle Forde, when the Parliament meets on Tuesday.

“We going have war,” said St. Clair Leacock, the parliamentary representative for Central Kingstown, who says the opposition has found it challenging to submit questions to the Parliament for answers from the government.

He said he has already submitted a question for an answer from the Minister of Urban Development, Senator Benarva Browne.

Leacock, who has been a legislator for almost 20 years, said that because of the current situation, “Parliament is now no longer a pleased place for me to be” and that things were taking place in the legislative chamber “where people want to usurp the right of the electorate as to who should or who should not be in the Parliament and speak down to us, representatives of people.”

“I’m not in the Parliament at the behest of Ralph (Gonsalves). I ain’t there at the behest of Rochelle Forde and others,” he said in an apparent reference to Prime Minister Gonsalves.

“There’s a constant war every time Parliament is being called to get around submitting questions to the Parliament,” Leacock said on the opposition New Democratic Party’s “New Times” radio program.

He said he had submitted a question to Parliament to ask the Minister of Urban Development “whether she would be prepared to go through the constituency with me to see the things that need a policy framework, not the operations, the policy framework, to say that these things are out of place, and need to be attended to [so] that she could nudge her portfolio minister to give that attention.

Leacock said that he will read his question when he goes to Parliament.

“She going stop me from reading my question. I’m going to read my question. She will stop me from reading my question, and then they will throw me out,” he told radio listeners, adding that the Speaker should be a facilitator.

“She is too much of a gatekeeper and putting up guardrails to keep an iniquitous regime in office,” he said.