Opposition boycotts parliamentary sitting to protest suspension of MPs and Government’s “slush fund” financial paper -Norton

All of the APNU+AFC seats in the Assembly were empty when the sitting was called and remained empty as the Government presented and passed the supplementary provisions.

Opposition boycotts parliamentary sitting to protest suspension of MPs and Government’s “slush fund” financial paper -Norton

The APNU+AFC Opposition boycotted today’s sitting of the National Assembly and the Government’s presentation of a $44 billion supplementary budget.

All of the APNU+AFC seats in the Assembly were empty when the sitting was called and remained empty as the Government presented and passed the supplementary provisions.

In a telephone interview with News Source, Leader of the Opposition Aubrey Norton said the boycott was called after a meeting among Opposition members to bring attention to the “arbitrary” suspension of eight Opposition MPs and the current state of the country.

Mr. Norton said there is nothing contained in the supplementary provisions that cater for easing the strain being faced by citizens as the cost of living continues to climb. He said the Opposition’s participation would have only served as window dressing since the Government and the Speaker have been repeatedly shutting down its concerns on major issues.

“The Government side suspended eight of our Members of Parliament without due process. They were not given a hearing and they acted very arbitrarily and so we believe they wanted to silence us by ensuring our numbers are depleted by eight. The government has this tendency of listening to your arguments but not hearing them and just go ahead and we concluded that they would go ahead anyhow and the next reason (for the boycott) is that the Supplementary Finance that they have applied for clearly is a slush fund. It didn’t come with details and take for instance, the cost of living, there is nothing in it, to impact the cost of living and so for us it is clearly a case of creating another slush fund for the corrupt people in the government to steal. And so having sat as a group, we felt that we should not go into Parliament to legitimise that by them”, Mr. Norton said.

The Opposition has repeatedly accused the Speaker of the National Assembly of being biased in many of his rulings on issues taken to the House by the Opposition. The Speaker recently withdrew a motion taken to the Assembly by the Opposition to discuss the rise in the cost of living and to jointly look at ways to ensure relief for citizens.

The Opposition Leader said “it is recognised that the Speaker is very biased and therefore he rules in evert regard in favour of the government and we thought that one form of protest that would be effective is to boycott the Parliament and let it be clear to people that we are supporting the government’s waste of taxpayers’ money into these slush funds and it is clearly a case where the Government’s approach is to make the elite in the PPP, their friends and families rich and when it comes to the real issues, dealing with the state of affairs of the people of Guyana, they are not dealing with that”.

Mr. Norton said today’s boycott was just a one-off protest and moving forward, the coalition will examine how it will continue to address concerns that its voice is being shut down in the National Assembly.

“We will analyze every situation and make our decisions based on the situation, but we believe on this occasion we should not make our presence felt so that we appear to be complicit in this attempt to rob the Guyanese people of resources”, Mr. Norton said.

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