Gail Alexan­der

House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh is ex­pect­ed to rule on whether the Op­po­si­tion's mo­tions of priv­i­lege against the Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, as well as a sim­i­lar mo­tion by Gov­ern­ment MP Bar­ry Padarath against PNM's Colm Im­bert, meet the thresh­old to be re­ferred to Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Singh in­di­cat­ed this dur­ing Wednes­day's Low­er House sit­ting. He spoke briefly about the mo­tions he had re­ceived when Im­bert asked him about his mo­tion. Im­bert has filed this mo­tion against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Singh said he had re­ceived the three mat­ters of priv­i­lege from PNM Arou­ca Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Diego Mar­tin North East MP Im­bert, and Cou­va South MP Bar­ry Padarath, Leader of House Busi­ness. Two ar­rived at 1 pm on Wednes­day, and one af­ter 11 am that morn­ing. "Those—I have not had time to con­sid­er. I will de­fer my de­ci­sion on whether or not it meets the thresh­old to a lat­er date," Singh added.

The House meets this af­ter­noon.

Ear­li­er this week, Gon­za­les and Im­bert spoke about what they de­scribed as "of­fen­sive" com­ments by the Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al dur­ing Par­lia­ment's No­vem­ber 21 sit­ting.

Im­bert al­lud­ed to an in­ci­dent in which the Prime Min­is­ter al­leged­ly told him not to point at her and al­leged­ly threat­ened to "cuff him down" when he asked why. He de­nied Padarath's claim that he had been mak­ing re­marks to her. PNM of­fi­cials said Im­bert's mo­tion deals with that is­sue.

Padarath's mo­tion, seek­ing a Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee probe of Im­bert, al­leged "mo­lesta­tion and men­ac­ing be­hav­iour" to­wards the Prime Min­is­ter. Padarath's let­ter de­tailed Im­bert's point­ing "in an in­tim­i­dat­ing, threat­en­ing man­ner" and al­lud­ed to "ag­gres­sion" when the Prime Min­is­ter asked Im­bert to cease his "un­to­ward ac­tion."

Padarath claimed the in­ci­dent was not iso­lat­ed but was a con­tin­u­a­tion of ag­gres­sive be­hav­iour dur­ing Im­bert's con­tri­bu­tion on the bill.

He said one of the fun­da­men­tal in­di­vid­ual priv­i­leges and im­mu­ni­ties of­fered to MPs is free­dom from ob­struc­tion, in­ter­fer­ence, in­tim­i­da­tion, and mo­lesta­tion. "It is clear the un­par­lia­men­tary and of­fen­sive ac­tions un­der­tak­en by the Mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin North East against the Mem­ber for Siparia is a clear act of mo­lesta­tion and an act to in­tim­i­date," he claimed.

Gon­za­les's mo­tion, seek­ing to have the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee, fo­cus­es on an al­leged ho­mo­pho­bic re­mark by the AG cap­tured on an ac­tive ("hot") mi­cro­phone. It has been re­port­ed that a Gov­ern­ment mem­ber said, “Hush yuh mouth, boy. Go and take yuh lil man.” It is un­known who the re­mark was di­rect­ed to.

Gon­za­les's let­ter re­quest­ing the probe claimed that a pri­ma fa­cie case of breach of priv­i­lege had been es­tab­lished. He said the re­marks amount to con­tempt of the House: "It is lan­guage that is con­temp­tu­ous, de­mean­ing, in­sult­ing, and whol­ly in­com­pat­i­ble with the stan­dards of con­duct ex­pect­ed in this House. It in­ter­feres with the work, dig­ni­ty, and au­thor­i­ty of the House."

"Dis­re­spect­ful and con­temp­tu­ous lan­guage di­min­ish­es the stand­ing of the House in the eyes of the pub­lic. When be­hav­iour of this na­ture is broad­cast na­tion­al­ly with­out cor­rec­tion, with­draw­al, or apol­o­gy, it erodes the au­thor­i­ty of the in­sti­tu­tion and un­der­mines pub­lic con­fi­dence in its pro­ceed­ings. State­ments of this kind cre­ate hos­til­i­ty and dis­re­spect with­in the Cham­ber and may im­pede Mem­bers in the per­for­mance of their par­lia­men­tary re­spon­si­bil­i­ties," Gon­za­les added.

He said the in­ci­dent must be con­sid­ered against the back­drop of ear­li­er in­stances when the AG di­rect­ed in­tem­per­ate lan­guage and threat­en­ing re­marks to­wards MPs, in­clud­ing state­ments such as “I am com­ing for you.” He cit­ed for­mer Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George's ac­tions ad­dress­ing sim­i­lar con­duct, re­gard­ing PNM MP Stu­art Young's "za­m­my" re­mark on an ac­tive mi­cro­phone, which she ruled of­fen­sive. Young had apol­o­gised to the House.