I thought last week's Festivals Office miscommunication was bad enough: a letter telling
a hopeful young woman she had made it into the Queen of Carnival contest – followed
by an embarrassing “Oops! Our bad! That letter was sent by mistake!”
But that was only the rehearsal, apparently; because, on Tuesday, May 26, what might
have been forgiven as a simple mistake was allowed to degenerate into legislative
power play and political victim-blaming.
Let’s be clear and let’s be fair: Opposition Leader Jamale Pringle did not go to the joint
sitting of Parliament that morning to create drama. He had been summoned to attend –
as an “Honourable Member” of Parliament – “by the President/Speaker” in a letter dated
May 14.
Both presiding officers were aware that MP-Elect Pringle had not taken the Oath of
Allegiance on May 18. In fact, all of Antigua and Barbuda knew it ahead of time,
because he and MP-Elect Trevor Walker had “advise[d] and apologize[d]” for their
absence in a press statement the day before.
Further, the two had been ridiculed for it – in the case of Pringle shamelessly so by the
attorney-general, with the tacit approval of all the sitting MPs and the Speaker, although
a legitimate reason for his absence had been given.
And yet, at no time after May 18 was his summons to attend the Throne Speech
withdrawn by the Speaker who, according to the official letter, had issued it.
So, Pringle showed up, as ordered. And after taking his assigned seat in the Chamber
by 8:30 a.m., he was summoned again – this time to the Senate President’s office – to
be told he would not be allowed to remain since he had not yet sworn allegiance.
So what did he do? He told the President, “Ok, but you must make that announcement
in public – to the House.”
I would bet $15 million – but since I have never been employed at Public Works, I don’t
have even a million – that if Pringle had simply left the President’s office and gone
home, the Government MPs, themselves, would have misrepresented his absence in
even worse fashion than on May 18.
So he was quite right to put the matter of the dis-invitation in the public domain.
But rather than having the grace to admit the invitation had been an administrative error
in the first place, the Senate President proceeded to order Pringle to leave …or be put
out by the sergeant-at-arms – as if he had crashed her private party or created some
disturbance in her yard.
It need not have come to the mess it did, and the cover of “constitutionality” was as
transparent as glass. Because the President, having been apprised by “someone” that
Pringle had not yet taken the Oath (as if this was news), had the time to have that
situation remedied…if she had been so minded.
After all, he had been seated in the Chamber since 8:30 a.m. – in ample time for “the
dispatch of such business as may be necessary;” the maliciously gleeful House
Speaker was present; and the Constitution grants Parliament the authority to regulate
itself.
Pringle did not insist. He did not cause a scene. After all, he had already announced, in
his press statement, that he would take the Oath at the next ordinary sitting. So, in a
dignified manner he withdrew.
It is interesting and contradictory that the President did not see it fit to allow the Speaker
to assume the chair and have the Clerk administer the Oath, but had no problem
recognizing the Attorney-General – not a Member of her House – and allowing him to
speak to the situation.
This permission, reportedly, had been preceded by a flurry of WhatsApp messages
between the bench and the chair.
When Senator Chester Hughes, the Minority Leader in her own House, attempted to
respond, the President quite disrespectfully and crudely didn’t want to hear from y’all.
Why then would the Opposition Senators stick around?
But you know what is really egregious – to me? To hear the Member for City West use
the most unparliamentary language – Eunuchs. Dunces. Dunce elements – to describe
fellow parliamentarians. And why? Because they left the House in a principled stand
against what had disintegrated into a partisan show of power.
What moral authority does MP Gaston Browne have to disparage any of them that way?
This is the man who had led a mob of red-clad civilians – “strangers” in the gallery – in a
chant against then Prime Minister Dr. Baldwin Spencer, grossly disrespecting the dignity
of the House and the Crown.
This man who, for almost 10 years, was the rule-breaker, tantrum-thrower, and proud
rude-bwoy of the Parliament – to the point of having to be named and suspended from
the service of the House…. So when did Saul become Paul?
I had the misfortune, on Wednesday, to have an opinion by someone who seems to be
a youth come up on my Facebook feed. And while I could forgive him for being
uninformed or misinformed about Tuesday’s happenings, I could find nothing to redeem
the semi-literate disinformation in the responses posted by the House Speaker.
It forced me to wonder what criteria had been applied when he was selected for the
position. But then I recalled the Prime Minister, on radio, demanding that even the
Senate President become more forceful in the fight against the Opposition; and I
concluded that the single criterion for his selection must have been party loyalty.
Say what they will now, after the fact, but during my years in the Speaker’s chair no MP
was allowed more leeway than the Member for City West. None! And if the Attorney-
General is inclined to resume his veneer of decency, he will admit that he and I enjoyed
cordial and respectful relations even after I left the position, and the then-Opposition
bench, as the minority, was protected.
How sad it is – for the House, for the people, for democracy – that the “highest court”
would be brought as low as it was on May 18 and again on May 26 and be made the
laughingstock of the Commonwealth.
By D. Gisele Isaac
