Renu­ka Singh

Who­ev­er draft­ed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ mo­tion to re­move Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes is “in­com­pe­tent.”

This was the word from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day, as he took some time from his 72nd birth­day cel­e­bra­tion to dou­ble down on his crit­i­cism of the Op­po­si­tion’s mo­tion last Thurs­day to re­move the Pres­i­dent and took aim at the per­son/s who draft­ed the lim­it­ing mo­tion.

On Thurs­day, the UNC’s un­prece­dent­ed mo­tion failed with on­ly 24 votes in favour and 47 votes against af­ter the Elec­toral Col­lege meet in what was a his­toric ses­sion to re­move a Pres­i­dent.

Row­ley has since been crit­i­cal of the UNC’s un­der­stand­ing of the process and ex­plained that the mo­tion should have con­tained all the par­tic­u­lars they wished to raise. The mo­tion could not be ex­pand­ed or de­bat­ed at Par­lia­ment and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, there was no pro­vi­sion for a de­bate at that stage. UNC mem­bers con­tin­u­ous­ly clashed with House Speak­er Brigid An­nis­sette-George over these two is­sues dur­ing the ses­sions, when she con­tin­u­ous­ly de­barred UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar from ex­pand­ing on the de­tails of the mo­tion and the re­fused calls for a de­bate to be en­ter­tained.

Yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said he had re-read the UNC’s mo­tion and on­ly now un­der­stood the “full enor­mi­ty of the in­com­pe­tence” of the drafters and mover of the mo­tion.

Row­ley, in a brief text ex­change with Guardian Me­dia, said it “hit me as the mon­u­men­tal dis­as­ter that it is.”

“Pre­sent­ing that tis­sue of in­dig­na­tion and rub­bish to a Par­lia­ment in or­der to em­bar­rass, den­i­grate and re­move a Pres­i­dent, then turn up in num­bers with­in the con­fines of Par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures de­mand­ing a favour of a de­bate out­side of the pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion is al­most be­yond be­lief,” Row­ley said.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that is the UNC who know that they could still count on the loy­al­ty of their sup­port­ers, who are even led to be­lieve that their leader was not al­lowed to read her mo­tion.

“This lie is to make them be­lieve that they are be­ing vic­timised by the state es­tab­lish­ment. They learnt well from Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca, when they sold our da­ta to evil in­tent, now they are learn­ing well from Trump­ism.

“It’s a pity they have not cho­sen in­stead to ground them­selves in the Robin­son­ian prin­ci­ples of moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues as es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ents of a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy.”

Row­ley said that to “hear the likes of Wade Mark and the au­thors of the in­fa­mous Sec­tion 34, in­voke the “death of democ­ra­cy” as a ral­ly­ing cry, makes one won­der whether we are deal­ing with un­der­tak­ers or ghouls.”

On Thurs­day, the Gov­ern­ment bench re­mained silent while the Op­po­si­tion bench fre­quent­ly erupt­ed in the House, de­mand­ing that t Per­sad-Bisses­sar be al­lowed to de­bate the mo­tion.

In a press brief­ing af­ter that ses­sion, Row­ley de­scribed the mo­tion as “skimpy,” say­ing that it did not con­tain the nec­es­sary par­tic­u­lars and de­tails the Op­po­si­tion leader need­ed to gain the sup­port she may have been seek­ing to gar­ner. He al­so ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of try­ing to “move the goal­post” dur­ing the mo­tion. Row­ley said then that he was con­vinced that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was read­ing what some­one wrote for her be­cause he “re­fused to be­lieve that a se­nior coun­sel” could have writ­ten what she read as a mo­tion.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that one sen­a­tor draft­ed the mo­tion, but nei­ther that sen­a­tor nor Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­spond­ed to ques­tions about who draft­ed the mo­tion yes­ter­day.

Al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment last evening on who draft­ed the mo­tion, San Juan/Barataria MP Sadam Ho­sein said, “The mo­tion was ap­pro­pri­ate­ly draft­ed by the Op­po­si­tion. It was ap­proved and ac­cept­ed by the Speak­er as an ap­pro­pri­ate mo­tion.”

Ho­sein had ear­li­er ad­dressed the failed mo­tion dur­ing a UNC me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.