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Sunday, July 20, 2025

PP out to wipe up Life Sport mess

by

20140804

Geisha Kow­lessar an­dRhon­dor Dowlat

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment was slammed by the Op­po­si­tion yes­ter­day for hold­ing par­lia­men­tary ses­sions in Au­gust.The Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment Bill and the Pro­cure­ment Leg­is­la­tion are ex­pect­ed to be de­bat­ed this month, al­though Par­lia­ment tra­di­tion­al­ly takes a break dur­ing this time.Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at Par­lia­ment in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley said Au­gust was a time when many par­lia­men­tar­i­ans spent time with their fam­i­lies and went on va­ca­tion abroad.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of de­lib­er­ate­ly not tak­ing a break for Au­gust so as to sway peo­ple from the Life Sport con­tro­ver­sy."This is pure­ly to change the con­ver­sa­tion from the cur­rent land­slide of scan­dal the coun­try is em­broiled in," Row­ley said.He said as in the case of his col­leagues, Au­gust was the on­ly time he could spend with his chil­dren."In all my years in the Par­lia­ment, the on­ly time I got to spend with my fam­i­ly is the month of Au­gust, and to do that you have to leave the coun­try for a pe­ri­od of time.

"If you are here on va­ca­tion you will have to be work­ing, be­cause you are avail­able to your con­stituents. If you want a week or two of qui­et time with your fam­i­ly, you plan that in Au­gust," Row­ley added.He said this was why Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert was out of the coun­try on va­ca­tion with his fam­i­ly.Row­ley said ac­cord­ing to the stand­ing or­ders the Par­lia­ment would meet if there was an ur­gent mat­ter to be dis­cussed, but not for "willy-nil­ly, capri­cious pur­pos­es.

"They are try­ing to use the Par­lia­ment to take egg off their face," Row­ley added.

Breach of stand­ing or­ders

PNM PRO Faris Al-Rawi mean­while said the new Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives may have been breached by the Gov­ern­ment in the process.Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view last evening, Al-Rawi said the Gov­ern­ment should act with care, cau­tion and re­spect for the laws of T&T and it should al­so recog­nise the im­por­tance of the new Stand­ing Or­ders.

He said the Stand­ing Or­ders specif­i­cal­ly pro­vide for a fixed re­cess of Par­lia­ment, "such that the Par­lia­ment is pro­hib­it­ed from sit­ting in the month of Au­gust un­til the sec­ond week of Sep­tem­ber, un­less the House is moved to sit on ex­cep­tion­al and ur­gent busi­ness.""Stand­ing Or­der Sec­tion 13 specif­i­cal­ly set out the mech­a­nisms by which the House should have caused the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the ex­cep­tion to Stand­ing Or­der 14, the lat­ter Stand­ing Or­der is the one which con­straints sit­tings dur­ing the sixth re­cess pe­ri­od."

Al-Rawi said House Speak­er Wade Mark would have to have giv­en cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the ex­cep­tion­al busi­ness to be con­sid­ered in or­der to sit in Au­gust, which he failed to do."The ad­journ­ment to Au­gust 11 there­fore stands in open breach of the new Stand­ing Or­ders and it is spec­tac­u­lar that the Gov­ern­ment should seek to start the new Par­lia­men­tary term by a breach of the new rules of Par­lia­ment."

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain the haste to in­tro­duce the con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments tabled for de­bate on Au­gust 11 in the face of this breach.


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