Gail Alexan­der

PNM MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald si­lenced the usu­al­ly talk­a­tive Gov­ern­ment MP Anil Roberts in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day when she dropped sev­er­al sharp ref­er­ences to "Span­ish" and "Room 201" in Roberts' di­rec­tion.Mc­Don­ald was de­liv­er­ing a fiery con­tri­bu­tion in yes­ter­day's de­bate on leg­is­la­tion to pre­cept sol­diers for the an­ti-crime fight, when Roberts ap­peared to tease her.

Mc­Don­ald shot back: "I doh need no clap! When I learn to speak Span­ish I'll go and talk to him, I'll go to Room 201."The Par­lia­ment cham­ber rang with a loud cho­rus of "Oh!"Call­ing for the bill to be with­drawn, Mc­Don­ald said the Gov­ern­ment should have fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion and then re­turn it.De­scrib­ing the bill as "a half-picked duck," Mc­Don­ald said the Gov­ern­ment was ill-ad­vised and didn't un­der­stand its con­se­quences.

She ex­pressed con­cern that the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty might not have ju­ris­dic­tion over com­plaints con­cern­ing sol­diers and the lat­ter, claim­ing im­mu­ni­ty, might be free to com­mit abus­es of peo­ple or prop­er­ty and there would be no re­dress for cit­i­zens.She said dur­ing the 2011 state of emer­gency, the army picked up many peo­ple from de­pressed ar­eas like Dun­can Street, Beetham, Laven­tille and Sea Lots.

Mc­Don­ald said the leg­is­la­tion could set the stage for a "show­down" be­tween po­lice and sol­diers. She queried who would con­trol the po­lice."Ramesh," some PP MPs mur­mured.Mc­Don­ald asked why there was "re­luc­tance" to give con­trol to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. She claimed the bill might be the first step to in­sti­tu­tion­alise the in­volve­ment of mil­i­tary pow­er.

She said the Gov­ern­ment's move to amend a seg­ment and give the Chief of De­fence Staff su­per­vi­so­ry pow­er, rather than the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, was still wrong, since the CDS re­port­ed to the min­is­ter.