Gail Alexan­der

There were po­lit­i­cal fire­works at the start of the Par­lia­ment's Sec­ond Ses­sion yes­ter­day, as gov­ern­ment's bid to push through with the Tax In­for­ma­tion Ex­change Agree­ment (2016) bill in Par­lia­ment hit a "wall" when the Op­po­si­tion re­fused to have a meet­ing on the pro­posed bill.

This was de­spite the Gov­ern­ment agree­ing to change cer­tain claus­es of the bill which the Op­po­si­tion had ob­ject­ed to.

Dur­ing the tea break, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told re­porters, "I'm not con­vinced we should speak to the Gov­ern­ment in se­cret, since those se­cret talks end up pub­lic for their dis­tor­tion and lies. Al­so, you don't breach the rights of the mi­nor­i­ty by in­vok­ing the Stand­ing Or­ders of the House (to call the meet­ing).

"What a day...what a day for the first day as we come back (to Par­lia­ment). I'm con­vinced the Gov­ern­ment doesn't want to pass this bill. They know very well they will get an ex­ten­sion from the US (on the bill), but they just want to rant and rave from their plat­form to blame the Op­po­si­tion. So they don't care to pass the bill and every me­dia fo­rum will be blam­ing the Op­po­si­tion."

The leg­is­la­tion, de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate the For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Agree­ment which T&T signed with the US in 2013, al­lows the T&T Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to share in­for­ma­tion with the US In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS). Fail­ure to pass it by the stip­u­lat­ed Sep­tem­ber 30 dead­line could re­sult in the halt of trans­fer of funds and trans­ac­tions be­tween the two coun­tries. The bill was top of the agen­da at yes­ter­day's launch of the Sec­ond Ses­sion of Par­lia­ment.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert slammed "mis­in­for­ma­tion and mis­un­der­stand­ing on the bill." He de­tailed the bill's gen­e­sis from the time the past Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion signed the agree­ment with the US in 2013, to its moves to be­gin draft­ing leg­is­la­tion in the first quar­ter of 2015. But noth­ing was done to fur­ther it af­ter, he said.

"For rea­sons best known to them­selves, they didn't ta­ble the law...this (2016) bill is the same bill they had...now we have to come to them and beg them to agree on the bill? That's not go­ing to hap­pen."

Im­bert, how­ev­er, agreed to delete the clause (six) the Op­po­si­tion had con­cerns about and change clause sev­en's stip­u­la­tion from hav­ing the "min­is­ter" pro­vide in­for­ma­tion sought un­der the T&T-US agree­ment. He said T&T's BIR Board would han­dle the task in­stead.

Con­ces­sions brought desk-thump­ing ap­proval from the Op­po­si­tion. Im­bert sub­se­quent­ly said the Gov­ern­ment was ready to vote and pro­posed sus­pen­sion of pro­ceed­ings for an hour for the two sides to meet on amend­ments.

But the Op­po­si­tion ob­ject­ed. Fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful Gov­ern­ment ma­jor­i­ty vote on this, the sit­ting was ad­journed for an hour. But dur­ing that time, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told re­porters: "Gov­ern­ment has no con­cern or re­spect for process. Why should we go be­hind closed doors? Let's talk here in Par­lia­ment so peo­ple can see, be­cause Gov­ern­ment dis­torts things and it ends up in lies.

"We want to pass this bill but Gov­ern­ment has its own agen­da. I fig­ure from their be­hav­iour and things they're say­ing, they don't want this bill passed. I dis­cov­ered at 6.15 am the bill would be de­bat­ed to­day. Apart from the or­der pa­per, there was no in­di­ca­tion of de­bate be­fore–so brinks­man­ship again."

She added, "There was on­ly one con­ces­sion on claus­es, but (Im­bert) said no to oth­ers. It's in­suf­fi­cient, the Bankers' As­so­ci­a­tion had 13 amend­ments, I'm not tak­ing any blame for the gov­ern­ment's reck­less­ness and brinks­man­ship."

Mooni­lal eject­ed

One of the "ca­su­al­ties" of yes­ter­day's ar­gu­ment on sus­pend­ing the sit­ting was UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal, who was told by House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George to leave the cham­ber. This oc­curred when Mooni­lal, in vot­ing against the ad­journ­ment, said the Speak­er could have in­ter­vened. He de­nied he was be­ing con­temp­tu­ous, but was sent out­side.