Following the suspension of Opposition Member of Parliament, Sherod Duncan from the next four sittings of the National Assembly there has been quite an uproar on social media.

This comes against the backdrop of a comment made by the Local Government Minister Nigel Dharamlall, who was at the microphone responding to questions when he told a female Opposition MP on Wednesday evening that ‘“You got to get a dildo, that’s what you looking for”. A dildo is a sexual stimulation toy. Duncan had loudly objected by shouting across the Assembly that Dharamlall was a “nasty fella” for the remark made. He was then instructed to take his seat, but refused and continued to make his disgust clear in the national assembly last evening.

Many persons pointed out that the Speaker Manzoor Nadir heard the remark by the Minister but ignored it, and yet called on the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Gail Teixeira to move a motion to have Duncan suspended. After the government passed the motion, Duncan was suspended.
However, persons were also up in arms that the Minister who is the holder of a public office would make such an obscene and vile comment in the house and was also not corrected or reprimanded.

The Opposition had walked out of Wednesday’s afternoon’s review of the examination of the budget estimates while in the Committee of Supply of the National Assembly. They alleged that the day was filled with continuous derogatory remarks directed to APNU+AFC female MP’s by Minister Dharamlall.

In a press statement, the APNU AFC said that their female MPs note that “on every occasion that the Minister has to speak going back to 2020, the members on the opposition side especially the female MP’s, are forced to sit and listen to the vilest of verbal abuses and racial slurs”. They made it clear that moving forward this will not be accepted. They further stated that the suspension of MP Duncan was “unacceptable and unfair”.

In response to what Minister Dharamlall dubbed as an “untruthful press release”, he released this statement on his Facebook page-“The APNUAFC MPs are no angels. My dildo comment was in response to the incessant insults by Sherod Duncan.
I read with astonishment, the total fabrication by the AFC of a situation in today’s sitting of the Committee of Supply of the National Assembly of Guyana.
Their media release is totally untruthful but as is their wont, they created a brouhaha to extricate themselves from the public exposure of their monumental embarrassment caused by their corrupt, discriminatory and vindictive conduct during their time in office as government.
On many occasions, the MPs on the government side have been ridiculed with some of the most uncouth and slanderous things about their bodies, their spouses, their children, their sexuality and even their dead relatives.
Some of the chief culprits in the heckling crowd of APNUAFC include MPs Sherod Duncan, Coretta Mc Donald and Natasha Singh-Lewis.
Today, my heckle regarding a dildo was aimed at verbal excesses of MP Sherod Duncan.
In hindsight, I should not have responded to the continued insults on me, my family and deceased sister, (yes they insulted my sister who died 11 years ago) by members of the APNU AFC.
To those offended by my comment I am truly sorry.
That is the truth.

FreeSpeech #HereToStay

ONE LOVE!!!”