No-trust vote off

THE Opposition has withdrawn the Motion of No-Confidence in the Prime Minister which it had lodged with Speaker Jeffrey Nape on July 28.
The motion carried the signatures of Leader of the Opposition Sir Mekere Morauta and Bulolo MP Sam Basil.
Sir Mekere announced yesterday he and Mr Basil had written to the Speaker withdrawing the motion. They said they could introduce it again at anytime.
“We have withdrawn the motion because we do not have confidence in the integrity of the process being used by the Government to ‘consider’ the motion.
“We have heard from reliable sources in Government that the Private Business Committee will reject the motion, allegedly on some technical ground,” Sir Mekere said.Sir Mekere said that to avoid this, the motion had been withdrawn and the Opposition had requested the Speaker to provide urgent advice on the alleged “defects” of the
motion.
“We want the Speaker to tell us what we should do to satisfy the Private Business Committee, so that we can submit a new motion that will conform to the committee’s ‘requirements’,” Sir Mekere said in a statement.
“At the same time, we shall seek legal advice on the issue of the process of tabling a Motion of No-Confidence in the Prime Minister.”
Sir Mekere said that since last week, he had been seeking an appointment with the Speaker and the Clerk to verify the information about the Government’s intention to prevent the motion from being tabled, but had not been successful.
“We do not want to fall into the game of dirty tricks being played by the Government to block the motion, so we decided to withdraw it and put the Government on the spot by asking the Speaker to advise us.
“The Speaker and the Clerk must remember they are not the servants of the Government. They serve the Parliament, which means they are obliged, legally and morally, to advise the Opposition,” he said.