Kali­fa Clyne

The Gov­ern­ment has used the mo­tion to sus­pend for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning as a di­ver­sion­ary tac­tic and has shift­ed the ar­gu­ment away from the va­lid­i­ty of what Man­ning had said with re­spect to the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's res­i­dence.So said Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Diego Mar­tin North East, Colm Im­bert, last night as he spoke in an in­ter­view af­ter a mo­tion was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to sus­pend mem­ber for San Fer­nan­do East Patrick Man­ning.

Im­bert said: "In our view the Gov­ern­ment has thrown away what­ev­er op­por­tu­ni­ty they could have had to look at the mer­its of what Mr Man­ning said or to de­ter­mine the truth­ful­ness of his al­le­ga­tions."He said the Gov­ern­ment had changed the sub­ject and op­er­at­ed like a kan­ga­roo court, with­out pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness."In their haste to sus­pend Mr Man­ning they have bro­ken every rule of pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness," Im­bert added.

He felt the com­mit­tee had made sev­er­al blun­ders and should have warned Man­ning if he did not at­tend an ad­verse find­ing would be made against him.He added that the fi­nal re­port by the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee had been sub­mit­ted with­out agree­ment from all com­mit­tee mem­bers.He de­scribed the re­port as in­con­sis­tent and in­com­plete and had said dur­ing the sit­ting in Par­lia­ment that sev­er­al things in the re­port were in­ac­cu­rate.He said the Gov­ern­ment al­so had brought an in­com­plete mo­tion to the House and amend­ed it in mid­stream, ef­fec­tive­ly am­bush­ing the Op­po­si­tion.e felt Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to cre­ate a new talk­ing point in the coun­try to dis­tract from its own in­ter­nal is­sues.