Richard?Lord

In an un­prece­dent­ed de­vel­op­ment, Chief Whip Gan­ga Singh is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to agree on a waiv­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives stand­ing or­ders in Par­lia­ment to­day to al­low Op­po­si­tion MPs to con­tribute to the de­bate on the con­tro­ver­sial For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA), which re­quires the Op­po­si­tion sup­port to be ap­proved.

The leg­is­la­tion was draft­ed on an In­ter-Gov­ern­ment Agree­ment (IGA) be­tween the US and re­lat­ed to the shar­ing of tax in­for­ma­tion with re­spect to US cit­i­zens and/or US com­pa­nies do­ing busi­ness in this coun­try.

The leg­is­la­tion must be ap­proved and im­ple­ment­ed by Feb­ru­ary next year. If the mea­sure is not im­ple­ment­ed T&T could black­list­ed and suf­fer ad­verse con­se­quences. The US au­thor­i­ties have al­ready grant­ed two ex­ten­sions to the T&T Gov­ern­ment for im­ple­men­ta­tion of the mea­sure.

When the de­bate was ad­journed on Fri­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had al­ready be­gan his wind-up of the de­bate.

He is ex­pect­ed to con­clude it this af­ter­noon. On Fri­day, no Op­po­si­tion MP was in the Par­lia­ment to con­tribute to the de­bate as they walked out of the House in sup­port of their leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was asked to leave the cham­ber by Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George.

The for­mer prime min­is­ter was at­tempt­ing to speak while the Speak­er was on her legs and that is not al­lowed in the Par­lia­ment.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Singh said pri­or to the leg­is­la­tion be­ing brought back to Par­lia­ment the Gov­ern­ment had agreed to an Op­po­si­tion re­quest for a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee to look at the leg­is­la­tion.

Singh said he was the on­ly Op­po­si­tion MP to speak in the de­bate so far (in this ses­sion). In the pre­vi­ous ses­sion last Sep­tem­ber, Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke.

Singh said yes­ter­day: "We would like to see the de­bate com­plet­ed and (al­low­ing us to speak) can be done by a waiv­er of the stand­ing or­ders and the more than 20 amend­ments pro­posed be tak­en sub­se­quent­ly to ef­fect pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion."

Singh said : "By agree­ment you can, in fact, al­low for that. You can waive the stand­ing or­ders and al­low for a de­bate to take place."

He said that can be done "with a view to giv­ing the Op­po­si­tion MPs the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have their say." Singh in­sist­ed that was what he want­ed to see hap­pen in Par­lia­ment to­day.

Asked if the Op­po­si­tion was like­ly to lend its sup­port to the leg­is­la­tion even if there was no waiv­er of the stand­ing or­ders, Singh said he felt "it is nec­es­sary for us. We recog­nise the na­tion­al im­por­tance of this piece of leg­is­la­tion but hav­ing re­gard to the man­ner in which the Gov­ern­ment ap­proached it, reneg­ing on their promise for a JSC, they now need to con­sid­er the views of the Op­po­si­tion in or­der to so­lic­it he Op­po­si­tion vote in this mat­ter."

He in­sist­ed that waiv­ing of the stand­ing or­ders would be in the na­tion­al in­ter­est. Asked to re­spond to claims from the Gov­ern­ment that no amend­ments were sub­mit­ted by the Op­po­si­tion, Singh quick­ly re­spond­ed by say­ing it was be­cause the pro­posed JSC would have been the prop­er fo­rum for the amend­ments.

He said the Gov­ern­ment "can­not play smart by a half if you re­nege on the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee."

Singh said if there will be no JSC , then the amend­ments have to be tak­en on the floor of the Par­lia­ment. He said as of yes­ter­day it did not seem like the Gov­ern­ment was "pre­pared to com­plete the de­bate by them­selves and they can­not take the vote by them­selves and have the leg­is­la­tion passed be­cause it re­quires a con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty."