Opposition stages Parliament walkout

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

A heat­ed con­fronta­tion broke out in the Low­er House yes­ter­day, af­ter the Gov­ern­ment moved to abrupt­ly end de­bate on a pri­vate mem­ber’s mo­tion, trig­ger­ing a dra­mat­ic Op­po­si­tion walk­out and ac­cu­sa­tions that the ad­min­is­tra­tion was sti­fling dis­sent in Par­lia­ment.

The mo­tion, first brought by Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle on Jan­u­ary 26, sought to have the House take note of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pact of ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment in com­mu­ni­ties fol­low­ing mass ter­mi­na­tions and the non-re­new­al of con­tracts.

It al­so called on Gov­ern­ment to ur­gent­ly re­spond to what it de­scribed as a de­vel­op­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic cri­sis by pro­vid­ing ad­e­quate and mean­ing­ful so­cial re­lief mea­sures.

The de­bate fea­tured con­tri­bu­tions from sev­er­al MPs over two sit­tings, in­clud­ing Bar­ry Padarath (UNC), Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly (PNM), Clyde El­der (UNC), Do­minic Ro­main (PNM) and Van­dana Mo­hit (UNC).

When de­bate re­sumed yes­ter­day, Mo­hit con­tin­ued her con­tri­bu­tion be­fore Symon de No­bri­ga (PNM) and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal took the floor.

How­ev­er, Mooni­lal then moved to bring the de­bate to an im­me­di­ate close.

“Giv­en the friv­i­o­lous, vex­a­tious, ill-ad­vised word­ing and in­tent of this mo­tion, I be­lieve it should be de­feat­ed forth­with. And, Mr Speak­er, in those cir­cum­stances, in ac­cor­dance with stand­ing or­der 52-1, I beg to move that the ques­tion be now put.”

Stand­ing Or­der 52(1) states: “Af­ter a ques­tion has been pro­posed, any Mem­ber may at any time dur­ing the course of de­bate rise in his place and move ‘That the ques­tion be now put’ and un­less it ap­pears to the Chair that that mo­tion is an abuse of the rules of the House or an in­fringe­ment of the rights of the mi­nor­i­ty, the ques­tion ‘That the ques­tion be now put’ shall be im­me­di­ate­ly put.”

How­ev­er, Stand­ing Or­der 15 pro­vides that a min­is­ter may move that the House ad­journ af­ter the con­clu­sion of ques­tions to min­is­ters. On pri­vate mem­bers’ day, ex­cept with the agree­ment of the Op­po­si­tion whips, the House is not sup­posed to be ad­journed ear­li­er than 6 pm.

The de­bate was wound up around 4.30 pm.

Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land rose to ob­ject, ar­gu­ing that grant­i­ng the re­quest would vi­o­late his right to speak on a day specif­i­cal­ly al­lo­cat­ed for pri­vate mem­bers’ busi­ness.

“It is my re­spect­ful sub­mis­sion that to ac­cede to this re­quest abus­es my rights to speak on a pri­vate mem­bers’ mo­tions day, which to­day (yes­ter­day) has been specif­i­cal­ly al­lo­cat­ed for.”

How­ev­er, be­fore Scot­land could com­plete his sub­mis­sion, House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh in­ter­rupt­ed and be­gan out­lin­ing the rel­e­vant stand­ing or­ders gov­ern­ing the clo­sure of de­bates.

Singh ex­plained that Stand­ing Or­der 46(2) al­lows a min­is­ter to move to close de­bate on a mo­tion crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment, but not­ed this pro­vi­sion ap­plies on­ly to min­is­ters. He said Stand­ing Or­der 52 is a rule of gen­er­al ap­pli­ca­tion and al­lows any mem­ber to move that “the ques­tion be now put.”

The Speak­er said the chair could on­ly refuse such a re­quest in two nar­row­ly de­fined cir­cum­stances: if the mo­tion con­sti­tutes an abuse of the rules of the House, or if it in­fringes on the rights of the mi­nor­i­ty.

“The dis­cre­tion which is to be ex­er­cised is not an open-tex­tured one. It is on­ly in two very nar­row­ly cir­cum­scribed cir­cum­stances that it can be re­fused. That’s the prob­lem. The way the stand­ing or­ders are con­struct­ed is that once you don’t meet ei­ther an abuse or a sup­pres­sion of the mi­nor­i­ty, the ques­tion has to be put,” Singh said.

“In my re­spect­ful view, the ev­i­dence does not arise to an abuse of the rules and nei­ther is it an in­fringe­ment on the rights of the mi­nor­i­ty.”

Op­po­si­tion mem­bers im­me­di­ate­ly protest­ed as the Speak­er con­tin­ued his rul­ing.

“Every­one has a right to speak but his­tor­i­cal ev­i­dence is... no, no, I am rul­ing. I don’t wish to hear any­one,” Singh said as op­po­si­tion MPs voiced ob­jec­tions.

Scot­land in­sist­ed he had been pre­vent­ed from com­plet­ing his sub­mis­sion.

“You stopped me in the mid­dle of mak­ing my sub­mis­sion,” he shout­ed, his voice au­di­ble in the cham­ber de­spite his mi­cro­phone be­ing turned off.

“I heard you. Have a seat, have a seat,” the Speak­er re­spond­ed.

But Scot­land con­tin­ued to protest, telling the Speak­er: “Hear me be­fore you rule.”

Singh ad­mon­ished him, say­ing both of them could not be on their feet at the same time and in­struct­ing him re­peat­ed­ly to take his seat.

Op­po­si­tion mem­bers were heard shout­ing, “It is a dis­grace, it is an abuse of process.”

As the con­fronta­tion es­ca­lat­ed, the Speak­er called for a mar­shal.

When Singh even­tu­al­ly put the ques­tion to the House, the Op­po­si­tion bench­es were emp­ty af­ter PNM mem­bers walked out.

Out­side Par­lia­ment, Op­po­si­tion MPs con­demned the rul­ing. They de­scribed the de­ci­sion as out­ra­geous, dan­ger­ous and a vi­o­la­tion of the rights of the mi­nor­i­ty in the House and promised to protest.

“There is noth­ing in the SoE reg­u­la­tions that pre­vent us, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, from hit­ting the streets and let­ting our voic­es be heard against this wicked, bru­tal dic­ta­tor­ship that we have as a Gov­ern­ment in Port-of-Spain. Enough is enough and it is time to push back against them,” Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les said.

“Be­cause when you can shut down an op­po­si­tion util­is­ing your ma­jor­i­ty, in­vok­ing the stand­ing or­ders in a clear abuse of process in the way that we are see­ing to­day (yes­ter­day), it is time to say enough is enough and push back against all of them with­in the con­fines of the law.”

Scot­land de­scribed the in­ci­dent as a dan­ger­ous mo­ment for par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy.

“If you re­al­ly in­ter­nalise what has hap­pened, they have lit­er­al­ly shut down democ­ra­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go as we know it,” he said, ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of be­ing un­com­fort­able with facts sur­round­ing its “dis­mal” per­for­mance over the past ten months.

“This is one of the dark­est days in our his­to­ry, you know, par­lia­men­tary his­to­ry ... How could this not be an in­fringe­ment of the right of the mi­nor­i­ty when we have come to­day for that spe­cif­ic pur­pose?” he ques­tioned.

Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert al­so crit­i­cised the de­ci­sion, say­ing the Op­po­si­tion had been pre­vent­ed from re­spond­ing to what he de­scribed as mis­in­for­ma­tion raised dur­ing the de­bate.

He specif­i­cal­ly took is­sue with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal’s at­tempt to com­pare the ter­mi­na­tion of work­ers from CEPEP, URP and the reaf­foresta­tion pro­gramme with the lay­offs that oc­curred at Ca­roni and Petrotrin.

“In one case, peo­ple got bil­lions of dol­lars in sev­er­ance and so on. In an­oth­er case, peo­ple got ze­ro,” Im­bert said.

He not­ed that the mo­tion high­light­ed how Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed sin­gle moth­ers, fe­male-head­ed house­holds, youth, the el­der­ly and per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, in­creas­ing food in­se­cu­ri­ty, school ab­sen­teeism, men­tal health strain and the risk of ex­ploita­tion and so­cial ex­clu­sion.

“In my 34 years as a pub­lic ser­vant, as the longest-serv­ing par­lia­men­tar­i­an at this time, and one of the longest-serv­ing ever, I have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced this,” he said.

“As far as I am con­cerned, this is a to­tal abuse of process, and it is a to­tal in­fringe­ment of our rights, be­cause the way the stand­ing or­ders are word­ed, it is the in­fringe­ment of the rights of the mi­nor­i­ty. We are the mi­nor­i­ty.”