BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - A recent call has been made for the Speaker of the National Assembly - the Hon. Curtis Martin - to resign from that position “if he doesn’t have the integrity, the courage, the moral fortitude to do the right thing” and table the Motion of No Confidence (MoNC) expeditiously.
Over the past weeks - the Speaker has been the centre of protests staged by the Unity Team and its supporters, who are making a clarion call for the 14-month-old MoNC to be debated in the House of Parliament.
The Hon. Dr. Timothy Harris - Parliamentary Representative for Constituency Number Seven and Leader of Team Unity - while speaking with this publication during yesterday’s (Feb. 25) protest, said he is advising the Speaker to “resign the position and let somebody who is up to the job undertake to do the right thing.
“It is now simple because the judge has freed him (the Speaker) of any impediment; the legal basis has now been set out. The matter is not sub judice; the Motion is not in bad form, we have to treat the Motion for what it says on the face of it. So all the legal arguments that have been put forward...those have been rubbished by the judge, rejected as being without appropriate legal foundation.
“If he doesn’t bring the Motion in a quick time, he should resign the position because we cannot continue to have the country in a state of instability. We cannot continue to have St. Kitts being the pariah nation.”
Dr. Harris declared that the Speaker’s silence on the issue, especially since the recent court ruling, is yet another reason why he should tender his resignation.
“You have heard a former chief justice...Sir Brian Alleyne say that our Parliament has been reduced to a state of uselessness. Well how is it you could have a Speaker presiding over a Parliament that has been described by a eminent jurist as one that has been reduced to a useless instrument? That is enough justification for him to resign. And when you compound that...with the reality of what the judge said...and he has not responded, then that is in fact a matter which requires him to resign.”
Filed in December 2012, the MoNC highlights what the Unity Movement describes as the inadequacies, bad decisions and major shortcomings of the government and six of the 11 elected Members of Parliament have indicated that they would support the Motion if and when it is tabled.
