BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – UNITY LEADER the Hon. Dr. Timothy Harris is blaming the “inability of the Speaker to manage the Parliament in a fair and mature way” for the deterioration of decorum which took place at yesterday’s (Aug. 18) sitting of the Federal Parliament.
The House of Assembly got off to a rocky start with Opposition Members making objections to what they deemed were breaches in the rules of the House and the Speaker – the Hon. Curtis Martin – making his pronouncements.
The Opposition’s objections centred the fact that the notice of a sitting of the National Assembly was delivered to them in a short space of time than is outlined by the rules of the House. But according to the Speaker’s suggestion, the Parliament’s convening was an emergency sitting.
After more than an hour of back-and-forth, the hurling of comments across the floor, sharp retorts and innumerable disruptions, the Opposition left the Federal Parliament.
Asked by SKNVibes it if was the Opposition’s intention to disrupt that sitting of the Parliament – Dr. Harris responded in the negative but indicated that the session “started by breaching rules with impunity. That couldn’t be allowed…
“We received short notice of the convening of Parliament and in breach of the rules, we received the Order Paper and accompanying bills less than one clear day in advance of the Parliament. The rules require that we would have had at least two clear working days for study of the bills and indeed in contravention of the Parliament, it was on the very Monday yesterday that nine resolutions or thereabout were passed to Members of the Opposition for debate at that very day.
“It has become very clear to us that the lawless government has no intention…to honour and observe the rules of Parliament. We went there with the intention to make clear to the Speaker that such behaviour was intolerable and unacceptable and Mr. Richards raised those points in his first intervention in the Parliament…”
According to Dr. Harris, the verbal fight which took place yesterday in the Federal Parliament resulted from the Speaker’s failure to apply the rules of the House.
“…It is the incompetence of the Speaker in terms of his knowledge and application of the rules that led to the breakdown of yesterday. And clearly as the majority in the Parliament, we owe it to the people who elected us…and to the country…to indicate clearly and loudly for all to hear that we contend the obvious serious breaches that were taking place in the Parliament of St. Kitts and Nevis.”
