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Parliament faces tight schedule

Legislators will have to work at breakneck speed when parliament reconvenes next month.A tentative start date has been set of February 1, but the House of Assembly could reconvene as late as February 8 because of the additional administrative workload associated with a change of Government, according to sources inside Government.“It’s going to be tight,” said Tourism Minister Shawn Crockwell. “My understanding is that everything kicks off on the first of February.”If it does, legislators will have to debate and pass the proposed Budget by March 31 when the financial year ends.But first, the Throne Speech laying out the Government’s agenda for the parliamentary session will have to be read and debated the following week.Mr Crockwell said that Government will also have to pass some priority legislation such as possibly repealing the Park Hyatt Act which transferred the former site of the Club Med to the hotel group Park Hyatt.Government terminated its agreement with developer Carl Bazarian last year.“If indeed it is decided that we are not going to continue relations with Bazarian and this Park Hyatt proposal then in order to go in different directions with the land we would need to repeal the Park Hyatt Act,” said Mr Crockwell.The Park Hyatt Act repeal is not the only piece of legislation that the new Government would have to address as a matter of priority.“Other Ministers may have other clean up work to do,” Mr Crockwell said.Following the last general election which was held on December 18 2007, parliament reconvened on February 1 2008 with the reading of the Speech to the Throne by the Governor.The Throne Speech debate, kicked off by the Opposition Leader’s Reply, took place a week later as is customary. The next three weeks, ending in mid March, were taken up with the Budget debate.