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But, the Chamber of Commerce is also an important part of the dynamic.  That organization is also part of the negotiations with government, and it is making its own demands. Last night, at the end of a contentious meeting, their membership voted in favour of two resolutions last night at their Special General Meeting.

The first is that their Senator, Mark Lizarraga, will only participate in the Senate Inquiry to investigate the Auditor General’s Findings at the Immigration Department if certain conditions are met. The Government has to reconstitute its membership with the amended terms of reference. Bottom line? The Prime Minister is basically being told to limit Government membership on the Senate Select Committee to only one, and the investigation powers of the Committee will have to be broadened. 

Those amendments would have to be approved by the Senate, and as we showed you last night, President Lee Mark Chang, at the initial stage, isn’t inclined to do so.

The next resolution is that the members of the Chamber will shut down their businesses for one day in protest if the Prime Minister fails to move forward on signing the commencement order of the 13th Senator, the appointment and activation of the Integrity Commission, and the reconstitution of the Public Accounts Committee. There is no deadline given as to when these demands are to be met, and so today, we sought clarification with Nikita Usher, the President of the Chamber. Here’s what he told us via telephone:

Alex Courtenay
"A final date for when the one day shutdown would commence has not been released or thought about at this moment, it says it needs to be nominated. And so can you explain what the timeline for that would look like?"

Nikita Usher – President of the BCCI
"Well we don’t know a timeline yet. The resolution spoke to various timelines on the part of asking government – there were several dates given. It’s not one that was just across the board saying shut down before. Because for example the resolution that was passed, what you are seeing there is only a summary, the actual resolution that has been passed, let me just put my hands on that. For example asks for…on the one with, for example, the thirteenth senator, which only requires the commission order to be signed, we have for example given government until the 14th which is tomorrow. There’s some reasonability that has to be put into these resolutions, right. With the respect to the appointment of the Integrity Commission, we’ve given the Prime Minister 10 days after the Chamber of Commerce issues names, recommended names of the Accountants that could serve. With respect of the decomposition reactivation of the PAC, there are two dates, there’s a portion for the drafting of the law and a portion for the passing of the law.

"As you know the PAC committee is only made, is a standing house comity which is only made up of UDPs and PUPs, or if you want to say Opposition and Government. What we had recommended to the government way back in June of last year well even prior to June I was looking at some letters from even before that, was a composition that could have at least let the PAC committee start to work. That is the composition that we’re still standing on base don the letters that we had sent to the Prime Minister, so there has to be a draft law change, an amendment to the law as it exists, and so we had to give two dates for that. One for the amendment to occur, and one for the passing of the law. Okay, so that would take you all the way down to –we had given up to November 9th." 

Today, the PUP sent out a release scolding the government for allegedly trying to infiltrate the Chamber’s Special General Meeting from last night. Their statement, says quote, â€œEven at that meeting, UDP operatives blatantly attempted to hijack the process, revealing to what depths the government will go to protect itself from scrutiny and to continue on this path of brazen corruption.â€￾