December 3, 2013
Hon. Barbara Webster-Bourne
Speaker,
Anguilla House of Assembly
Atlin Noraldo Harrigan Parliamentary Bldg.
The Valley,
Anguilla
Dear Madam Speaker,
Thank you for your letter of November 27th, which was delivered most expeditiously by hand that very day to the Member for Island Harbour, Road North and myself the Member for Valley North. I hasten herein to respond to your comments with sufficient knowledge and I trust a modicum of aplomb, to use your own words, that will help to elucidate the issues which you have raised so misguidedly in your letter and in the fleeting hope that you will grasp the gravity of this occasion as well as your heavy responsibility as Speaker in conducting the affairs of the Honourable House of Assembly.
First let me say that our letter of protest over your conduct of the recent affairs of the House was delivered to your office moments after our leaving the Chamber on November 20th. For the record, that letter was left in your Reception’s Office before we exited the precincts of the House and long before we delivered copies to the media or anyone else. Your charge against us of disrespect to your office is therefore void of substance and brings into further question the administration and operation of the House under your direction as well as the apparent lack of communication between you and your staff.
We regret that you have found it necessary to charge us with impugning your character and integrity, a charge which we emphatically deny. However, we stand equally emphatically in our position that you have shown little regard for the Rules of Procedure during your tenure as Speaker and in fact have on more than one occasion abused and exceeded the power of your high office. These allegations will be fully ventilated in a substantive motion under section 36 of the Rules of Procedures which I intend to move at the next sitting of the House.
In the interim however, let me address some of the issues raised in your letter beginning with the matter of the quorum. I would entertain the hope, albeit without conviction, that you are aware that our Constitution like most others bears a spirit to its construction along with the letter of its framework. That spirit demands that democracy be a foundational principle in all matters relevant to the establishment and function of the House of Assembly. The Elected Members are chosen by a plurality of electors in each constituency; the Government is formed by a majority of elected members sent to The House; and Bills are passed into law by a majority of votes cast in the affirmative. The quorum, which is comprised of two-thirds of the Members of the House and calculated as eight Members apart from the Speaker, reinforces that spirit of democracy and in fact raises the level and threshold of decisions on matters before the House from a simple majority of members being present to a two-thirds majority. If the quorum were unimportant to the functioning of the House it would not have been placed in the Constitution. The fact that it is in the Constitution is clear notice to all, particularly the Speaker who should be the principle guardian of the Constitution and the Rules of the House, that Bills should not be made law without a minimum of 8 members being present for a vote. That is now settled law as evidenced in the 1999 case of Hubert Benjamin Hughes v Leroy C. Rogers.
The ruling of Justice Saunders in that case should be required reading for any Speaker of the Anguilla House of Assembly and you should note that the precedent set by former Speaker Leroy Rogers in ascertaining that a quorum be present before the commencement of a sitting should inform you of your principle duty, which is to uphold the spirit of the Constitution and maintain democracy. The fact is that there was no quorum on October 25th and you were notified that there was none. Yet you proceeded with a sitting of the House and cowardly hid behind a procedural letter in the Constitution, which calls for a member to notify you that a quorum is not present after the sitting has commenced. We consider your action here to be willful negligence and an obvious predilection to acquiesce to Government dictates rather than the proper democratic procedures required by the House.
I also note in your letter that you have charged us with breaching rule 4(1) which states that “any member unable to attend a meeting of the assembly to which he has been summoned shall acquaint the clerk in writing as early as possible to attend”. This charge is ludicrous in the extreme. It bears reminding you that rule 2(1) of the Rules of Procedure sets out clearly the importance of notifying members of the House properly of an impending sitting. Members of the Opposition are seldom, if ever, in a position to call or demand a sitting of the House. That is a function of the Speaker on the advice of the Leader of Government Business. But Members of the Opposition have an inalienable right to be heard and this is enshrined in statute and convention.
Whereas, it is The Speaker’s right to decide what is an emergency meeting, it is also the Speaker’s duty to ensure that a summons to the House for any meeting, let alone an emergency sitting, be properly delivered to Members with clear reasons set out as to why the sitting is deemed to be urgent. The meeting in question was scheduled for October 25th. On the evening of the 23rd at a graduation ceremony which we both attended you casually informed me that there would be a sitting on Friday morning and that the meeting had to do with some financial matters. No supporting documents were delivered to me that evening or at anytime during the following day. I received no agenda, no draft bills or any documentation whatever from the House and consequently had to collect them myself on the afternoon of Thursday 24th. The Member for Island Harbour was similarly notified in a haphazard way and the Member for Road North was not informed at all. It is unconscionable for any legislator to be notified of a meeting of the House in such a manner, as though it were an invite to a Sunday School picnic.
What is even more egregious is that the sitting was scheduled to deal with the Framework for Fiscal Responsibility Bill which had been banded about for months and was clearly not urgent and a Bill for the granting of general immunity for the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank in its take over of the CCB and NBA. How on earth is it possible for your letter of reprimand to us, referenced herein, to be so expeditiously delivered by courier to the doors of Members of the Opposition, while a formal notice of a sitting of the House required by law to be dispatched properly was communicated in such a frivolous manner and in one case not communicated at all?
This is a serious breach of the rules, an attack on the privileges of Members of the House and a direct and deliberate assault on the Opposition’s right to be heard. What is more irksome is the fact that the take over of the indigenous Banks is a matter of deep concern to every Anguillian and surely such a serious matter should have been vigorously debated. What is supremely ironic is that you were prepared to delay and delay the Education Bill for further public consultation and yet denied the same public any consultation whatsoever on this matter with the Banks, a matter affecting the very foundations of our economy. Your action both in the failure to notify the minority properly of a sitting as prescribed by law and your willful disregard for the quorum at the meeting of October 25th effectively denied the Opposition of its right to represent the people who elected them. It also allowed the Government to ram legislation through the House with three readings in one sitting in an obscene example of the dictatorship of the executive. You were the only person with the power to prevent this travesty of procedure and yet you kowtowed to the whims of the Chief Minister and violated the sacrosanct spirit of democracy in the House enshrined in the Constitution and the Rules.
On the matter of your charge that the House does not “talk about things arbitrarily” and works by a set agenda, let me say this, Section 10 of the Rules of Procedure set out clearly the Order of Business in each sitting. There are 12 headings. At the tail end of the list of headings, number 10 allows for questions, number 11 for motions and number 12 for “other business”. Let me repeat, “other business” is the very last heading in the list of headings on any order paper of the House. Section 30 of the Rules defines what “other business” means and you will note that it defines “other business” as GOVERNMENT BUSINESS, private bills and other orders of the day. You seem blissfully unaware that this said section 30 ensures that Government Business must come last on any agenda of the day and that the rule is crafted in this way to ensure that the minority or Opposition is afforded the right to be heard first. Were it to be otherwise, the Government with its inherent majority could easily get its business done first, and then leave the Chamber, thereby collapsing the quorum and silencing the Opposition. I repeat again, questions and motions must be heard before Government business. I moved my motion under Rule 20 (9) on a matter of privilege and without notice which is absolutely permitted by the rules. Without allowing me to finish my motion you allowed the Chief Minister to interrupt me twice claiming incredulously that I could have had this motion on the order paper 72 hours in advance. This is the same Leader of Government Business who 3 weeks before gave no notice at all concerning a meeting of the House to deal with critical matters before the island and which you did nothing to rectify. When the Member of Road North pointed out to you that Government did not have preferential treatment in the House you responded: “There is no rule that points out that the opposition bench has priority either, therefore we will proceed with the agenda and we will continue with the Government business”.
No rules? Madam Speaker, you chose to insult us in your letter about the need for a training programme to assist legislators in the comprehension of the Constitution and the Rules. I will choose to forgive the insult and agree with you on that point. But it is you more than anyone else who is in dire need of the education and training.
In conclusion, let me state clearly that we the Members of the Opposition have been seriously aggrieved by your conduct as Speaker in allowing an unseemly element of absolute bias to invade the conduct of business in the House. What is as disturbing is your penchant in allowing Members on the Government side to use their parliamentary privilege of immunity to abuse members of the public at will who cannot defend themselves and cannot bring an action against these members for slander. You have allowed this without even a modicum of caution. We have decided to draw a red line on this behaviour. At the end of the day you may have and use the power of your office to muzzle us in whatever way you wish. But be assured that we are confident in our own abilities and in our rights as freely elected members of the House to take these matters at some point to the final court of appeal which is the people of Anguilla.
Sincerely,
Evans McNiel Rogers
Leader of the Opposition,
Anguilla House of Assembly
cc The Governor
House of Assembly Members
Media
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
