Op­po­si­tion MP Rod­ney Charles, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Na­pari­ma, is tak­ing is­sue with com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, that that Op­po­si­tion had done a poor job of draft­ing its Mo­tion to im­peach the Pres­i­dent over the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion is­sue.

In fact, MP Charles as­serts “the Mo­tion was well writ­ten and out­lined the facts as re­quired”, con­trary to what PM Row­ley would have the coun­try be­lieve.

In a strong­ly word­ed re­lease is­sued to­day, MP Charles asks the ques­tion: “How in Heav­en’s name can any­one lay out a com­pre­hen­sive ar­gu­ment against Her Ex­cel­len­cy in 250 words?”

The Op­po­si­tion MP al­so laments the fact that the coun­try “has been de­nied a ful­some de­bate on why the PSC es­sen­tial­ly col­lapsed”, among oth­er crit­i­cal is­sues.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment is­sued to­day by the Na­pari­ma MP…

The PM is wrong. The Mo­tion was well writ­ten and out­lined the facts as re­quired.

Row­ley, aware that many do not crit­i­cal­ly an­a­lyze what he says, tends to spew rub­bish and lies (like Email­gate) know­ing full well that the me­dia, arm­chair ex­perts, clos­et PN­Mites and anony­mous Face­book com­men­ta­tors ac­cept them as gospel.

The lat­est is that the Mo­tion, par­tial­ly read in Par­lia­ment, was too brief and poor­ly draft­ed.

Is the PM aware that Stand­ing Or­der 40 of the HOR, lim­its the num­ber of words used to 250?

How in Heav­en’s name can any­one lay out a com­pre­hen­sive ar­gu­ment against Her Ex­cel­len­cy in 250 words?

And can any­one in­di­cate what ba­sic in­for­ma­tion was not in­clud­ed in the Mo­tion as pre­sent­ed?

Yet un­think­ing­ly many ac­cept Row­ley’s non­sense, false­ly con­coct­ed, and re­peat­ed ad nau­se­am.

He did the same with Email­gate and was able to sus­tain that false­hood for many months even through a gen­er­al elec­tion get­ting no less a per­son than the act­ing DPP to as­sert some un­heard of mer­it in ex­am­in­ing events "out­side the four cor­ners" of the ev­i­dence.

A Mo­tion, ac­cord­ing to our Stand­ing Or­ders (SO 40), is a skele­tal state­ment of your main ar­gu­ments. Its pur­pose is to “in­di­cate the is­sue to be raised for de­bate and in­clude on­ly such ma­te­r­i­al as may be nec­es­sary to iden­ti­fy the facts or mat­ter to which the mo­tion re­lates”.

It pre­sup­pos­es a de­bate. It was ac­cept­ed by the Speak­er, the on­ly one with au­thor­i­ty to do so.

In­stead of hid­ing be­hind the Speak­er’s dress, Row­ley should have aired his con­cerns in Par­lia­ment.

Fur­ther­more, Stand­ing Or­der 34 states that “sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion and these Stand­ing Or­ders, any Mem­ber may in­tro­duce any Bill or pro­pose any mo­tion for de­bate in the House”. This would im­ply that both the Con­sti­tu­tion and the SOs must be tak­en to­geth­er.

One must ask if a Mo­tion is be­fore the House, and the Con­sti­tu­tion is silent on the mat­ter of a de­bate, should the SOs not pre­vail?

This is a mat­ter for our courts, but in the in­ter­im TT has been de­nied a ful­some de­bate on why the PSC es­sen­tial­ly col­lapsed, whether H.E. was un­du­ly in­flu­enced by the Ex­ec­u­tive, and the ar­gu­ments against the Mo­tion by mem­bers of the in­de­pen­dent bench.