John Briceño says PM is Using Crisis to Acquire More Power

John Briceño

A letter from the Ministry of Finance to the Public Service Union, earlier this week, Financial Secretary Joseph Waight  first sounded the ultimatum that the PM can well proceed to amend the Public Service Regulations to forgo the increments of public officers for the fiscal year starting April first, 2020 and ending March thirty-first, 2021.  But the intention to go straight to the Governor General and bypass the House, does not sit well for the Leader of the Opposition. John Briceño cautions that the PM is going down the usual path of finding cover in the law, and in this case the COVID-19 crisis, to acquire more power.

John Briceño, Leader of the Opposition

“The strategy from the prime minister has been from day one, if you don’t want to give it to me, I will change the law so that I can legalise what I want to do. And he has done that; for instance the best example is B.T.L.  I think what is even more worrisome to me as a member of parliament, as a member of the National Assembly, is that he is not saying that I am going to go to parliament, to the National Assembly, and to make amendments to the law. He is saying that under the state of emergency, I am going to go directly to the Governor General and ask the Governor General to give me the powers to make all of these changes without any kind of negotiations, without any kind of consent, without even going to the House for us to have a robust debate as to what he is doing. And to me that’s very concerning because now we are in a state of emergency, now he is going to give himself even more powers than he already has. I think that any citizen should be very concerned when a prime minister wants to take that kind of attitude.”