Gail Alexan­der

De­spite Op­po­si­tion ob­jec­tions, de­bate will pro­ceed to­day—af­ter de­liv­ery of the 2019/2020 Bud­get—on the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s (EBC) draft or­der on the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Low­er House Camille Robin­son-Reg­is con­firmed this yes­ter­day af­ter the Op­po­si­tion held a me­dia brief­ing to com­plain about hav­ing to deal with the EBC or­der as well as the Bud­get.

“We will be de­bat­ing the or­der af­ter the Fi­nance Min­is­ter de­liv­ers the Bud­get. There are no par­lia­men­tary sanc­tions for mov­ing be­yond the usu­al prac­tice of deal­ing with a Bud­get alone on Bud­get Day. It’s a prac­tice, not a rule,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

The EBC or­der is like­ly to be de­bat­ed af­ter the tea-break. Par­lia­ment con­firmed it was his­toric for an­oth­er un­re­lat­ed mat­ter to be de­bat­ed on Bud­get day. On Fri­day, Gov­ern­ment in­formed the Op­po­si­tion of the de­bate.

The EBC or­der rec­om­mends bound­ary shifts, names changes and the ad­di­tion of two Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment ar­eas in 12 cor­po­ra­tion dis­tricts. The changes af­fect three PNM and four UNC cor­po­ra­tions and must be passed for the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls to be held.

Gov­ern­ment said it must be done for the EBC to have time to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions. EBC pre­sent­ed the or­der to Gov­ern­ment in 2017 and it was laid in Par­lia­ment in April. Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions are due af­ter No­vem­ber 28.

Op­po­si­tion whip David Lee said yes­ter­day he ex­pect­ed the elec­tions to be De­cem­ber 9, so Gov­ern­ment has to meet an EBC time­line to have the or­der im­ple­ment­ed be­fore that.

“Gov­ern­ment rush­ing through this de­bate on the same day as an im­por­tant event as the Bud­get is un­ac­cept­able. Our MPs spent much time prepar­ing for the Bud­get but now we have to shift gears and be dis­tract­ed by prepar­ing for this de­bate,” he said.

Lee said he wrote the House Speak­er on the is­sue Sat­ur­day.

“We said it’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly ab­hor­rent Gov­ern­ment de­layed this re­port since 2017 and worse, af­ter lay­ing it in Par­lia­ment, de­layed de­bate a fur­ther sev­en months... there was suf­fi­cient time on Par­lia­ment’s re­sump­tion in Sep­tem­ber to de­bate it,” he said.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of try­ing to take away from the Op­po­si­tion’s time to ab­sorb the Bud­get.

Lee said while Par­lia­ment reg­u­la­tions don’t ex­press­ly for­bid any oth­er busi­ness to be done on Bud­get Day, it is the prac­tice that on­ly the Bud­get is dealt with.

He said: “It can be in­ferred that the in­tro­duc­tion of any mat­ter oth­er than the Bud­get con­sti­tutes pro­ce­dur­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty that’s at vari­ance to es­tab­lished prac­tice.”

Lee said all 18 MPs were put on no­tice to de­bate the EBC or­der.