Richard Lord

Both Chief Whip Mar­lene Mc Don­ald and MP for Diego Mar­tin North East Colm Im­bert say there is no di­vi­sion in the Op­po­si­tion. They said that dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Most of the Op­po­si­tion MPs, ex­cept Mc Don­ald and Im­bert, walked out of the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber on Fri­day evening af­ter House Speak­er Wade Mark put a mo­tion by House Leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal for Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Amery Browne not to be no longer heard. He was con­tribut­ing to the de­bate on the An­ti-Gang Bill, 2010.

Mc Don­ald said she was not aware of any break in the ranks of the PNM. "The team is unit­ed and com­mit­ted," she added. Com­ment­ing on the par­tial walk­out, she said: "All of us couldn't walk out as we were threat­ened by the oth­er side (Gov­ern­ment)," she added. Mc Don­ald said the Gov­ern­ment threat­ened to com­plete all the busi­ness on the Or­der pa­per if the en­tire Op­po­si­tion had walked out of the Cham­ber. She said list­ed on the Or­der Pa­per were the Bail Amend­ment Bill, the Ev­i­dence Act and oth­er crit­i­cal mat­ters.

Mc Don­ald said the Gov­ern­ment would have rushed through all those mat­ters with­out any in­put from the Op­po­si­tion if they had all walked out the cham­ber. She added: "If the en­tire Op­po­si­tion had va­cat­ed their seats, they (Govt) would have seized that op­por­tu­ni­ty to clear the en­tire Or­der Pa­per.

"So the coun­try would have missed the de­bate on the Bail Amend­ment Bill, the Ev­i­dence Act and the mo­tion for the Stand­ing Or­ders," she added. Im­bert said he had no prob­lem with the walk­out but en­sured that at least two MPs re­mained to pre­vent the Gov­ern­ment from com­plet­ing de­bate on the mat­ters be­fore the House with­out an in­put from the Op­po­si­tion.

Im­bert said Mc Don­ald and him were pre­pared to talk for a max­i­mum 75 min­utes on all be­fore the House to en­sure it would have sat un­til about 3 am last Sat­ur­day. "There­fore they backed down and ad­journed the House," he said. He said the is­sue about the par­tial walk­out was "be­ing blown out of pro­por­tions. I don't think it's a big deal and I don't think it's some­thing that peo­ple should be fo­cussing too much on. Cer­tain­ly there wasn't no split in the Op­po­si­tion."

The for­mer cul­ture min­is­ter said the Op­po­si­tion pro­pos­es to raise con­cern about sev­er­al of­fend­ing claus­es in the Bail Bill when it is de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.