Litigation aimed at reversing the decision to suspend Opposition Member of Parliament (MP) Sherod Duncan from sittings of the National Assembly would be a challenge, given the judiciary’s penchant to stay clear of parliamentary matters, says Alliance for Change (AFC) Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan.
Duncan was suspended last week for defying the Speaker of the House, Manzoor Nadir, after he protested an unsavory comment by Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Nigel Dharamlall that was hurled at an opposition MP. Ducan refused to withdraw his “you’re a nasty man” retort and to take his seat despite the Speaker’s persistence. Nadir then called upon the government’s Chief Whip and Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Minister, Gail Teixeira to table a motion to have the MP suspended for four sittings. That motion was tabled and voted upon in the Committee of Supply, as opposed to the full Assembly.
It was Ramjattan who pointed out the blunder, but the Speaker subsequently requested that Teixeira re-table the motion in the House when the Committee of Supply was dissolved after the passage of the 2022 Budget last Thursday. Duncan was ultimately suspended, leaving some sections of society displeased with the Speaker’s failure to also reprimand Dharamlall for suggesting that a MP needs a dildo. Nadir, who has in the past responded to detractors, is yet to respond to these fresh allegations of bias.
Dharamlall has since apologized for the outburst in confessing his regret, but controversy now surrounds who was at the receiving end of the comment. The Minister said that the utterance was meant for Duncan, while Opposition MPs are adamant that the remark was aimed at a female MP.
Asked if the AFC would challenge Duncan’s suspension in court, Ramjattan responded in the negative.
“In relation to the (legal) challenge or whatever we can do in the matter of Sherod Ducan, I have to tell you that there is very little that we can do, now that the motion was corrected. When I had brought the observation to the Speaker, indicating that to him that he had done it wrong, I thought the Speaker was going to utilize the opportunity to then rescind the decision. That was my motive, but the man did not rescind the thing,” Ramjattan told reporters this morning during a virtual press conference.
He continued, “The courts, generally, do not want to interfere or judicially review the inner operations of Parliament. There are many cases on that, and so, I don’t know what else we can do but to publicly talk about how this thing is bad in the sense of the Speaker being, to the extent, biased in that regard,” Ramjattan said.
This is not the first time that Ramjattan has predicted failure in court. In fact, he proffered the similar argument earlier this month when the party was quizzed on challenging the passage of the Natural Resources Fund (NRF) Act, when Opposition MPs embarked on an in-house protest that saw the removal of the mace by MP Annette Ferguson.
The Opposition stressed that the mace’s removal and the subsequent use of a replica meant that the bill was illegally passed, but Ramjattan said that mounting litigation to challenge that would be futile because “courts do not venture into the precincts of the Parliament”.
Ramjattan’s reasoning conflicts with the coalition’s move back in 2018 to challenge in court, the passage of the no-confidence motion that was passed against his government by the then-opposition-now-government.
