Attorney General Ryan Pinder said yesterday that the actions of Opposition Leader Michael Pintard in the House of Assembly, which prevented the Financial Transaction Reporting Bill from being passed and debated in the Senate as a part of a compendium of financial services bills, was a “power play” motivated by “political ego”.
Pinder said he took personal offence to the move and Pintard ought to be embarrassed.
According to the attorney general, the tabled compendium of financial services bills was supposed to include the financial transactions reporting bill, but due to an administrative error in the Cabinet Office it was not tabled in Parliament at the same time.
He said as per custom, consensus was sought from the opposition and received from St Anne’s MP Adrian White to debate the bill with those previously tabled.
“Madame President, the leader of the opposition must have apparently had some point to provide either to us as the government or to that other leader, the member for Killarney or maybe to the leader in waiting,” Pinder said.
“In any event, he was heard saying that he had to make power plays and decided not agreeing to debate the bill.”
He continued: “This is an unfortunate situation where political ego has gotten in the way of legislating for the best interest of the Bahamian people.”
Rising on a point of order, Free National Movement (FNM) Senator Darren Henfield said the opposition leader never stood on his feet to anything in the House.
He said what the FNM leader was purportedly heard to have said “can only be hearsay”.
“In any order, did he act contrary to the rules or the law?” Henfield said.
“Did the opposition in the other place act contrary to the rules and the law?
“We’ve come here over and over and agreed that bills should be laid in this place for a first time and we debate them. That’s not normal. What should happen is they should be laid; we should be given time and we come back and debate them.
“To excoriate the leader of the opposition or the opposition for this on a day when you just said yourself that we agreed that we will move on, let’s move on. Let’s move on in the interest of the country.”
But Pinder said if the opposition wished to move forward in the interest of The Bahamas it would not have made “this power play against whoever they were deeming to make it against”.
“This is a true shame and the member Madame President should be frankly embarrassed especially as parliamentary convention generally provides that matters such as financial services bills are generally viewed as in national interest and not to be controversial and not to provide an opportunity to incur controversy, which is what happened.
“I took grave offence to the actions of the leader of the opposition. Your leader was wrong. He was wrong. He was wrong. And he should be embarrassed.”
Source: https://ewnews.com/grave-offence-ag-blames-opposition-leaders-political-ego-for-stalled-bill?fbclid=IwAR0ljuPD4sl1YQwSJsmiDgn7gPSuq8g89lijf3CQcxFyyZW6MQ-Rj9defzQ
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