PNM stages walkout from the House

The last sit­ting of the first ses­sion of Par­lia­ment was not with­out con­tro­ver­sy, as the Op­po­si­tion staged a walk­out from the Low­er House, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of abus­ing its par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty to si­lence Op­po­si­tion voic­es dur­ing de­bate on the Vic­tims’ Rights Bill.

In a state­ment is­sued af­ter the sit­ting, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) con­demned what it de­scribed as “yet an­oth­er at­tack on the sanc­ti­ty of the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go” and ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of un­der­min­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the PNM, the con­tro­ver­sy un­fold­ed af­ter Op­po­si­tion MP for Port-of-Spain South Kei­th Scot­land com­plet­ed his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate and MP for Laven­tille West Ka­reem Mar­celle rose to con­tin­ue speak­ing on be­half of the Op­po­si­tion.

How­ev­er, in­stead of recog­nis­ing the next Op­po­si­tion speak­er, Deputy Speak­er and MP for Princes Town Dr Aiy­na Ali re­port­ed­ly recog­nised Jus­tice Min­is­ter and MP for Aranguez/St Joseph, De­vesh Ma­haraj, who moved to end the de­bate.

The PNM ar­gued the move ef­fec­tive­ly shut down any fur­ther Op­po­si­tion con­tri­bu­tions on the leg­is­la­tion.

“The UNC once again abused its Par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty to si­lence the Op­po­si­tion, sti­fle de­bate and sup­press the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right of Op­po­si­tion Mem­bers to speak on be­half of their con­stituents in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives,” the state­ment said.

The Op­po­si­tion stressed that it was pre­pared to sup­port the Vic­tims’ Rights Bill but main­tained it still had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to raise con­cerns sur­round­ing its im­ple­men­ta­tion.

“The is­sue, there­fore, is not sup­port or op­po­si­tion to the bill it­self. The is­sue is the con­tin­ued abuse of Par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure by a Gov­ern­ment that has re­peat­ed­ly demon­strat­ed in­tol­er­ance for scruti­ny, dis­sent and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion when­ev­er it is po­lit­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient,” the PNM stat­ed.

The par­ty fur­ther ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of en­gag­ing in a “dan­ger­ous pat­tern” of us­ing its par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty to un­der­mine de­bate and erode de­mo­c­ra­t­ic norms.

“Every Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment car­ries in­to the Cham­ber the voic­es, con­cerns and in­ter­ests of thou­sands of cit­i­zens. When a Mem­ber is pre­vent­ed from speak­ing, it is not on­ly the Mem­ber be­ing si­lenced, but the thou­sands of cit­i­zens who sent that rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Par­lia­ment,” the state­ment added.

The PNM al­so crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, claim­ing she was ab­sent for most of the sit­ting and ap­peared on­ly mo­ments be­fore what the par­ty de­scribed as a “Par­lia­men­tary trav­es­ty.”

The Op­po­si­tion said its MPs took the de­ci­sion to walk out of the cham­ber “in protest and dis­gust” over what it called con­tin­ued dis­re­spect to­ward Op­po­si­tion mem­bers and par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy.

The par­ty warned it in­tends to pur­sue the mat­ter “through every le­git­i­mate Par­lia­men­tary, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al av­enue avail­able.”