‘Camille slams Govt’s use of clause to not answer questions’

KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

Trinci­ty Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is has crit­i­cised the Speak­er of the House, ar­gu­ing that Stand­ing Or­der 28(3) is at risk of be­com­ing an “un­chal­lenge­able shield” for gov­ern­ment se­cre­cy af­ter min­is­ters again re­fused to an­swer ques­tions in Par­lia­ment.

Her com­ments fol­low Wednes­day's sit­ting which Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter in­voked the “pub­lic in­ter­est” ex­emp­tion to de­cline ques­tions, and the Speak­er backed the re­fusal while lim­it­ing at­tempts by Mar­vin Gon­za­les to fur­ther chal­lenge.

Robin­son-Reg­is said MPs must still be al­lowed to test the ba­sis of such re­fusals.

“If the Min­is­ter ul­ti­mate­ly chose to main­tain the re­fusal, then that would have been the end of the mat­ter. How­ev­er, what the Speak­er could not prop­er­ly do was pre­vent the Chief Whip from even ques­tion­ing the ba­sis up­on which the Stand­ing Or­der was in­voked,” she said.

She warned that the ap­proach risks weak­en­ing par­lia­men­tary scruti­ny.

“Such an ap­proach risks con­vert­ing Stand­ing Or­der 28(3) in­to an un­chal­lenge­able shield against scruti­ny, which it was nev­er in­tend­ed to be,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

She stressed that Par­lia­ment ex­ists to hold the Ex­ec­u­tive to ac­count, not shield it from ex­am­i­na­tion.

“The Speak­er must ap­pre­ci­ate that elect­ed Mem­bers rise in the House not on their own be­half, but as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple, ex­er­cis­ing one of Par­lia­ment’s cen­tral con­sti­tu­tion­al func­tions: hold­ing the Ex­ec­u­tive to ac­count,” she said.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so ar­gued that the Speak­er’s role must re­main neu­tral and ground­ed in con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples.

“The Speak­er is en­trust­ed with en­sur­ing that par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures are ap­plied con­sis­tent­ly with the broad­er con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples of fair­ness, ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment,” she said.

“Stand­ing Or­ders ex­ist to fa­cil­i­tate par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy, not to frus­trate it.”

The de­bate has al­so been am­pli­fied on so­cial me­dia, with Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les post­ing on Face­book, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of re­peat­ed re­fusals to ac­count to the pub­lic.

“An­oth­er day of the Gov­ern­ment re­fus­ing to be ac­count­able to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go by in­vok­ing Stand­ing Or­der 28(3),” Gon­za­les wrote.

“I will con­tin­ue to be re­lent­less in my du­ty as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment to bring for­ward these Per­ma­nent Ques­tions in the in­ter­est of my con­stituents and the coun­try at large. Ac­count­abil­i­ty is not op­tion­al. The peo­ple de­serve an­swers."