Hon Dr Ingrid Buffonge
Is Premier Romeo facing an uphill task to keep his government in power
by staff writer
Popular news this week pose that Premier Donaldson Romeo’s four-year-old government faces an uphill task to complete its first five-year term in office after an independent legislator filed a motion of no confidence in his administration.
The motion by Dr. Ingrid Buffonge, a former member of the ruling People’s Democratic Movement (PDM) is scheduled to be heard on October 23.
Dr. Buffonge sits as an independent member of the Legislative Assembly, having left the PDM party after just a year. She did so ‘crossing the floor’, following much upheaval of dissatisfaction with the way she felt things were in particular in the area of health and more so with conditions especially the lack of equipment at the hospital. She, according to official sources served as a health advisor to the Minister of Health, which was part of her contractual duties to the government.
Buffonge, who received the second highest number of votes in the September 2014 elections on the PDM slate, resigned from the party a year later and two weeks ago, called for the resignation of Health Minister Delmaude Ryan. Willock had also called for Ryan’s resignation, saying that he supported Buffonge
Hon. Gregory Willock
In September 2014 general election, the PDM won seven of the nine seats in the Assembly, but since losing Buffonge, recently, in support of further grouse, personal and otherwise, Parliamentary Secretary Gregory Willock, who has acted as Minister in every Ministry except the Premier’s, formally resigned from the government and the party last week.
Prior to this, last year, Romeo dismissed Claude Hogan his agriculture minister. Earlier this week, with the pending motion in the Assembly, the crossing of the floor by Willock, putting four people on the side of the house, a call from the opposition leader for the government to resign, Hogan called on Premier Romeo to be “bold and put loyalty to country before any personal loyalty.
“There has been much change over the last week and with good reason,” he said in a statement somewhere, “Some people are looking to me to create further change to lead our nation out of the impasse our government finds itself in. I do not see the need for the constant rush to deny and exclude anyone.”
Hogan said that while he agrees that “further change has to come” it must come from the people themselves.
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The 2014 general election was a victory for the newly established PDM, which was formed on April 30 that year, in order to contest the elections.
The party defeated the then ruling Movement for Change and Prosperity, which seats two members in the Legislative Assembly on the opposition benches.
