Gail Alexan­der

The 2012-2013 bud­get had to be passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by 7.50 pm last night, Speak­er Wade Mark said yes­ter­day. He said the Stand­ing Or­ders man­dat­ed that the bud­get had to be passed in four days. He said the Stand­ing Or­ders would have to be re­vised lat­er on.

Mark cut yes­ter­day's lunch break from an hour to 45 min­utes to al­low more speak­ing time in or­der for the bud­get to be passed by the dead­line. He called on speak­ers to arrange their con­tri­bu­tions to suit the al­lot­ted time and warned that there would be no 4.30 pm tea break.

Up to that time, the Gov­ern­ment still had two or three speak­ers and PNM?MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald al­so had to speak. De­bate of the bud­get will start in the Sen­ate next Mon­day at 10 am, Sen­a­tor Ja­mal Mo­hammed said. The Gov­ern­ment has lined up 16 speak­ers, the Op­po­si­tion six and the In­de­pen­dent bench­es, nine. Mo­hammed ex­pect­ed the Sen­ate de­bate might end by next Thurs­day.

Fol­low­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing's de­bate, Op­po­si­tion?Leader Kei­th Row­ley called on the Prime Min­is­ter to deal with Na­tion­al?Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er af­ter he said the PNM was "spon­sor­ing mur­ders." "To seek to as­cribe some­one's death to the PNM is sim­ply ridicu­lous.?Mr Warn­er has a habit of mak­ing these pre­pos­ter­ous state­ments, not re­al­is­ing there are con­se­quences to his state­ments," Row­ley said.