Mar 23 - Number Six: Mr Feetham “Lied To Parliament In The Most Obvious Way”
The Government says that it considers that the only Members who should be ashamed of the way in which they are behaving in Parliament are the Opposition and, in particular, their current leader, Daniel Feetham.
Number Six says that, as Leader of the Opposition, Mr Feetham is also accountable to Parliament and to taxpayers. Yet, during last Thursday’s session in particular, says the Government, Mr Feetham “lied to Parliament in the most obvious way”. He said that he was not aware that the Sunborn had been advised by his firm on a particular matter, whilst the whole issue of his conflict of interests had, according to the Government, been made public during the course of 2013. Number Six argues that Mr Feetham “is acting in conflict with the interests of clients of his firm, Hassans, by making suggestions in Parliament that the clients in question are not paying the loans they have taken.” The Government has already announced that what is calls “Mr Feetham’s gross misrepresentation of the relationship between the Sunborn and the Government” will be the subject of the first Motion of the next meeting of Parliament. That is the seriousness of Mr Feetham’s “deceit” says the Government.
Moreover, the Government says that the contempt with which the previous administration held Parliament is reflected in the few meetings that they held. Indeed, it argues, in 2003 there was only one meeting in the whole year. This made it very difficult for the then Opposition to be able to discharge its constitutional obligations. The Government says that there were countless occasions when the previous administration refused to answer questions in Parliament over a whole range of issues. As the Opposition, their complaints “now smack of political hypocrisy of the first order.”
A statement from Number Six concluded: “The proceedings of Parliament are now televised and the Hansard (official transcript) is available quicker than ever before. When the previous administration was in office, it once took nearly a year to make Hansard available to the public and to the Opposition. In addition to this, there is more statistical data available on-line than ever before. Meetings of the Development and Planning Commission take place in public, when under the previous administration they would take place in secret with the public and the media shut out from the process.
“In 2012 this Government was quick to instigate monthly meetings of Parliament and, since then, Mr Feetham and his Opposition MPs have had more opportunities to ask more questions, in more detail, on more subjects, than any previous Opposition has ever had. On 30th March, the Government will be asking its own questions of Mr Feetham, which he should prepare himself to answer truthfully and transparently.”
