THE SPEAKER THROWS DOWN THE GAUNTLET
cialis canada buy times;”>The PLP supporters watch with a wary eye the Speaker of the House Kendal Major on each and every pronouncement. The streak of independence unknown for a PLP Speaker has them worried. Last week’s pronouncement did nothing to ease their pain. He spoke to the Nassau Guardian on 1st December and said the following about the Westminster system; the kind of stuff you could expect from an academic or a critic in civil society, not someone sitting in a post allied with the ruling party Sigh! Such are the times:
When you have Cabinet ministers in the number of the 38 Members of Parliament and the majority of the members of the governing side are Cabinet Ministers, what you have done is you have removed and violated the principle of separation of powers and you have created an elected dictatorship because you have Cabinet members who , because an individual and Cabinet responsibility, have a sense of loyalty to the Cabinet.
They bring that into the House of Assembly and it affects the level of scrutiny and accountability to air matters in an open and honest fashion.
Our constitution speaks to a minimum amount of Cabinet ministers, eight including the attorney general. Some would argue they many have meant nine.
What we have found since the early 1990s up to now is cabinets that have become overwhelmingly large and have taken the lion’s share of the Members of Parliament in the House.
That decision by the executive or the various Prime Ministers within itself has destroyed in one fell swoop, the spirit of what answerable to Parliament means or what Westminster was all about.
I have found that in small states in particular the Westminster system and the spirit of what we ought to be has been bastardized because of an authority, an executive dictatorship, that come sometimes with the authority of the executive.”