He­len Dray­ton

Al­le­ga­tions of bias against a Speak­er touch the heart of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege be­cause such ac­cu­sa­tions ques­tion the im­par­tial­i­ty of the chair, the very foun­da­tion up­on which rest or­der and fair­ness in de­bate. To al­lege that the Speak­er has act­ed with bias or par­tial­i­ty may amount to a breach of priv­i­lege or even con­tempt of the House. It could un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in the in­de­pen­dence of the Chair and the in­tegri­ty of the in­sti­tu­tion, as well as it may not, de­pend­ing on the in­tent of the mem­ber or mem­bers and, im­por­tant­ly, the ev­i­dence and cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the al­le­ga­tion.

Such al­le­ga­tions have arisen re­peat­ed­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause speak­ers tra­di­tion­al­ly don’t ex­plain their rul­ings, which has of­ten fu­elled per­cep­tions of bias.

While the rule stands that im­pu­ta­tions of bias are im­prop­er both in­side and out­side the Cham­ber, nev­er­the­less, a Speak­er must re­main con­scious of how his or her de­ci­sions and be­hav­iours are per­ceived, as when the Speak­er mocked the stature of MP Colm Im­bert and then cal­low­ly said it was a joke.

Based on what is in the pub­lic do­main, short­ly be­fore the bud­get de­bate, a mat­ter of priv­i­lege was filed by the Mem­ber for Cou­va South, Mr Bar­ry Padarath, against the Op­po­si­tion Leader, Mrs Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, re­gard­ing a state­ment she made on Oc­to­ber 10, which the Mem­ber for Cou­va South al­leged at­tempt­ed to bring in­to dis­re­pute the in­de­pen­dent, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic work of the Par­lia­ment by ques­tion­ing the im­par­tial­i­ty of the Speak­er, Mr Jagdeo Singh.

The pre­cise man­ner in which it was filed was un­clear. What is ev­i­dent is that the mat­ter wasn’t pre­vi­ous­ly brought be­fore the House. Un­der es­tab­lished par­lia­men­tary prac­tice, a mat­ter of priv­i­lege must be raised at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty. Was this done?

It is rather cu­ri­ous that the Deputy Speak­er, Dr Aiy­na Ali, is­sued a rul­ing on priv­i­lege, al­though no such mat­ter had been for­mal­ly raised in the House or con­sid­ered in ac­cor­dance with prop­er pro­ce­dure.

Un­der the Stand­ing Or­ders, for a rul­ing on a mat­ter of priv­i­lege to be is­sued from the chair, the mat­ter must first be raised in the House.

Even that step isn’t au­to­mat­ic; the Speak­er must first de­ter­mine whether the mat­ter qual­i­fies to be raised at all. If the Speak­er de­ter­mines that it qual­i­fies, the mem­ber must then stand and raise the mat­ter in the House as a mo­tion of priv­i­lege.

On­ly af­ter the mat­ter is so raised does the Speak­er de­ter­mine whether a pri­ma fa­cie case has been made. Nor­mal­ly, this process takes sev­er­al days, as the Speak­er must con­sid­er whether the is­sue gen­uine­ly war­rants the at­ten­tion of the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges. There should be some ev­i­dence that the mem­ber was wil­ful­ly mis­lead­ing and ma­li­cious­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly in­tend­ed to bring the Speak­er and the in­sti­tu­tion in­to dis­re­pute. It is un­usu­al for a com­pre­hen­sive rul­ing to be de­liv­ered on the same day that a mo­tion is first raised.

Here we have the un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion where the Deputy Speak­er de­ter­mined that a pri­ma fa­cie case was made against the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion while breach­ing the Stand­ing Or­der rules—a strike against the very de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples Par­lia­ment is de­signed to up­hold.

It was con­cern­ing that im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the Deputy Speak­er raised the priv­i­lege mat­ter, the Clerk of the House at­tempt­ed to in­ter­vene, pre­sum­ably to ad­vise on the pro­ce­dure. He sits at arm’s length from the chair. She ap­peared to dis­re­gard his in­ter­ven­tion.

The pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards in the sys­tem ex­ist to pre­serve the neu­tral­i­ty and in­tegri­ty of the chair. Par­lia­men­tary prac­tice and pro­ce­dure con­sti­tute a spe­cialised dis­ci­pline in which few can claim sub­stan­tial ex­per­tise. For this rea­son, in par­lia­ments across the Com­mon­wealth, there ex­ists a recog­nised body of pro­fes­sion­als known as the So­ci­ety of Clerks at the Ta­ble, the ac­knowl­edged ex­perts in par­lia­men­tary law and prac­tice. Ig­nor­ing the clerk’s pro­fes­sion­al guid­ance risks erod­ing the pro­ce­dur­al bal­ance that pro­tects both the au­thor­i­ty of the chair and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the in­sti­tu­tion.

Com­mon­wealth par­lia­ments’ his­to­ry is re­plete with ac­cu­sa­tions against speak­ers ques­tion­ing their neu­tral­i­ty. Ours is lit­tered with such al­le­ga­tions. The very UNC Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South, who brought the priv­i­lege mat­ter against the Op­po­si­tion Leader, once dis­re­spect­ful­ly told speak­er Brigid An­nisette-George, “The peo­ple vot­ed for us; who vot­ed for you?” In 2021, the UNC Op­po­si­tion ac­cused the same Speak­er of bias, al­leg­ing favouritism to­ward the PNM gov­ern­ment and dis­re­gard for the UNC’s con­tri­bu­tions and mo­tions. In 2017 and 2020, the UNC claimed that the Speak­er’s bias had hin­dered its ef­forts to ef­fec­tive­ly scru­ti­nise the PNM gov­ern­ment.

If such al­le­ga­tions al­ways bring the Speak­er and the in­sti­tu­tion in­to dis­re­pute, then all Speak­ers, past, present, and fu­ture, have been dis­graced, and all par­lia­ments dis­hon­oured.

Is it the in­tent of mem­bers to dis­grace speak­ers and par­lia­ments when they ex­press per­cep­tions of bias, or is this in­her­ent in our po­lit­i­cal sys­tem? Politi­cians align with the phi­los­o­phy of their po­lit­i­cal par­ty and of­ten hold ad­ver­sar­i­al views of their com­peti­tors. The us-ver­sus-them men­tal­i­ty plays huge­ly in­to po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sive­ness, bias, and po­lar­i­sa­tion. Politi­cians tend to en­dorse on­ly in­for­ma­tion that con­firms their ide­o­log­i­cal pref­er­ences, their il­lu­sion­ary “truth”, as do trib­al mem­bers whose truths are shaped by the di­vi­sive po­lit­i­cal cul­ture. When per­son­al iden­ti­ty and cul­ture in­te­grate with po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, dis­agree­ments may be tak­en as per­son­al at­tacks. Fur­ther­more, a Speak­er is nom­i­nat­ed by the gov­ern­ing par­ty, as it holds the ma­jor­i­ty of seats. At any time, a gov­ern­ment can call a No Con­fi­dence Mo­tion and throw out the Speak­er. That alone, right­ly or wrong­ly, pre­sup­pos­es in-built bias, set­ting the stage for con­flict.

This is why the Speak­er or Deputy Speak­er must be seen to en­force par­lia­men­tary rules dis­pas­sion­ate­ly. A breach of Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Or­ders in­curs loss of the moral au­thor­i­ty to com­mand the re­spect of all par­ties. Stand­ing Or­der 32 on the Priv­i­leges pro­ce­dure is clear and re­quires no in­ter­pre­ta­tion. It was breached. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, what makes the re­fer­ral of the Op­po­si­tion Leader to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee trou­bling was the tim­ing and stealth of the priv­i­leged am­bush, risk­ing the per­cep­tion that the Chair was part of a po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy. The stage was pre­pared, cam­eras ready, au­di­ence in place, and the Deputy Speak­er read the pre­pared script, look­ing some­what un­com­fort­able as the mis­chief un­fold­ed. Bush­whack­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader di­rect­ly af­ter her re­sponse to the 2026 Bud­get didn’t de­tract from the sub­stance of the pre­sen­ta­tion but rather brought at­ten­tion to it.

It is nec­es­sary to state that a mem­ber bring­ing a mat­ter of priv­i­lege dur­ing a bud­get de­bate is noth­ing new. On Oc­to­ber 16, 2018, con­sis­tent with the Stand­ing Or­ders pro­ce­dures, MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is brought a mo­tion against MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, al­leg­ing “con­tempt of the House” for ut­ter­ing threat­en­ing words to a mem­ber. About two weeks lat­er, the Speak­er ruled that a pri­ma fa­cie case was made. Oth­er cas­es I re­viewed, though not dur­ing the Bud­get De­bate, have been prop­er­ly moved.

To pre­serve trust and con­fi­dence in the in­sti­tu­tion of Par­lia­ment, one can­not overem­pha­sise the crit­i­cal con­sti­tu­tion­al role of the Speak­er and the im­por­tance of po­lit­i­cal im­par­tial­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly con­trol de­bates, al­low ques­tions that en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty to the peo­ple, and, among oth­er im­por­tant oblig­a­tions, up­hold par­lia­men­tary rules.