‘If you want a war, you can get a war’

House Speaker Halson Moultrie abruptly adjourned proceedings of the House of Assembly yesterday after he again accused the executive of disrespecting his authority in Parliament, and declared that he was fully prepared to go to war with the Minnis administration.

Moultrie fired his latest salvo against the Minnis administration while stating that measures were not taken to ensure the safety of parliamentary staff and others, after the House clerk tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday.

Moultrie indicated on Tuesday that he and his staff planned to go into quarantine and would not be present at yesterday’s sitting of the House.

The expectation was that Deputy House Speaker Don Saunders, who was not present in Parliament last week when the House met, would be in the chair yesterday.

However, after taking the chair yesterday morning, Moultrie said the staff members were called into work despite his recommendations that they quarantine.

He also noted that the House of Assembly had not been sanitized.

Moultrie’s essential declaration of war was an apparent reference to Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis, who said in the House last week that he reads books of war.

The speaker said repeated questions to Minnis and Leader of Government Business Renward Wells about how the House would proceed yesterday given the clerk’s positive COVID-19 result went unanswered.

“The most challenging matter to me was yesterday in the process of dealing with this matter with the staff of this Parliament, I made numerous attempts to communicate the situation with the member for Killarney (Minnis) and with the member for Bamboo Town (Wells),” he said.