ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, Sept 8, CMC – Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell Tuesday expressed his disappointment at the decision of opposition legislators to boycott the joint sitting of Parliament convened to have received a report from the Hydrocarbons Technical Working Group (HTWG).
“…yes it is extremely disappointing and sad that members have chosen to boycott such an important session to provide them good information about what we have done,” Mitchell said.
On Monday, Opposition Leader and head of the main opposition New National Party (NNP), Emmalin Pierre, told reporters that the NNP wanted to “make it abundantly clear that its members who are representing us in the Houses of Parliament … have serious concerns about the special joint sitting of Parliament” and that they would not attend the ”sitting under the current arrangements.
“We understand also that several individuals with great knowledge and experience in parliamentary procedures have also advised the government and the Parliament accordingly. “We have absolutely no problem with the government updating Parliament on oil and gas exploration, but this matter must not be handled through a process that misuses Parliament and departs from proper parliamentary procedures and practises,” Pierre told reporters.
The NNP said it has no objection to the government updating Parliament on oil and gas exploration, but strongly objected to inviting the HTWG to present directly to Parliament instead of first formally laying its report before the House.
Former foreign affairs minister Peter David, who was present in the Parliament on Tuesday, reiterated his opposition to the move by the government reiterating that the HTWG “is neither a Joint Select Committee of the Houses nor an appointed committee by the Houses”.
“It is therefore irregular to invite such a committee to address the House of Representatives,” he said, even as the Speaker Leo Cato told legislators that there was nothing wrong with the procedures being adopted in getting the members of the HTWG to present the report.
.”So we are will in order for this particular meeting and we consulted with the government on the preentation of the report today and we were told it is a highly technical report and that it is best presented by the experts,” Cato said.
Prime Minister Mitchell told legislators that he wished to go on record as expressing “our appreciation” to the HTWG members for presenting and ensuring that the presentation was done in a manner that the layman could understand.
He said the presentation by the lead technocrat, Dr. Gibert Yevi, an internationally recognised petroleum energy, will be made available to the House and will be laid in Parliament formally by him as the line Minister.
“I hope my colleagues appreciate why we requested for the committee to present in person rather than for me as the line minister to present because as Dr. Yemi indicated the oil and gas industry as a commercial business industry is highly technical, highly commercial in nature and requires people with the expertise to lead it”.
Mitchell said that while obviously from a policy point of view and from a leadership point of view, the policy makers and the parliamentarians ultimately are responsible to demonstrate ”our responsibility requires us to accept where our expertise begins and ends and where we need to rely on others to do so”.
Mitchell said that he is hoping that David, the lone opposition member present “would appreciate that substance matters over form and that the presentation ought to have been done by the experts who did it today so that they could be questioned and provide the right answer rather than me.
“So I hope going forward since we seem to stand more on form and on substance that more of this will happen and that the Parliament will become alive with real substantive issues of national importance rather than that of form.”
Mitchell said that Grenada’s oil and gas industry has been shrouded in mystery, in opaqueness, in secrecy and in an obvious lack of documentation, noting that “so when a well has been drilled and Grenada doesn’t have the data on the well, what does that tell you?
“So if I wanted to be partisan, if I wanted to politicise this issue, I would not ask for a joint sitting of the House. I would not ask the experts to come and subject themselves to our questioning and our scrutiny. We would not make the reports available.
“We would not go to the lengths that we have done to have meetings not just with the technical working group but with the experts so that the members of the public can be told what we have done, what we need to do and where we need to go on this issue.”
