By Marvin Cato | HGP Nightly News|
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — Speaker of the National Assembly, Manzoor Nadir, has fiercely fired back at critics over the exclusion of Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) Leader Amanza Walton-Desir from parliamentary select committees, branding the entire controversy an engineered “set-up” explicitly designed by opposition members to trigger a groundless media storm.
Speaking with reporters, the Speaker maintained that the FGM lawmaker had “made a mountain out of a molehill,” asserting that the opposition was entirely aware of the strict mathematical regulations governing committee selections before manufacturing a public outcry.
The political firestorm erupted after Walton-Desir failed to secure a seat on any of the 15 main parliamentary committees, despite nominations put forward by the major opposition coalitions, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and We Invest in Nationhood (WIN). In a scathing video statement published to Facebook, Walton-Desir slammed the governing People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), stating, “The selective application of numbers really does tell you all you need to know about the PPP/C.”
However, Speaker Nadir forcefully rejected allegations of political bias, revealing that opposition parliamentarians were fully complicit in orchestrating the drama.
“That particular MP, I believe, was set up. Right? People set up this situation,” Nadir declared, pointing out that opposition MP Tabitha Sarabo-Halley had openly acknowledged that the benches were fully aware of what the committee compositions would look like under the law. “So if you knew what the composition of committees are, why are you going to go and break the rules?”
The Speaker explained that while the larger parliamentary blocks successfully placed members on various bodies, the FGM simply did not command the raw electoral math required by long-standing parliamentary practice and statutory rules. Under the official seat-allocation formula, Walton-Desir’s movement—which secured its lone seat in the 13th Parliament with just over 4,000 votes—fell completely short of the threshold needed to qualify for an independent committee nomination.
Nadir noted that this is not a novel legal precedent. Following the 2020 elections, a similar joinder-party configuration saw minor-party parliamentarians like former Deputy Speaker Lenox Shuman and Dr. Asha Kissoon face the exact same exclusion from standing committees based on identical proportionality rules, prompting them to vent their frustrations in open letters to the press at the time.
Pivoting from defense to warning, Speaker Nadir signaled that the House is actively preparing to take formal disciplinary action against members who publicly attack the integrity of the chair. He sternly reminded lawmakers that the National Assembly maintains strict standing orders to address MPs who deliberately mislead the public or undermine the lawful, non-discretionary rulings of the Speaker.
Emphasizing that parliamentary leadership must decisively “nip such behavior in the bud” to protect the foundational decorum of the legislative branch, Nadir indicated that the upcoming sitting of the National Assembly will explicitly reveal how these infractions will be handled.
