The Chairperson of the Committee of Selection, Manzoor Nadir, is expected to call initial meetings as early as next week to kickstart the work of 13 newly constituted parliamentary committees, following a decisive meeting of the Committee of Selection earlier this afternoon. The move is a step towards ending the 100-day legislative gridlock since the assembly’s last sitting, successfully mobilizing key democratic guardrails and legislative oversight frameworks that had been left vacant. The fully revitalized roster includes the crucial Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Parliamentary Management Committee, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Constitutional Reform, the Committee on Appointments, the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on the Security Sector, the Standing Orders Committee, the Committee of Privileges, the Statutory Instruments Committee, the Assembly’s Committee, and the four Sectoral Committees tasked with scrutinizing government policy in Economic Services, Foreign Relations, Natural Resources, and Social Services.
The composition of these bodies strictly adheres to established constitutional and parliamentary formulas, which calculate committee seat allocations based on the proportional strength of each political party within the National Assembly. This mathematical framework guarantees a government majority and an opposition minority across the board. Through this systematic process, representation was secured for all qualifying political entities, with the People’s Progressive Party government, the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN), A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), all successfully placing representatives on the newly finalized committees.
APNU Member of Parliament Ganesh Mahipaul confirmed to the Guyana Standard the completion of this statutory process, explaining the procedural mechanisms utilized during the session. Mahipaul stated, “We finally met as a National Assembly and simultaneously we met as a committee of selection to fill the vacant seats on every committee. There are 13 committees of the National Assembly and all 13 were properly constituted today.”
Mahipaul confirmed his return to the Public Accounts Committee which has, has five government members and four Opposition members.
When questioned about the exact names put forward to fill the minority seats on the crucial financial watchdog body, Mahipaul confirmed the roster: “On the PAC, the opposition will be Juretha Fernandes and myself from APNU. And from the WIN side, they have Vishnu Pandey, and Nandrani Singh.Those are the four names from the opposition.”
The calculation rule did, however, block one nomination. Both APNU and WIN attempted to nominate Amanza Walton-Desir, leader of the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM), to sit on select committees. However, the Chairperson of the Committee of Selection ruled the nomination inadmissible. According to the official electoral records used by the Chair to determine eligibility, Walton-Desir did not accumulate the threshold of votes required to secure a seat on any of the parliamentary bodies, despite the cross-party consensus from the main opposition groups.
