Latest update May 10th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 06, 2016 News
– Says, “If talk was valued anything and used to change lives, this government would get the prize for it.”
Even though Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, is appreciative of President David Granger’s recent
address to the Parliament, he is of the belief that President Granger is an imposition on the National Assembly.
The former President made this remark as he contributed to the debate on Granger’s October address to the Parliament.
Jagdeo in his opening remarks on Friday said that “if anything is comatose, it is this government.”
He said, too, that a speech by any Head of State must be taken seriously. Jagdeo said that in most jurisdictions around the world, there is a particular approach to these speeches.
The Opposition Leader said that these speeches are given adequate time to be debated and there is a protocol following that debate.
“But what we find worrying is the way this speech and the motion to debate it, were brought to the House. It was hurriedly placed on the agenda and breached the procedures for how a normal motion is brought to the House,” expressed the Opposition Leader.
Jagdeo said that given what the President said about the nature of the House and how the Parliamentarians ought to conduct themselves, he found the manner in which the motion on the President’s speech was brought to the House to be an insult to what Granger had said.
The “Champion of the Earth” said that speakers from his camp came yesterday, prepared to debate its motions on the order paper since they were told that it was Opposition’s Day.
In spite of the aforementioned, Jagdeo proceeded to dissect comments by Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo as well as the President’s speech, most of which he disagreed with.
Jagdeo said that the Head of State has delivered six speeches to the Parliament. He said, however, that a speech to the House is not a sign of a functioning democracy and it is not a barometer of that.
He said, “How many times you address the House does not really matter, the content of what you are saying in the speech matters. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I see it as an imposition on the National Assembly that in such a short period this has become a routine.”
The Opposition Leader said that there must be some gravity behind the Head of State’s address to the House.
“Not every time there is a policy issue the House must suspend itself to listen,” Jagdeo said to the National Assembly.
He added, “What we have seen from this comatose government is no action, just rhetoric. If talk was valued anything and used to change lives, this government would get the prize for it.”
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