Opposition leader barred from participating in finance meeting on national budget

Opposition Leader Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has described as “an immature display of triumphalist” the decision of the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Ronnia Durham-Balcombe, barring him from attending Thursday’s meeting of a committee of Parliament, because he has yet to take the oath of opposition leader.

Gonsalves, the only member of the now opposition Unity Labour Party (ULP) to have won a seat in last November 27 general election, has since written to Governor General Stanley “Stalky” John, KC on the issue.

Gonsalves, who served 25 years as prime minister before his defeat last November, along with two opposition senators, did not attend the ceremonial opening of Parliament on December 23 last year, when all government members took their oath of office.

The Finance Committee of the Whole House met on Wednesday to consider the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2026 before they are sent to the floor for debate later on Thursday.

However, the Speaker in a letter sent to Gonsalves on Monday said that he would not be allowed to take part in the proceedings because he has yet to take the oaths.

But speaking on his party’s radio station on Wednesday, Gonsalves told listeners that “the Speaker of the House said that because I haven’t been ‘sworn in’, that is to say, do the Oath of Allegiance and make the declaration as to my qualification to sit as an elected member in the house, that I can’t sit”.

He said this was Durham-Balcombe’s position, “though, of course, she has said in a communication to the clerk of the house that if I ask the chairman of the committee who is the prime minister, that I can sit, but I can’t vote on anything there today”.

The Opposition Leader said the letter from the Speaker was “an absurd communication”, adding that he has since responded to her in writing.

“The business of the proceedings of the Parliament, the proceedings of the House is the business of the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Gonsalves said.

In his letter, which was copied to the Governor General,  Gonsalves said Durham-Balcombe’s decision “is an erroneous, egregious and high-handed assault on democratic norms in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“Directing the Leader of the Opposition to seek ‘permission’ of the Prime Minister to attend the meeting of the Finance Committee is an immature display of triumphalist, partisan politicking that has absolutely no place or precedent in the history of an independent St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”

Gonsalves has maintained since 2021 that he does not speak to Prime Minister Godwin Friday, whom he has blamed for an injury he sustained when he was struck in the head by an object while walking among protesters on his way to Parliament in Kingstown a few years ago.

In his letter Gonsalves wrote “In prohibiting the opposition members from participating fully in the Finance Committee meeting, you’re behaving in a manner that is biased, inconsistent and against your responsibility to purposefully facilitate rather than obstruct the operations of the Parliament”.

He said that the Speaker  had said that the opposition “deliberately flouted the Parliament by not attending its first sitting”, adding that she “high-handedly declared that your prohibition is the’ consequences of such indifference’”.

Gonsalves, however, said that the opposition “will not permit this partisan rewriting of history to take place” reiterating that his decision not to attend the opening of Parliament was because of concerns about his safety.

“Indeed, my decision not to attend was made after the government ‘flouted’  or was ‘indifferent’ to the Governor General’s request that additional security be provided to me for the occasion,” he said, referring to the then head of state, Dame Susan Dougan.

He said that the Minister of National Security St. Clair Leacock, ignored Dame Susan’s request that he be provided with additional security, “resulting in a carefully considered decision not to attend the first meeting.

“That decision was taken with a view to the legitimate threats to my safety and the government’s indifference and disregard of these threats,” Gonsalves said.

He said that in barring him from the Committee meeting, the Speaker was “now party to a wholly undemocratic collusion wherein members of the opposition are first left unprotected and bullied into absence from a meeting and then subsequently punished for that legitimate absence by your punitive and arbitrary misapplication of the Standing Orders”.

Gonsalves said that the precedent was set in May 2018, when members of the then opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) refused to make a declaration that they were qualified to sit in the house.

“Indeed, all members of the opposition at the time refused to make the required declaration. The Honourable Dr. Friday, in refusing to make the declaration, stated from the floor of the House that ‘with no great violence to the tradition and the law-making powers of the house, I have no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that I am qualified to sit as a member’”.

Section 62 of the Representation of the People’s Act, 1982, says “every person elected as a member of the House of Assembly shall, before sitting or voting therein, make the declaration of qualification in Form A”.

However, when asked to make the declaration, Friday, who, like Gonsalves, is a lawyer, said,  “the requirement of the law is that it be done before sitting and voting in the House”.

The then-opposition leader also noted that Gonsalves, then prime minister, had stated that he had never made the declaration since his election to parliament in 1994.

In his radio programme on Wednesday, Gonsalves noted that the Speaker at the time did not bar the opposition members from participating in the house business.

He said Durham-Balcombe was objecting to the opposition participating in the Finance Committee on the basis of standing order 3(1), although she had waived that objection on multiple occasions.

The Opposition Leader said the Speaker had done so  by “actively participating with members of the opposition in the process of our preparation of questions for written and oral answer in Parliament to the point where you have allowed some questions and disallowed others”.

He said she had also provided members of the opposition with copies of the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2026 for consideration in the finance committee and in Parliament.

Further, she had provided members of the opposition with formal notice of the date, time and place of the meeting of the Finance Committee, “all in full knowledge of the fact that they had yet to take the prescribed oath.

“Madam Speaker, your own prior actions estoppel you from your current course,” Gonsalves wrote, adding “You cannot credibly tell me that I can take part in some proceedings of the house, but not others, and that I cannot know which proceedings I’m allowed to participate in until the eve of the proceedings themselves.

“You cannot invite me to a meeting by means of a notice and then subsequently tell me that I cannot participate in that very meeting,” he said, adding the Speaker’s behaviour “smacks of arbitrariness, inconsistency and hubris.

“It is an affront to democratic process and runs directly counter to your duty to defend democratic processes and uphold the rights and privileges of members in a fair and impartial manner.

“The commencement of your tenure as speaker has begun in a most inauspicious and immature manner. Mark not by strict adherence to the rules, but a weaponisation of those rules to deter participation, accountability and democratic norms,” Gonsalves told the Speaker, who has also not been allowed to ask any of the three questions he had submitted for oral answers.

He noted that all three opposition members are previous members of the Parliament.

“This does not exempt us from the oath-taking requirement. However, it should make you aware that there is no reluctance by any of us to take the oath. A purposive speaker would acknowledge this fact,” Gonsalves said.

He said the situation could be remedied by having the clerk administer the oath after prayers at the beginning of the Finance Committee meeting.

“You cannot claim that the Finance Committee is a proceeding of the house requiring an oath, but simultaneously not the house for the purpose of administering an oath,” Gonsalves said.

“Such a position would require an unfathomably disingenuous legal contortion that will permanently block your tenure, the session of the house and the democratic record of the new administration of which you have been an active and activist member,” Gonsalves said.

“I strenuously urge your adoption of this simple corrective as a way to assuage all the relevant viewpoints in the interest of full participatory democracy.”

Gonsalves said he ha, adding however, Wednesday’s meeting was procedural.

“So, it’s not that I am missing anything of any great import today at that session. But what I normally would want from my time in the opposition before, sometimes there are errors to these estimates, and there are lots of errors that I’ve found. I would point out those errors to help them, to make any corrective,” he told radio  listeners. (CMC)

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