Rumble in the House
Published:
Friday, March 2, 2012
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Plenty hype, much fevered political activities by the two sides of the Parliament, some expectation in the population and, most of all, a desire of many for a political wrestling match with large quantities of entertainment attached. Those are a few of the expectations apparent in the political environment today as the no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar is engaged by Opposition Leader Keith Rowley and the PNM.
One morning this week, on one of the more popular morning radio talk shows, 29 out of 31 respondents to a survey did not expect too much quality debate to take place in the Parliament.
Political analysts have been saying that both sides will experience trauma because of the debate, with Dr Rowley to get the wrong end of the stick.
A report in the press quotes a senior member of the opposition party, Port-of-Spain Mayor Louis Lee Sing, as also having warned his political leader that he could even face a backlash within the PNM. Dr Rowley is clear in his mind that the debate is “about the conduct of the affairs of the people of Trinidad and Tobago.” Leading PP spokesmen have said to Dr Rowley that when he loses the vote, the tradition in Parliaments is for the mover of the motion to resign from the House.
However, neither Dr Suruj Rambachan nor Dr Fuad Khan has substantiated such a claim. Surely Basdeo Panday did not resign when he called a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Patrick Manning and lost.
Neither was there any indication from UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar that she would have resigned had she lost her no-confidence motion against then Prime Minister Manning in April of 2010. One of the sad things about T&T’s politics is that politicians take people for fools when making unsubstantiated statements.
Nonetheless, Dr Rowley and the PNM are required to engage the debate with substance. If not they would have proven the Prime Minister and her spokesmen right that the motion was “frivolous, vexatious and a waste of parliamentary time.”
If Dr Rowley and his team are not able to “buss a mark” or two, they will have to develop a substantive cumulative argument to justify their contention that the Prime Minister and her Government have failed in their responsibilities to the population.
From the preparations being made by Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar and her team, there will be the expected rebuttals and statements on the achievements of the near two-year government. Dr Rowley and the PNM must also expect the Government to make damning revelations against the Opposition.
In modern parliamentary history, no-confidence motions are engaged in to get rid of a government that is believed to be performing poorly. However, successful motions are rare given the built-in majority of a government in typical two-party systems. So the purpose of the opposition parties is to use such a motion to embarrass a government.
With live media coverage of the debate, the opposition gets dozens of hours taking pot shots at the Government’s policy generally and, in this case, the conduct of the Prime Minister. But it is not a one-sided privilege; the Government gets to respond in kind. In this situation, the Government has almost three times the number of MPs who can speak. Given the broad nature of the motion, speakers from both sides will have more than the usual latitude to make their case.
The hope of the population must be that the Government in power must clarify and answer questions. It may be too much to expect that both sides will not use the privilege of the Parliament to make unsubstantiated allegations to score cheap political points.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/editorial/2012-03-01/rumble-house