By Antonio Dey | HGP Nightly News|
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — A bitter row has erupted within the corridors of the National Assembly, with Member of Parliament and Leader of Forward Guyana, Amanza Walton-Desir, fiercely condemning her systemic exclusion from all parliamentary committees. The prominent lawmaker has labeled the move a glaring political “double standard,” pointing a finger directly at Speaker Manzoor Nadir and Government Chief Whip Gail Teixeira for allegedly orchestrating her removal from committee representation.
Addressing the media following the operational blockade, Walton-Desir clarified that her public pushback is not driven by personal ambition, but rather by an unconstitutional and highly selective application of parliamentary rules that undermines democratic representation for smaller political organizations.
According to Walton-Desir, her formal nominations to several standing select committees—backed collaboratively by both A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and We Invest in Nationhood (WIN)—were abruptly thrown out by the Speaker’s chair. The rejection was based on a calculated mathematical formula that allocates committee seats proportionally according to the total electoral votes received by individual lists.
Walton-Desir argued that this proportional seat formula is being weaponized exclusively against her. She cited prominent historical precedents from previous legislative sessions where minor-party representatives faced zero mathematical barriers to high-level appointments.
Specifically, she pointed to the 2020 post-election appointment of Lennox Shuman as Deputy Speaker after his party list captured just 2,657 votes, as well as the 2023 installation of Dr. Asha Kissoon to the legislative floor following an even smaller allocation of 244 votes.
“Vote totals were never a barrier before,” Walton-Desir maintained under review. She highlighted that her party, Forward Guyana, secured a more substantial 4,585 votes during the September 1, 2025, General and Regional Elections, yet she is uniquely being deemed mathematically ineligible to serve.
“I think Asha had 244 votes and she was entitled to join the arrangement… And of course, the PPP used their majority again to vote her in, and no formula barred it,” Walton-Desir observed, claiming the ruling administration selectively alters the procedural rules depending on political alignment.
Despite the administrative setback, the Forward Guyana leader vowed she would not be silenced or restricted from executing her monitoring and advocacy mandates on behalf of the electorate. She revealed she has already finalized an arrangement with WIN MP Odessa Primus, the Chairperson of the Foreign Relations Committee, to provide expert external assistance to that desk and any other oversight committees requiring her legislative background.
The unfolding controversy was corroborated by Opposition Chief Whip Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, who released a detailed video statement confirming that the unified opposition had fully intended to allocate some of its own proportional committee slots to the Forward Guyana leader.
Sarabo-Halley disclosed that prior to the June 5 meeting of the Parliamentary Select Committee, formal documentation explicitly placed Walton-Desir as an active member of both the Foreign Relations Committee and the highly critical Constitutional Reform Committee, alongside an alternate seat on the Natural Resources Committee. Furthermore, APNU MP Ganesh Mahipaul had formally nominated Walton-Desir for a seat on the Parliamentary Management Committee, a motion seconded by WIN to ensure all independent voices held a structural seat at the table.
However, according to Sarabo-Halley, Speaker Nadir and Chief Whip Teixeira rigidly maintained that because Forward Guyana commands only a single seat in the house and fell short of the absolute threshold under the initial seat-allocation formula, Walton-Desir could not hold any committee assignments. When opposition factions attempted to voluntarily surrender one of their own legally allotted slots to accommodate her, the Speaker clamped down on the cross-party transfer.
“We were wondering whether, if WIN or APNU decided to give one of their seats to a member of another party, why that would be an issue,” Sarabo-Halley questioned. “There was significant pushback from the Speaker.”
Speaker Nadir ultimately ruled that once committee distributions are locked in via the baseline mathematical formula, individual political parties are statutorily prohibited from transferring, sharing, or donating those seats to another distinct political organization.
The strict interpretation has reignited intense constitutional debates regarding the true scope of minority representation in the National Assembly, leaving smaller parties to question whether the legislative framework is being altered to limit independent oversight over the nation’s rapidly expanding economy.
