Se­nior Coun­sel Mar­tin Daly said it was a “very bad day” for the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

This was his ini­tial re­ac­tion to what hap­pened in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

“They were flat-foot­ed, frus­trat­ed and just ful­mi­nat­ed be­cause they were trapped by the guide­lines that the Speak­er is­sued,” Daly said.

On Tues­day, Speak­er of the House Bridgid An­nisette-George is­sued the guide­lines for yes­ter­day’s mo­tion which ba­si­cal­ly al­lowed for no de­bate and di­rect­ed a vote by yes or no.

Daly said that while the guide­lines were “very con­ser­v­a­tive” they were cer­tain­ly not il­le­gal.

“They left lit­tle room to wig­gle, but UNC should have thought of all of this be­fore they rushed in­to this un­ex­plored part of the Con­sti­tu­tion,” he said.

He said it was clear that the UNC did not do their re­search.

“And I be­lieve the Prime Min­is­ter de­scribed the mo­tion as ‘skimpy” and that it was,” he said.

Daly said the Op­po­si­tion in­tend­ed to flesh out their ar­gu­ment dur­ing the sit­ting.

“But they did not un­der­stand that they would get trapped by hav­ing to read it and leave it there. So it is a very bad day for them,” he said.

“It wasn’t a great day for the coun­try ei­ther but it did de­scend in­to a cer­tain lev­el of chaos as the end,” he said.

Daly said he could not tell the Op­po­si­tion how to do their work but thought the move was “hasty”.

“They should have con­tin­ued to com­ment on the Pres­i­dent’s state­ment be­cause they’ve gone past what the Prime Min­is­ter had to say, the fo­cus now must be on what the Pres­i­dent had to say,” he said.

Daly said that the Op­po­si­tion need­ed some­thing se­ri­ous to gain the ma­jor­i­ty and oust a Pres­i­dent.—Renu­ka Singh