I thought last week's Festivals Office miscommunication was bad enough: a letter telling a hopeful young woman she had made it into the Queen of Carnival contest – followed by an embarrassing “Oops! Our bad! That letter was sent by mistake!” But that was only the rehearsal, apparently; because, on Tuesday, May 26, what might have been forgiven as a simple mistake was allowed to degenerate into legislative power play and political victim-blaming.
Let’s be clear and let’s be fair: Opposition Leader Jamale Pringle did not go to the joint sitting of Parliament that morning to create drama. He had been summoned to attend – as an “Honourable Member” of Parliament – “by the President/Speaker” in a letter dated May 14. Both presiding officers were aware that MP-Elect Pringle had not taken the Oath of Allegiance on May 18. In fact, all of Antigua and Barbuda knew it ahead of time, because he and MP-Elect Trevor Walker had “advise[d] and apologize[d]” for their absence in a press statement the day before. Further, the two had been ridiculed for it – in the case of Pringle shamelessly so by the attorney-general, with the tacit approval of all the sitting MPs and the Speaker, although a legitimate reason for his absence had been given.
And yet, at no time after May 18 was his summons to attend the Throne Speech withdrawn by the Speaker who, according to the official letter, had issued it. So, Pringle showed up, as ordered. And after taking his assigned seat in the Chamber by 8:30 a.m., he was summoned again – this time to the Senate President’s office – to be told he would not be allowed to remain since he had not yet sworn allegiance. So what did he do? He told the President, “Ok, but you must make that announcement in public – to the House.”
I would bet $15 million – but since I have never been employed at Public Works, I don’t have even a million – that if Pringle had simply left the President’s office and gone home, the Government MPs, themselves, would have misrepresented his absence in even worse fashion than on May 18.
So he was quite right to put the matter of the dis-invitation in the public domain. But rather than having the grace to admit the invitation had been an administrative error in the first place, the Senate President proceeded to order Pringle to leave …or be put out by the sergeant-at-arms – as if he had crashed her private party or created some disturbance in her yard.
It need not have come to the mess it did, and the cover of “constitutionality” was as transparent as glass. Because the President, having been apprised by “someone” that Pringle had not yet taken the Oath (as if this was news), had the time to have that situation remedied…if she had been so minded.
After all, he had been seated in the Chamber since 8:30 a.m. – in ample time for “the dispatch of such business as may be necessary;” the maliciously gleeful House Speaker was present; and the Constitution grants Parliament the authority to regulate itself.
Pringle did not insist. He did not cause a scene. After all, he had already announced, in his press statement, that he would take the Oath at the next ordinary sitting. So, in a dignified manner he withdrew.
It is interesting and contradictory that the President did not see it fit to allow the Speaker to assume the chair and have the Clerk administer the Oath, but had no problem recognizing the Attorney-General – not a Member of her House – and allowing him to speak to the situation. This permission, reportedly, had been preceded by a flurry of WhatsApp messages between the bench and the chair.
