Tony Fras­er

If it is proven by an in­de­pen­dent and ex­pert in­ves­ti­gat­ing team, in­clu­sive of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, that the par­cel of e-mails ex­posed in the Par­lia­ment by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley is so patent­ly false that if he had had a pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion done on the doc­u­ments it would have re­vealed them to be bo­gus, then he would sure­ly be de­serv­ing of a cen­sure ap­pro­pri­ate to such neg­li­gence or worse.

It would al­so be up to his par­ty to take ac­tion against him for un­der-per­form­ing at a lev­el of pro­bity and po­lit­i­cal sagac­i­ty re­quired in his re­spec­tive roles.The above is the ob­vi­ous. How­ev­er, the ap­proach does not deal with the fun­da­men­tal prob­lem of the need for a re­view of the priv­i­leges al­lowed un­der the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem in the con­text of the his­tor­i­cal abuse of them by Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment.

As this col­umn has pre­vi­ous­ly analysed, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans on all sides and from all par­ties have over decades sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly used the priv­i­lege mere­ly as a means of po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da against each oth­er. More than that, the MPs have slan­dered cit­i­zens who do not have the right to re­dress by the courts.The priv­i­lege, grant­ed un­der the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem, was in­sti­tut­ed and op­er­at­ed in a po­lit­i­cal cul­ture in which dom­i­na­tion by the po­lit­i­cal elite was en­trenched.

As analysed in pre­vi­ous columns, the Ex­ec­u­tive has com­plete con­trol over the Par­lia­ment and the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges (PC), in­clu­sive of the pow­er to ap­point a Speak­er of the House who makes the de­ci­sion as to whether a mat­ter qual­i­fies for be­ing tak­en be­fore the PC. More­over, giv­en the com­po­si­tion of the PC with an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty, the Ex­ec­u­tive is ef­fec­tive­ly in charge of the de­ci­sions made.

The in­con­gruity of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing around this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter is that the Prime Min­is­ter deemed that the e-mail in­ves­ti­ga­tion could not be de­cid­ed by the MPs with­out tech­ni­cal skills and re­sources.She there­fore re­ferred the e-mails for in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the po­lice. Nev­er­the­less, the PM sent the al­leged act of de­cep­tion by Row­ley to the PC for de­ter­mi­na­tion with one pos­si­ble out­come be­ing the sus­pen­sion of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.

It is there­fore not dif­fi­cult to con­clude that the Par­lia­ment and the com­mit­tee sys­tem are struc­tured not for ra­tio­nal de­lib­er­a­tions and ob­jec­tive out­comes but rather as an in­sti­tu­tion that favours po­lit­i­cal par­ti­san­ship.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, while it is clear that on­ly a pub­licly ac­cept­ed in­de­pen­dent en­quiry will sat­is­fy the right of the pub­lic to know the truth of the e-mail al­le­ga­tions, there is hur­ried ac­tiv­i­ty by sig­nif­i­cant play­ers in the po­lit­i­cal are­na to in­flu­ence in­sti­tu­tion­al and pub­lic opin­ion on the guilt and/or in­no­cence of the play­ers through po­lit­i­cal sleight of hand.

Al­ready list­ed is the ac­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter to have a struc­tural­ly bi­ased PC bring Dr Row­ley in guilty be­fore a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion is done. Then there is the sto­ry leaked to the news­pa­pers about al­leged bug­ging of the DPP's of­fice in line with one of the pack­age of e-mails. Most re­cent­ly there was the news­pa­per ac­count of a re­port on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port­ed­ly done by peo­ple as­so­ci­at­ed with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al; un­sur­pris­ing­ly, the re­port finds the e-mails to be fraud­u­lent. More­over, the re­sults of the study are then strate­gi­cal­ly sent to the po­lice and leaked to the me­dia, all of this de­signed to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion, per­haps even con­t­a­m­i­nate the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion, too, has been work­ing over­time to dis­cred­it the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.But the anx­i­ety and hur­ried ac­tions are un­der­stand­able–if it is found that the e-mails were re­al­ly ex­changed among key gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, then sure­ly the Gov­ern­ment must fall. Equal­ly ex­pect­ed would be the slide from grace of Dr Row­ley if it turns out that he was not suf­fi­cient­ly ju­di­cious in the use of the priv­i­leges giv­en, or worse.

On the de­fi­cien­cies in the struc­ture and func­tion­ing of the Par­lia­ment, Dr Row­ley and his sup­port­ers would cer­tain­ly feel gross­ly wronged if he is found to have neg­li­gent­ly mis­led the Par­lia­ment and strong and de­ci­sive ac­tion is tak­en against him when that has not been the tra­di­tion with MPs who have en­gaged sim­i­lar breach­es.

For in­stance, then min­is­ter Jack Warn­er made un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions against peo­ple he claimed were plan­ning to destab­lise the coun­try, yet when the "plot­ters" con­vinc­ing­ly re­fut­ed the al­le­ga­tions, no one sought to drag Warn­er be­fore the PC.

More­over, the Speak­er, who in­stant­ly ar­rived at a de­ci­sion that a pri­ma fa­cie case had been made against the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in the e-mail scan­dal, de­nied one of the peo­ple Warn­er charged with plot­ting the right to put his re­sponse to the al­le­ga­tions on the par­lia­men­tary record.So too was the case when a num­ber of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters es­caped be­ing made to face the PC when it was found that they mis­led the House on the is­sue of Resh­mi's qual­i­fi­ca­tions and suit­abil­i­ty for the job of head of in­tel­li­gence.

The big point is that there is need for the elim­i­na­tion of an abused priv­i­leges sys­tem and re­place­ment with one which would make MPs open to court ac­tion by peo­ple they wrong. Pow­er must be re­turned to the peo­ple.