Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribed yes­ter­day's 90-minute meet­ing with the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee as "in­ter­est­ing and very cor­dial."He and two of his lawyers–Michael Quam­i­na and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi – ar­rived at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex at 11 am yes­ter­day for the ques­tion-and-an­swer ses­sion with the com­mit­tee, which was chaired by House Speak­er Wade Mark.

Row­ley was re­ferred to the com­mit­tee on May 22 af­ter the Speak­er ruled a pri­ma fa­cie case had been made out against him based on a mo­tion pre­sent­ed to him on the said day by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.Mark ruled that Row­ley was in con­tempt of the Par­lia­ment for state­ments he made dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion of a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against the Prime Min­is­ter on May 20.

Row­ley pre­sent­ed 31 e-mails from the ad­dress­es of Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and oth­ers about pro­posed ac­tions in the wake of a T&T Guardian ex­clu­sive sto­ry about the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Bill in Au­gust last year.

The leg­is­la­tion would have caused two busi­ness­men–Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son (for­mer fi­nanciers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress )–to es­cape their day in court in the pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry in­to the Pi­ar­co Air­port de­vel­op­ment project.The law was re­pealed af­ter emer­gency sit­tings of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.

Row­ley told the me­dia he could not say any­thing about the de­lib­er­a­tions ex­cept that an­oth­er meet­ing was sched­uled. He said he ad­dressed the com­mit­tee and was ad­vised by his at­tor­neys.Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, who is a mem­ber of the com­mit­tee, al­so spoke with re­porters af­ter the meet­ing.

He dis­missed a claim by Row­ley that Gov­ern­ment had al­ready prej­u­diced him in the mat­ter, say­ing to claim that mem­bers of the com­mit­tee could not take a de­ci­sion with­out par­ti­san in­ter­ests would be in­ac­cu­rate.He said Row­ley was guar­an­teed nat­ur­al jus­tice from the com­mit­tee.Like Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion MP Paula Gopee-Scoon, Ra­mad­har said the meet­ing was "in­ter­est­ing."