No loaf better than half for the U.D.P.
Within hours of the Musa press conference, officials of the Opposition United Democratic Party told News 5 that the decision to vote against the Caribbean Court of Justice was the result of quote “an honest, healthy and critical exercise” that exemplifies the inherent democracy of the inner workings of the party. Member of the U.D.P. party council, Collet Representative Patrick Faber, says while all the P.U.P. counter proposals were tabled at last night’s meeting, discussions never got past Government’s rejection of a debt ceiling.
Patrick Faber, Member, of the U.D.P. Party Council
“And so we, in all honesty, never even got to consider the other proposals made by the Government because we couldn’t change on that. We think that the debt ceiling is very, very important. We believe that this government has been very reckless when it comes to borrowing money. It has put us in danger. It will put our children and our children’s children in danger and we want to put a stop to it. We believe that this government needs to be more responsible when it comes to borrowing and so that is an issue that we thought we definitely could not, could not agree with them on. Because we couldn’t move any further we decided then that our vote on the C.C.J. tomorrow has to be a no. It just goes show what we were telling people all along that it is a very democratic process in our party; decisions aren’t made by one person. We have a national party council, we have a central executive, and we have the shadow cabinet. All these bodies participate in all decisions that are made in our Party and it is never made by one person. We want people to understand that when we vote no tomorrow against the C.C.J. Bill that is not politics we are playing, that in fact we believe that we are acting responsibly. It is an opportunity that we have now to call the government to be more accountable and we would be remiss and we would be not a very good Opposition Party if we didn¡¦t take advantage of that opportunity that we have. We don’t know when it might come again.”
As for what will happen at Friday’s sitting of the House, there is some confusion. It appears that the Prime Minister will withdraw the amendment bill, but table the C.C.J. bill for its second reading. That bill, however, was written to complement the constitutional amendment and without it, will require some heavy amending itself. Whether this can all be accomplished with sufficient thoroughness in one day is anybody’s guess.
