Richard Lord

Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Wade Mark sees a dis­con­nect be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Par­lia­ment and the pop­u­lace.The ob­ser­va­tion was made at a me­dia brief­ing at the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber, Tow­er D, Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. It was con­vened to an­nounce this coun­try's host­ing of the 21st Con­fer­ence of Speak­ers and Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cers of the Com­mon­wealth (CSPOC) to take place at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel from Jan­u­ary 8 to12, next year. The con­fer­ence will cost the State just over $1 mil­lion, Mark said.

Mark said many cit­i­zens of T&T were ei­ther "un­aware" of or "have be­come cyn­i­cal about the role and ef­fec­tive­ness of Par­lia­ment."Asked to clar­i­fy, Mark said the Par­lia­ment had to be­come more open and pro­mote link­ages with the peo­ple. "There ap­pears to be a dis­con­nect be­tween the Par­lia­ment and the peo­ple," he added.

Mark said both Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith and he were try­ing to ad­dress that mat­ter. Mark said the 50th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion was one ini­tia­tive to forge clos­er re­la­tions be­tween the Par­lia­ment and the peo­ple. He re­vealed that on De­cem­ber 19, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards will ad­dress a joint as­sem­bly of Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

"What we are do­ing is try­ing to bring the Par­lia­ment clos­er to the peo­ple," Mark said.He said in 2012 he and Hamel-Smith will em­bark on an out­reach pro­gramme to in­clude vis­its to pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools and the uni­ver­si­ties to fur­ther de­vel­op link­ages be­tween the Par­lia­ment and the peo­ple. Hamel-Smith, who al­so at­tend­ed the news brief­ing was asked to com­ment on the im­par­tial­i­ty of the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers. He said such of­fi­cers were re­quired to be "in­de­pen­dent" and to "call the shot as he best sees it."

Mark said CSPOC was an in­de­pen­dent group with no for­mal af­fil­i­a­tion to the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at, Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment or the Com­mon­wealth Par­lia­men­tary As­so­ci­a­tion. He said next month's con­fer­ence will at­tract Speak­ers and Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cers from at least 35 Com­mon­wealth na­tions.

The con­fer­ence will ad­dress:

• The role of Par­lia­men­tary Diplo­ma­cy in the era of Glob­al­i­sa­tion

• Ex­ec­u­tive Ac­count­abil­i­ty: Over­sight Role of Par­lia­ment

• Emerg­ing new Chal­lenges for Speak­ers: Mul­ti-par­ty Cham­bers and Mi­nor­i­ty Coali­tion Gov­ern­ment

• Par­lia­men­tary Ser­vice and its Man­age­ment: Strength­en­ing the In­de­pen­dence of Par­lia­ment.