KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing on House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh to re­scind his de­ci­sion to block an Op­po­si­tion mo­tion on the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply.

Bring­ing ev­i­dence to sup­port his claims at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les played a video clip from last Fri­day’s Low­er House Sit­ting, which he said proves he did, in fact, for­mal­ly move the mo­tion at the be­gin­ning of his 45-minute con­tri­bu­tion.

The video shows Gon­za­les say­ing, “Mr Speak­er, I beg to move the fol­low­ing mo­tion stand­ing in my name,” be­fore read­ing the mo­tion and pro­ceed­ing with his con­tri­bu­tion.

The record­ing ap­pears to have con­tra­dict­ed Singh’s claim that Gon­za­les had failed to ut­ter the words “I beg to move” with­in his al­lot­ted speak­ing time.

Gon­za­les is now chal­leng­ing Singh to iden­ti­fy which Stand­ing Or­der he breached and is de­mand­ing that the mo­tion be re­stored for de­bate.

He al­so ar­gued that nowhere in the Stand­ing Or­ders does it state that an MP who for­mal­ly moves a mo­tion at the be­gin­ning of a con­tri­bu­tion must re­peat it at the end.

Af­ter cit­ing the 25th edi­tion of Er­sk­ine May’s Par­lia­men­tary Prac­tice yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les added, “There is nowhere in these Stand­ing Or­ders of the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go that in­di­cates that hav­ing moved your mo­tion and con­tributed for 45 min­utes that you have to re­peat it again in or­der for the mo­tion to be placed be­fore the Par­lia­ment … Tell me and tell the coun­try which Stand­ing Or­der was breached by this Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment.”

Gon­za­les al­so ques­tioned what he re­gard­ed as in­con­sis­tent treat­ment by the Speak­er, pro­duc­ing an­oth­er video clip from ear­li­er in last Fri­day’s sit­ting.

He said a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter had been al­lo­cat­ed ten min­utes un­der the Stand­ing Or­ders to de­liv­er a min­is­te­r­i­al state­ment but ex­ceed­ed the al­lot­ted time.

In the clip played at yes­ter­day’s press con­fer­ence, Singh is heard ac­knowl­edg­ing that the Min­is­ter’s time had ex­pired but al­low­ing him to fin­ish.

Gon­za­les con­trast­ed that de­ci­sion with the treat­ment of his mo­tion.

The col­lapse of the wa­ter mo­tion was the sec­ond pro­ce­dur­al con­tro­ver­sy in­volv­ing an Op­po­si­tion pri­vate mo­tion in less than a year.

Last No­vem­ber, a pri­vate mo­tion by Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les col­lapsed af­ter she said “I beg to move” im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter read­ing the text of the mo­tion, rather than at the con­clu­sion of her pre­sen­ta­tion.

Mean­while, Gon­za­les is al­so lodg­ing a for­mal com­plaint with Singh over what he de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s re­peat­ed ex­pe­dit­ed treat­ment of leg­is­la­tion.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of re­peat­ed­ly giv­ing Op­po­si­tion MPs less than 48 hours to scru­ti­nise pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, con­sult con­stituents and stake­hold­ers and ad­e­quate­ly pre­pare for de­bate.

Gon­za­les de­scribed the prac­tice as de­lib­er­ate and dan­ger­ous and ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of abus­ing Stand­ing Or­der 64(1)(b) to fast-track leg­is­la­tion through Par­lia­ment.

He iden­ti­fied sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion which he claimed had been brought be­fore the Op­po­si­tion with in­ad­e­quate time for scruti­ny.