Rose­marie Sant

GML En­ter­prise Desk

For­mer House Speak­er Oc­c­ah Sea­paul is con­tem­plat­ing le­gal ac­tion against Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for al­le­ga­tions made by him that she was placed un­der house ar­rest in 1995 be­cause she had pub­licly de­clared she was go­ing to sus­pend oth­er gov­ern­ment mem­bers of Par­lia­ment fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion of Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Ken Val­ley, there­by re­duc­ing the gov­ern­ment's ma­jor­i­ty in the Par­lia­ment.

Row­ley told the me­dia last Thurs­day "we were not go­ing to al­low Speak­er Sea­paul to re­move the man­date of a gov­ern­ment that we earned from an elec­tion."

He ex­plained that "she took it on her­self to re­duce the gov­ern­ment ma­jor­i­ty so that the Gov­ern­ment would fall. She sus­pend­ed Ken Val­ley and said the next time the Par­lia­ment re­opens, she would sus­pend, me (Row­ley), (Wen­dell) Mot­ley and (Kei­th) So­bion.

"We took ac­tion as a gov­ern­ment to pro­tect our­selves from be­ing sus­pend­ed from Par­lia­ment by a Speak­er who had gone rogue," he added.

But Sea­paul is deny­ing she ever in­di­cat­ed to any­one she had planned fur­ther sus­pen­sions fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion of Val­ley.

She told the GML En­ter­prise Desk: "Dr Row­ley is go­ing to be very hard pressed to find any ev­i­dence of such an in­di­ca­tion or de­c­la­ra­tion be­cause I nev­er made any such de­c­la­ra­tion and I nev­er in­tend­ed to put any­body out of the House."

She said it was on­ly when Dr Row­ley spoke last week that "I re­alised what mo­ti­vat­ed then, this un­truth that I was go­ing to move these men out."

She laughed hearti­ly when she re­flect­ed on Row­ley say­ing she planned to re­move Wen­dell Mot­t­ley. She asked: "How his name come up here? I can't imag­ine how Dr Row­ley came up with these names. I don't know... some­body, some­where con­coct­ed a sto­ry. I had ab­solute­ly no quar­rel with these four peo­ple. Why would I have put them out of the House?"

Sea­paul re­called that pri­or to the state of emer­gency and her house ar­rest So­bion and then ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Au­gus­tus Ram­rek­ers­ingh had come to her and told her the Prime Min­is­ter want­ed her to va­cate the chair.

She said: "I had very good re­la­tion­ships with both of them. I told them I am sor­ry I am not step­ping down be­cause I did noth­ing wrong."

Sea­paul is of the view that the then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning who went to the act­ing Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Carter to de­clare a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency act­ed on the ba­sis of hearsay.

She said: "You don't willy-nil­ly put peo­ple out of the House. It is now abun­dant­ly clear to me that what­ev­er they went and pre­sent­ed to the Pres­i­dent for the is­sue of the war­rant were false al­le­ga­tions based on false premis­es."

She said she had nev­er been able to de­fend her­self be­cause every­thing that was said about her back then was un­der the cloak of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege "but 20 years lat­er he is still per­pet­u­at­ing these false­hoods against me again. These are lies. A com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion by per­son or per­sons for what­ev­er means."

Sea­paul said she was now weigh­ing her le­gal op­tions be­cause "20 years ago I could not have tak­en ac­tion be­cause every­thing was said in Par­lia­ment and there was par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege but 20 years lat­er they still per­pet­u­at­ing these false­hoods against me. I now have to de­ter­mine what to do. So I ask for le­gal re­dress or leave it to the high­er uni­verse for re­dress?"

Sea­paul said she had been left to won­der why the then Pres­i­dent did not ask the rel­e­vant ques­tions be­fore agree­ing to im­pose a lim­it­ed state or emer­gency.

She be­lieves if the sub­stan­tive pres­i­dent Noor Has­sanali was there he would have in­formed the Prime Min­is­ter that one could not act on hearsay ev­i­dence.

"As a for­mer judge he would have asked if there was sworn tes­ti­mo­ny. Is there any af­fi­davit sworn by peo­ple say­ing yes I heard her say she is go­ing to re­move them by virtue of this," she added.

The moves to have her re­moved, she be­lieved, al­so stemmed from a court mat­ter in­volv­ing Vic­tor Jat­tan.

She said if the then gov­ern­ment "had lost con­fi­dence in me be­cause of what the mag­is­trate said then they could have moved a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against me. That would have been in or­der and ap­pro­pri­ate," she added.

AU­GUST 11, 1995 RE­VIS­IT­ED (HANSARD)

In Au­gust 1995 days af­ter the state of emer­gency the Par­lia­ment met to de­bate the Pres­i­dent's state­ment on the state of emer­gency.

Hansard quotes then AG Kei­th So­bion as say­ing "the mem­ber for St Joseph (Ram­rek­ers­ingh) and the mem­ber for Or­toire/Ma­yaro (So­bion) were both warned, in no un­cer­tain terms, that the ques­tion of their con­tempt of the Chair was de­ferred for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion.

That was on the oc­ca­sion when pre­pared scripts and ex­ten­sive notes were used in re­la­tion to the speak­er's par­tic­u­lar prob­lem.

What is clear is that there was a course of ac­tion tak­ing place in this Par­lia­ment over a pe­ri­od of weeks which led one to the rea­son­able con­clu­sion that ac­tion was be­ing con­tem­plat­ed by the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer against Mem­bers of this House and par­tic­u­lar­ly against mem­bers sit­ting on the Gov­ern­ment bench­es.

So­bion said he had no doubt that the Pres­i­dent was con­cerned by what was tak­ing place in the Par­lia­ment and had by Sec­tion 8(2)(c) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, analysed the facts and cir­cum­stances which ex­ist­ed and had come to a rea­son­able con­clu­sion and ex­pressed his view in clear and un­am­bigu­ous lan­guage say­ing: "As a con­se­quence of these events I was sat­is­fied that the pub­lic safe­ty was en­dan­gered to an ex­tent that war­rant­ed the de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of pub­lic emer­gency."

But there was no in­di­ca­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter or the then AG as to what ev­i­dence would have been put to the Pres­i­dent to pro­claim the state of emer­gency.

Then op­po­si­tion leader Bas­deo Pan­day took is­sue with this, telling the Par­lia­ment:

"The Pres­i­dent ac­cepts that he is go­ing to act on a pos­si­ble aber­ra­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter; some­thing that he had a dream about, not ev­i­dence.

"Where is the hard, cold ev­i­dence that the Speak­er in­tend­ed sim­i­lar­ly to ap­ply con­tempt charges against oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters? Not a shred of ev­i­dence has come out in this Par­lia­ment to­day."