Opposition accuses Government of ‘attack on democracy’ after Private Members’ Day ‘abuse’

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion chief whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has writ­ten to House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of abus­ing par­lia­men­tary rules and in­fring­ing on the rights of the Op­po­si­tion, fol­low­ing a con­tentious in­ci­dent in the Low­er House last Fri­day that prompt­ed the Op­po­si­tion to walk out.

In a let­ter dat­ed March 11, Gon­za­les said the Op­po­si­tion point­ed out that it be­lieves the par­lia­men­tary process was ma­nip­u­lat­ed when En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal moved a mo­tion un­der Stand­ing Or­der 52(1) to pre­ma­ture­ly end de­bate on a pri­vate mem­ber’s mo­tion.

The mo­tion, brought by Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle, fo­cused on the so­cio-eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of un­em­ploy­ment and mass con­tract ter­mi­na­tions across state bod­ies and lo­cal gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties.

Speak­ing dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said the de­bate cen­tred on the Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to safe­guard cit­i­zens’ well-be­ing and main­tain con­di­tions for a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing.

He said the mo­tion ad­dressed re­ports of wide­spread job loss­es and con­tract non-re­newals, which were af­fect­ing vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.

Gon­za­les added that the mo­tion al­so warned that ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment could have broad­er na­tion­al con­se­quences.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, the Op­po­si­tion had on­ly just be­gun de­bat­ing the mo­tion when the Gov­ern­ment moved to shut down the dis­cus­sion.

He said the MP for Port-of-Spain South at­tempt­ed to ar­gue that end­ing the de­bate would amount to an abuse of par­lia­men­tary process, but was cut off be­fore com­plet­ing his ob­jec­tion.

Gon­za­les said the Speak­er then ruled that his dis­cre­tion on the mat­ter was “very nar­row” and agreed to put the mo­tion to the House.

In the let­ter to the Speak­er, the Op­po­si­tion strong­ly dis­put­ed that in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Stand­ing Or­ders.

“Dr Mooni­lal’s mo­tion to pre­ma­ture­ly end a pri­vate mem­ber’s mo­tion when there were still nine out of thir­teen Op­po­si­tion mem­bers to speak was a bla­tant abuse and ma­nip­u­la­tion of the rules of Par­lia­ment,” Gon­za­les wrote.

He al­so chal­lenged the sug­ges­tion that the de­bate had al­ready been suf­fi­cient­ly ven­ti­lat­ed.

Gon­za­les said the move un­der­mined the very pur­pose of Pri­vate Mem­bers’ Day, which is de­signed to en­sure the Op­po­si­tion can raise is­sues out­side the con­trol of the ex­ec­u­tive.

Gon­za­les said the is­sue is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling be­cause the mo­tion ad­dressed hard­ships af­fect­ing cit­i­zens across the coun­try.

“We were de­prived of our con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ven­ti­late these mat­ters on the floor of Par­lia­ment sim­ply be­cause it was an un­com­fort­able con­ver­sa­tion for the Gov­ern­ment.”

He de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as deeply trou­bling for the coun­try’s de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem.

“We re­gard that as a dan­ger­ous de­vel­op­ment in par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy. We see this as a vi­cious and dis­dain­ful at­tack on par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Gon­za­les said.

He said the walk­out from the cham­ber was in­tend­ed to sig­nal strong ob­jec­tion to the events of the day.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the let­ter and in­di­cat­ed that an “ap­pro­pri­ate­ly word­ed” re­sponse was forth­com­ing.