We are not biased

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Par­lia­ment staff are deny­ing al­le­ga­tions of bias, af­ter claims by Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath that mi­cro­phones used by Gov­ern­ment MPs were de­lib­er­ate­ly mut­ed dur­ing par­lia­men­tary sit­tings.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia un­der the strict con­di­tion of anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, work­ers said they were not fazed by the ac­cu­sa­tions and re­mained com­mit­ted to car­ry­ing out their du­ties.

“We serve both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion equal­ly. It mat­ters not to us who is in pow­er or what. We serve both sides equal­ly and it’s as sim­ple as that.”

Fri­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing erupt­ed short­ly be­fore 10 pm when Padarath ac­cused par­lia­men­tary broad­cast­ing per­son­nel of show­ing bias by mut­ing the mi­cro­phones of Gov­ern­ment MPs and al­leged­ly main­tain­ing high­er au­dio lev­els for Op­po­si­tion MPs.

There were al­so al­le­ga­tions, though it was not seen in the Par­lia­ment Chan­nel’s pub­lic broad­cast due to the cam­era an­gle, that Padarath left his seat and took a pic­ture of a staff mem­ber whom he be­lieved was in charge of the au­dio sys­tem.

Asked how staff felt hear­ing the ac­cu­sa­tion, the work­ers said: “We are sur­prised that that would hap­pen. But at the end of the day, we have our job to do and that is all. We have a job to do and that is what we are com­ing to work to­mor­row (Mon­day), for the sit­ting. We are sit­ting from morn­ing, and we are com­ing to do our job. It’s as sim­ple as that.”

Dur­ing the loud out­bursts on Fri­day, which caused the sit­ting to be sus­pend­ed for ten min­utes, mem­ber of the Broad­cast Com­mit­tee, Michelle Ben­jamin, said that the mat­ter of mi­cro­phones be­ing mut­ed was raised dur­ing the last par­lia­men­tary term.

Mem­bers of the com­mit­tee, which in­cludes Hans des Vi­gnes, Fos­ter Cum­mings and Khadi­jah Ameen, were con­tact­ed yes­ter­day but calls went unan­swered.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that com­mit­tee dis­cus­sions are pri­vate, and whether or not the mat­ter was raised ought not to be dis­closed.

It is ex­pect­ed that when the com­mit­tee meets again the mat­ter will once again come up.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, a for­mer par­lia­ment staffer of over three decades al­so as­sured that mem­bers of the broad­cast team are pro­fes­sion­al.

The for­mer work­er said the mi­cro­phone is not an in­di­vid­ual thing.

“Every time the Speak­er stands, the tech­ni­cian switch­es off all the oth­er mi­cro­phones. You may think it is your mi­cro­phone alone, but all oth­er mi­cro­phones are mut­ed be­cause the Speak­er must al­ways have con­trol of the floor.”

Ac­cord­ing to the work­er, the same prac­tice ex­ists through­out West­min­ster-style leg­is­la­tures and is de­signed to pre­serve or­der dur­ing heat­ed ex­changes.

“This is not some PNM-UNC thing. This is how it is done not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go but every­where.”

The work­er said MPs seat­ed on one side of the cham­ber of­ten can­not tell when mi­cro­phones on the op­po­site side have al­so been mut­ed, cre­at­ing the im­pres­sion that on­ly their side is be­ing af­fect­ed.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj sug­gest­ed the con­tro­ver­sy was over­shad­ow­ing more press­ing na­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing to­day’s Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view.

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said the ex­pla­na­tions pro­vid­ed by par­lia­men­tary staff left lit­tle room for fur­ther de­bate.

“In light of staff say­ing they are work­ing for every­one, there is no is­sue. They are pre­pared to do the work...If staff say they are pre­pared to do the work, then we’re speak­ing about ab­solute­ly noth­ing.”