Richard Lord

Con­cerned cit­i­zen Patrick By­noe has called on House Speak­er Wade Mark to dis­ci­pline em­bat­tled Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts for al­leged­ly mak­ing "dis­parag­ing re­marks" in Par­lia­ment on March 28.By­noe's call was con­tained in an April 4 let­ter to Mark, claim­ing that Roberts made re­marks crit­i­cis­ing Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers for abus­ing him while con­tribut­ing to a pri­vate mo­tion on the bil­lion-dol­lar Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny/ WASA wa­ter-re­cy­cling plant at Beetham, Port-of-Spain.

By­noe pre­sent­ed Mark with news­pa­per re­ports to sup­port his claim that Roberts was not abused by PNM pro­test­ers.Both the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had sup­port­ers out­side the Par­lia­ment for that de­bate and were close­ly ob­served by po­lice of­fi­cers.Roberts re­port­ed­ly told leg­is­la­tors then: "But the adults in PNM jer­seys here to­day, I am stat­ing here, that they were act­ing like hooli­gans."

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, By­noe said two months af­ter his let­ter was sent to the Speak­er, he was yet to re­ceive a re­sponse.He said he de­cid­ed to write to Mark be­cause of all the po­lit­i­cal ten­sion in the coun­try."It is get­ting out of hand in the coun­try now," he added.By­noe said: "Things are es­ca­lat­ing in the coun­try now in terms of how sup­port­ers are be­ing treat­ed. There are new fea­tures com­ing in­to the pol­i­tics and it could es­ca­late," he added.

"There is no telling where we could be at the end of the road, so this thing needs to be nipped in the bud," he said.By­noe said he made one re­quest of the Speak­er in that mat­ter."The on­ly re­quest I made of the Speak­er is that he (Roberts) be rep­ri­mand­ed by ask­ing for his apol­o­gy," he said.By­noe said based news­pa­per re­ports in all the dailies on March 29, there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port Roberts' claim that he was abused by PNM sup­port­ers and Roberts should apol­o­gise.Mark de­clined com­ment on the mat­ter.