Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning last night ad­vised Pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son to pro­rogue Par­lia­ment from mid­night, af­ter two days of bat­tling fruit­less­ly in the Low­er House with the UNC to elect a Speak­er. A to­tal of 16 peo­ple were nom­i­nat­ed over the last two days of sit­tings. All were un­suc­cess­ful due to the hung Par­lia­ment. "We failed to elect a Speak­er for this ses­sion of Par­lia­ment," Man­ning ad­mit­ted af­ter yes­ter­day's sec­ond day in the House. "We saw on the part of the UNC over the last two days, a de­lib­er­ate and con­cert­ed ef­fort to frus­trate the will of the peo­ple by tak­ing steps to pre­vent the ap­point­ment of a Speak­er. "There­fore, we thought the in­ter­ests of the coun­try would best be served by a pro­ro­ga­tion of Par­lia­ment." Yes­ter­day's sit­ting was marked by in­creas­ing­ly bois­ter­ous be­hav­iour in the Low­er House since there was no Speak­er to call for or­der. At one point, Clerk of the House, Jacqui Samp­son-Ja­cent, had to ap­peal for bet­ter be­hav­iour.

She was forced to an­nounce an ear­ly tea break when very noisy cross-talk threat­ened to drown out PNM's Kei­th Row­ley as he sec­ond­ed the nom­i­na­tion of one­time To­ba­go East MP Dr Wilbert Win­ches­ter. Dur­ing the tea break, the UNC ac­cused the PNM of us­ing the pro­ceed­ings as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for an at­tack. "Soon­er or lat­er, the House was go­ing to de­gen­er­ate in­to the law of the jun­gle, as it did to­day," UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day said then. Less than two hours lat­er, Man­ning said: "Af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with my col­leagues, I have to­day writ­ten the Pres­i­dent, ad­vis­ing him to pro­rogue Par­lia­ment with ef­fect from mid­night tonight." He said it didn't mean a gen­er­al elec­tion was im­mi­nent; it on­ly meant the first ses­sion of the Sev­enth Par­lia­ment-which be­gan on Fri­day-was over. He said he would call the sec­ond ses­sion some­time with­in the next six months. It was the first set of sit­tings since Par­lia­ment dis­solved last Oc­to­ber. The House's first task-to elect a Speak­er-be­gan at 1.30 pm on Fri­day. That first sit­ting end­ed at 12.30 am yes­ter­day when 10 peo­ple were nom­i­nat­ed un­suc­cess­ful­ly in that pe­ri­od.

The House met again yes­ter­day from 1.30 pm un­til al­most 6 pm, with six more un­suc­cess­ful nom­i­nees. The PNM nom­i­nat­ed for­mer PTSC deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er An­dre Sover­all, at­tor­ney Alvin Pas­cal, and Win­ches­ter. The UNC nom­i­nat­ed UNC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fazal Karim, Lester Matadeen and Chris­tine Nunez. When they re­sumed at 5.45 pm, the Clerk again called for nom­i­na­tions. But both sides had no pro­pos­als and MPs all sat silent­ly for ten min­utes. They then agreed to re­turn at 1.30 pm to­day. But re­porters were called back for Man­ning's an­nounce­ment. He said the sec­ond ses­sion of the Sev­enth Par­lia­ment would be called in due course: "We'll have to make an as­sess­ment of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, and a judg­ment on the UNC's dis­po­si­tion-the dy­nam­ics might be dif­fer­ent-and on that ba­sis we'll come to con­clu­sions," he said. "So we can­not say with any as­sur­ance at what time it will be, ex­cept that it will be with­in the next six months. "We have no in­ten­tion of run­ning T&T with­out a Par­lia­ment if we can help it, but it doesn't re­ly sole­ly on us." He said if the sec­ond ses­sion fails to elect a Speak­er al­so, then, "the mo­ment of de­ci­sion" will be when the Bud­get comes up. In­abil­i­ty to pass a Bud­get could cause an elec­tion. The "out­side date" of Ju­ly 2003 which the PNM had giv­en still stands, he said. But if the PNM has to go to the polls by Sep­tem­ber or Oc­to­ber this year it would be con­sis­tent with its po­si­tion and plans.