PNM walks out of heated John-Bates debate

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) walked out of the Low­er House last night, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of turn­ing the de­bate in­to a “de­lib­er­ate abuse” of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued mo­ments lat­er at 9 pm, the Op­po­si­tion said it “con­demns in the strongest pos­si­ble terms the con­duct of the Gov­ern­ment,” which, it ar­gued, left it with “no op­tion oth­er than to take the se­ri­ous and prin­ci­pled de­ci­sion to walk out.”

The Low­er House was de­bat­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Spe­cial Re­port of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC). This re­port deals with the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Janelle John-Bates and ac­cu­sa­tions that she in­ten­tion­al­ly at­tempt­ed to tam­per with a par­lia­men­tary in­quiry.

Ac­cord­ing to the PNM, what un­fold­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives “was not a fair or prop­er de­bate,” but in­stead “a de­lib­er­ate and co­or­di­nat­ed abuse of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure by a Gov­ern­ment in­tent on si­lenc­ing the Op­po­si­tion.”

The par­ty claimed Gov­ern­ment MPs re­peat­ed­ly breached Stand­ing Or­ders through “the im­pu­ta­tion of im­prop­er mo­tives” and the use of “un­par­lia­men­tary lan­guage” and “of­fen­sive and in­sult­ing at­tacks” di­rect­ed at Op­po­si­tion mem­bers.

It fur­ther al­leged that Gov­ern­ment speak­ers im­prop­er­ly ref­er­enced in­di­vid­u­als not part of the com­mit­tee un­der re­view, “un­der­min­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy and fair­ness of the pro­ceed­ings.”

The Op­po­si­tion al­so raised con­cern over what it de­scribed as an “alarm­ing de­vel­op­ment,” claim­ing the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion was warned she would not be al­lowed to ob­ject to be­ing ref­er­enced dur­ing the de­bate, an act the PNM said rep­re­sents “a dan­ger­ous ero­sion of the rights of elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”

Re­ject­ing what it called an “abuse of par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty,” the par­ty said it re­fused to “par­tic­i­pate in the cha­rade” in the cham­ber.

The PNM warned the in­ci­dent re­flects “a grow­ing pat­tern of be­hav­iour” by the ad­min­is­tra­tion, al­leg­ing that “rules are dis­re­gard­ed, in­sti­tu­tions are weak­ened and dis­sent­ing voic­es are treat­ed with con­tempt.”

It main­tained it would “con­tin­ue to stand firm in de­fence of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples, par­lia­men­tary in­tegri­ty and the rights of the cit­i­zens” it rep­re­sents.