Published 25 January 2018
Buckie Got It, St. Kitts and Nevis News Source
By: Media Source
MRS LIBURD GOOFED IN TRYING TO DEFEND DOUGLAS STUPIDITY
As I read a commentary by Mrs Willa Franks Liburd, I suddenly became alarmed as I wondered where Mrs Liburd was over the last seven years. Mrs Liburd, must have been dreaming and suddenly woken up, hasn’t she? Let me familiarize her on our parliamentary proceedings.
All parliament members in the past have always complied with the rules of the Speaker whether or not they are in agreement with it. Dr. Douglas was the only one who would have told the speaker, “well we gonna have to talk about this privately”. If a member doesn’t like what the Speaker has said then he/she should move on especially when the speaker asks him/her to move on. It is like in any sport, once the umpire or referee makes a decision the players must accept the ruling or decision and anything outside of that is considered as showing dissent and carries a monetary fine or suspension.
From examining what Mrs Liburd has written, one wonders what she meant by saying “The Speaker indicated that Dr. Douglas should take his seat and not say another word. THERE WAS SOME PROTEST FROM DR. DOUGLAS”. How did he protest? Was his so called protest consistent with parliamentary propriety? Former House Speaker Curtis Martin used to say, “hey me nuh waan dat” and “ah nuh gun hear dat fram aryou”.
So when Mrs Liburd naively looked at our present parliamentary model and then compare it to Trump’s ludicrous and racist remarks, I have to conclude that she has lost the plot. Donald Trump is not the parliament and neither is he the Congress or the House. The Executive Arm of government in America is separate from the Parliament. Simply stated, President Trump is not in the Senate or Congress. So Mrs Liburd has used a terribly wrong example.
She mentioned about fights in East Asian parliaments. Yes there have been many fights in Asia in the parliament but this is not what we want in our parliament in St. Kitts, do we? It has never been our way as Mrs Liburd has implied. The closest it has ever come to a fight was when Gene Condor went with the mace by in the 1980s. So please, we do not want to even go there where we are using Asia as our model and adopting their parliamentary ways of fights.
But I think she is right and may have a point because if other commonsensical members of our parliament were to respond to Dr. Douglas and his grossly uncouth behaviour, our parliament could well end up in fights. So this Asian model she made reference to cannot be the model to follow, can it?
Mrs Liburd miscued on a very important matter. She cited the wrong examples because she had a non point and these inappropriate examples could not buttress that non point. The fundamental issue in all of this is that the rules by which the parliament is governed are well known because every Member of Parliament is given a book with those rules.
These rules are not hidden and that is why one can observe the parliamentary members carefully going through the rule book from time to time and the Speaker always instructs which rule is being applied and he sometimes quotes it, saying for example, section 41…
Therefore upon examination of what took place on Tuesday, Dr Douglas was told what rule he had offended and he was also told why he was being asked to leave the House. What I think was very disingenuous about Mrs Liburd comment was where she pointed out that Dr Douglas immediately got up and started packing his stuff to leave. Are you for Real Mrs Liburd? Anyone who knows Dr Douglas well knows that he is not a person to take the last lick so true to form, as the economist she is, she is certainly being economical with the truth here.
Therefore, the Speaker acted properly in accordance with the highest condition of democracy. It was certainly not an arbitrary decision. What I recommend that she must do is to tell her friend Douglas that his age is excessively showing and he must simmer down and behave or at least TRY TO BEHAVE LIKE THE STATESMAN HE IS NOT and could never be.
So Mrs Liburd, if you ever want to see a parliament that was out of order and you need to make references to shithole conditions, then you can go back to the last parliamentary sitting with Curtis Martin. Ask ZIZ to give you the tapes which the government replayed recently showing the 16th sitting of the parliament under Dr. Douglas which took place on the 16th of January 2015 when he tried to ram through the boundary. That should have been your reference point!
Maritza Williams
