Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has dishonoured Parliament by failing to honour a promise he made to provide all documents relating to the discontinuance of the Malcolm Jones case, says Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
Persad-Bissessar said in the interest of accountability and transparency she had asked for the documents to be made available to Parliament so they could be perused before a private motion on Loss of Confidence in the Attorney General was debated.
But debate began on the motion in the House of Representatives yesterday without the documents.
The Opposition Leader, during her contribution to the debate, said she was very disappointed in the Prime Minister.
She told the House on March 18, 2016, Rowley gave his word to Parliament that he would provide the documents. He failed, however, to honour his word and Parliament, she said.
Persad-Bissessar said the Government said the documents were sent to the Law Association but that body has no statutory remit or jurisdiction in the matter.
"The place it belongs is the Supreme Court."
Taking a turn in Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi, against whom the private motion was brought, she implied he was "Seukeranising," a word taken from the book, "In and Out of Politics: Tales of the Government of Dr Eric Williams," by former government minister Winston Mahabir.
Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal, speaking earlier, first made mention of the word "Seukeranise." He said Mahabir, in his book, stated it meant having the ability to talk on any subject with an air of authority.
It also meant having the ability to bore anyone to distraction without boring a hole in anything, he said.
The word referred to former PNM government minister, Lionel Seukeran, grandfather of Al-Rawi.
Persad-Bissessar said Al-Rawi's contribution to the motion was a distraction, rather than answering the case brought against him by the Opposition.
She said the Attorney General has a dual role, to serve as chief legal officer to the Cabinet and to be the guardian of the public interest.
Instead, he came to Parliament yesterday to wash his hands of the Malcolm Jones scandal, like Pontius Pilate, she said.
She said Al-Rawi came to Parliament to say, like Jamaican dance hall entertainer Shaggy, "it wasn't me".
"It's a pathetic attempt to shirk his responsibility and duty."
At the same time, she said, the AG also told Parliament how he called an "all-parties meeting" concerning the Jones matter, asking for information on this, that and the other.
Al Rawi: I'm pleased
Al-Rawi's answer to the motion brought against him in the House yesterday consisted of a long string of events and dates relating to the Malcolm Jones affair.
Dismissing Moonilal's earlier presentation as "nothing short of a rant," Al-Rawi said he was pleased and warmed to be the subject of a no-confidence motion brought by the Opposition.
He said he did not want to be in the confidence of an Opposition led by Persad-Bissessar.
He denied he gave any instruction to State-owned Petrotrin to file a notice of discontinuance of the case against Jones, its former chairman.
A lawsuit was brought by the previous Persad-Bissessar-led administration against Jones for the Gas-to-Liquids project fiasco.
Indicating it was Petrotrin itself that decided to drop the case against Jones, Al-Rawi said he had no brief for Jones or for the Petrotrin board that would have sat between 2004 and 2009.
Countering a charge from Moonilal that the present PNM administration spent $39 million in legal fees on two overseas arbitration matters, Al-Rawi said the last administration spent $55-plus million to hire Vincent Nelson, QC, and $32 million-plus for the services of attorney Gerald Ramdeen.
Moonilal, in his presentation, criticised Rowley's hands-off approach to the Jones matter while chasing down Parliament and quarreling on a public platform for his $30,000 salary withheld from him when he was suspended from the House by the last administration.