Sturge, Imbert avoid privileges sanctions from House Speaker

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

No fur­ther ac­tion will be tak­en against Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MP Wayne Sturge and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MP Colm Im­bert, fol­low­ing re­cent moves to have each tak­en be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee on sep­a­rate mat­ters.

But House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh, who con­firmed their re­spec­tive is­sues were closed dur­ing Fri­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, al­so ad­vised MPs to en­sure the cor­rect­ness of their state­ments re­gard­ing Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment be­fore mak­ing them and to think “long and hard” be­fore seek­ing to in­voke the sub ju­dice rule.

Singh ruled on the call by PNM whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who raised a mat­ter of Priv­i­leges re­gard­ing Sturge’s claim that PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi was rent­ing AGRA Court to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. Sturge sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised and with­drew the state­ment.

On that is­sue, Singh said no fur­ther ac­tion was re­quired. But he cau­tioned MPs that they should sat­is­fy them­selves of the cor­rect­ness of their state­ments re­gard­ing MPs be­fore mak­ing them.

“Whilst mere neg­li­gence, reck­less­ness or in­ad­ver­tence re­gard­ing the ac­cu­ra­cy of a state­ment does not meet the thresh­old of de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing the House, Mem­bers ought to re­frain from mak­ing state­ments, which may be in­ter­pret­ed as seek­ing to cast as­per­sions on oth­er mem­bers,” Singh added

Singh al­so ruled on Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein’s bid to have Im­bert tak­en be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for “de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing” Par­lia­ment by claim­ing the High Court’s de­ci­sion in the case of Ro­honie Ramkissoon ver­sus the Fi­nance Min­is­ter was cur­rent­ly un­der ap­peal and couldn’t be dis­cussed as it was sub ju­dice.

Singh said no fur­ther ac­tion was re­quired, since he had con­sid­ered the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the mat­ter and ex­am­ined the ex­pla­na­tion by Im­bert, who al­so un­re­served­ly apol­o­gised for his mis­state­ment.

Singh said the ac­cept­ed prac­tice is that where mem­bers make in­ac­cu­rate state­ments and timeous­ly cor­rect those state­ments, the House ought to ac­cept the truth­ful­ness of the cor­rec­tion.

But he ad­vised mem­bers to “think long and hard be­fore seek­ing to in­voke the sub ju­dice rule. This ap­plies even more so where the mem­ber al­leg­ing that a mat­ter is sub ju­dice is par­ty to the pro­ceed­ings in ques­tion. The mem­ber has a du­ty to be in­formed of mat­ters in which they are a par­ty.”

He said the sub ju­dice rule has been cod­i­fied in Stand­ing Or­der 49.

“The point to be as­cer­tained from Stand­ing Or­der 49, is that the sub ju­dice rule is not ab­solute but dis­cre­tionary in its ap­pli­ca­tion, and, in pre­scribed cir­cum­stances, dis­cus­sion on a mat­ter that is be­fore the courts may be al­lowed,” Singh said.

“If the sub ju­dice con­ven­tion is ap­plied too broad­ly, then the mere ex­is­tence of lit­i­ga­tion can be used as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for cur­tail­ing de­bate.

“Con­verse­ly, if the sub ju­dice rule is ap­plied too nar­row­ly, mem­bers may make state­ments that un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty or im­par­tial­i­ty of ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings through their pro­nounce­ments in Par­lia­ment.”