Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Nigel de Fre­itas has warned Sen­a­tors against un­be­com­ing con­duct and us­ing the oc­ca­sion of greet­ings in the Sen­ate to make over­ly charged state­ments or voice neg­a­tive per­son­al anec­dotes.

De Fre­itas did so via a state­ment at the start of yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting.

He cit­ed two oc­cur­rences, “...Both of which were very ev­i­dent at our last sit­ting and which have been a fol­low-on from pre­vi­ous sit­tings.”

De Fre­itas said, “The first mat­ter re­lates to the in­creas­ing oc­cur­rence of ran­dom dis­tur­bances by mem­bers while an­oth­er mem­ber is mak­ing his/her con­tri­bu­tion. At the last Sen­ate sit­ting on March 28, this House wit­nessed a mem­ber vo­cif­er­ous­ly tak­ing is­sue with a per­son­al anec­dote de­liv­ered dur­ing greet­ings by an­oth­er Mem­ber. There is no doubt that such con­duct is un­be­com­ing.”

He re­mind­ed Sen­a­tors that the Sen­ate’s Stand­ing Or­ders man­date that Mem­bers main­tain si­lence while an­oth­er is speak­ing.

“That notwith­stand­ing, you will agree with me that from this Chair, a de­gree of le­nien­cy has tra­di­tion­al­ly been grant­ed in the con­text of light ex­change among mem­bers who are not speak­ing. How­ev­er, it has be­come ap­par­ent that some mem­bers have opt­ed to dis­re­gard the Stand­ing Or­ders and rather spec­tac­u­lar­ly dis­turb the con­tri­bu­tions of Mem­bers, even dur­ing greet­ings ... this prac­tice is not in keep­ing with the rules of prop­er deco­rum in this House.”

De Fre­itas urged Sen­a­tors to reac­quaint them­selves with the rules of or­der pro­vid­ed for in Stand­ing Or­ders 42, 51, 52 and 53.

On the well-es­tab­lished par­lia­men­tary prac­tice to bring greet­ings on var­i­ous na­tion­al­ly recog­nised oc­ca­sions, De Fre­itas said greet­ings ought to be an ide­al or a mes­sage that is in­her­ent­ly pos­i­tive in na­ture, re­lat­ing to the oc­ca­sion be­ing ob­served.

“I have not­ed with con­cern that in re­cent times, Mem­bers have used greet­ings to make over­ly charged state­ments or voice neg­a­tive per­son­al anec­dotes.”

Un­der­scor­ing that T&T is rich in mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism, De Fre­itas said, “As such, greet­ings must not and shall not be used in a way that may be con­strued as in­ju­ri­ous. At all times, greet­ings ought to be re­spect­ful to this Au­gust House, to the oc­ca­sion to which it re­lates and by ex­ten­sion, to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”