Opposition seeks Speaker’s intervention over allegations of staff bias, MP’s conduct

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The Op­po­si­tion has for­mal­ly writ­ten to House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on al­le­ga­tions of bias in­volv­ing par­lia­men­tary staff and con­cerns over the con­duct of Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath.

In a let­ter signed by Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and 12 oth­er Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MPs, the Op­po­si­tion said it learned through a news­pa­per re­port that com­plaints had al­leged­ly been made about bias, par­tial­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism among par­lia­men­tary staff, in­clud­ing claims that mi­cro­phones used by Gov­ern­ment mem­bers were mut­ed dur­ing House pro­ceed­ings.

The Op­po­si­tion said it was not in­formed of any such com­plaints and is now re­quest­ing de­tails on when they were made, who re­ceived them, whether in­ves­ti­ga­tions were car­ried out and what find­ings, if any, were reached.

The MPs de­scribed the al­le­ga­tions as “se­ri­ous” and said they “strike at the in­tegri­ty, in­de­pen­dence and prop­er func­tion­ing of the Par­lia­ment”, ar­gu­ing that the is­sues war­rant ur­gent clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

The let­ter al­so rais­es con­cerns about an in­ci­dent dur­ing Fri­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee pro­ceed­ings, in which Padarath was al­leged­ly seen pho­tograph­ing or record­ing a mem­ber of the par­lia­men­tary staff while the of­fi­cer was car­ry­ing out of­fi­cial du­ties.

The Op­po­si­tion has asked whether the Speak­er was in­formed of the in­ci­dent, whether it was re­viewed by his of­fice and what safe­guards ex­ist to pro­tect par­lia­men­tary staff from con­duct that could be per­ceived as in­tim­i­dat­ing, co­er­cive or in­ter­fer­ing with the in­de­pen­dent dis­charge of their du­ties.

The MPs warned that par­lia­men­tary em­ploy­ees must be able to car­ry out their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties free from po­lit­i­cal pres­sure, ha­rass­ment or in­ter­fer­ence, adding that fail­ure to ad­dress the mat­ter could raise broad­er in­sti­tu­tion­al con­cerns about the func­tion­ing of Par­lia­ment.

Mean­while, an in­creased num­ber of par­lia­men­tary staff and par­lia­men­tary po­lice of­fi­cers were present in the cham­ber dur­ing yes­ter­day’s sit­ting. Guardian Me­dia was told the arrange­ments were made to ac­com­mo­date a larg­er-than-usu­al pub­lic gallery and be­cause the day co­in­cid­ed with a sched­uled par­lia­men­tary tour.

At the start of the sit­ting, Speak­er Jagdeo Singh in­di­cat­ed that he in­tend­ed to ad­dress con­cerns aris­ing from Fri­day’s pro­ceed­ings. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that any state­ment on the mat­ter will be de­ferred pend­ing his re­sponse to the Op­po­si­tion’s let­ter.