Brent Zephyrine

For­mer Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Oc­c­ah Seep­aul says the no­tion of elect­ing a Speak­er who is free from any known po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, is "an ad­vanced form of think­ing" that will sig­nal to the pub­lic that we are "ma­ture" enough to move away from the "ad­ver­sar­i­al na­ture" our Par­lia­ment has grown so ac­cus­tomed to."I think hav­ing an in­de­pen­dent Speak­er will def­i­nite­ly be a step in the right di­rec­tion and will show ma­tu­ri­ty on the part of the politi­cians and an ad­vanced think­ing for the new age."It is on­ly when we take it to this lev­el, the Speak­er will have to look at the is­sues rather than feel ob­lig­at­ed to tak­ing sides," she said.Seep­aul was speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly with the Sun­day Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view when she made the ob­ser­va­tion.

She, along with her pre­de­ces­sor Nizam Mo­hammed and her suc­ces­sor Baren­dra Sinanan, all shared their views on the neu­tral­i­ty of Speak­ers, the Stand­ing Or­ders and the pub­lic's per­cep­tion of po­lit­i­cal bias in the man­ner in which pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers ex­er­cised their du­ties.Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed in a news con­fer­ence ear­li­er this month (June 6) that he had writ­ten to Speak­er Wade Mark, re­quest­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss what he (Row­ley) saw as a Par­lia­ment that had be­come "a place where you can­not speak" and where "you can­not up­set" the Gov­ern­ment "be­cause there is some­thing called per­son­al re­flec­tion which can­not be cast."He said Mark was in­tent "to pro­tect the Gov­ern­ment (Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship)" in this rul­ing and that "the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in op­po­si­tion, will not tol­er­ate it."

The 'in­de­pen­dent' Speak­er

While Seep­aul be­lieves that a po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­point­ed Speak­er could be tru­ly un­bi­ased, she said it was pos­si­ble for T&T to cre­ate the kind of "in­de­pen­dent" Speak­er that it want­ed so long as there was "the will" to move away from this "very ar­cha­ic" sys­tem of Par­lia­ment which we in­her­it­ed.Mo­hammed con­tends that even a known politi­cian (or po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­ate) could be per­ceived as po­lit­i­cal­ly neu­tral up­on as­sum­ing the pedestal chair (role of Speak­er) once he is "strong willed" and ful­ly ca­pa­ble of con­duct­ing "the busi­ness of the House in a very fair man­ner."He added, too, that the House "will ben­e­fit" from a Speak­er who emerged from amongst politi­cians since he would have that ex­pe­ri­ence that will bet­ter equip him to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly.

"I think the House will ben­e­fit from some­one who comes from with­in, from amongst politi­cians in that he will have a clear­er un­der­stand­ing of the work­ings of the House, the tem­pera­ment of mem­bers; be able to fore­cast a sit­u­a­tion as it is de­vel­op­ing and min­imise con­flict sit­u­a­tions," Mo­hammed said.In a quick re­but­tal to this view­point, Seep­aul was not hes­i­tant to re­mind her au­di­ence that though "Mark (in­cum­bent Speak­er), was one of those" whom Mo­hammed may have been al­lud­ing to, he (Mark) has still man­aged to have "these com­plaints (of bias) made against him."Sinanan's view on the mat­ter, "in­so­far as it per­tained to al­le­ga­tions of bias", was that "every Speak­er goes through that" sort of at­tack.

He al­so said the no­tion of the "in­de­pen­dent" Speak­er will nev­er be at­tained since a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer "goes to vote (gen­er­al/lo­cal elec­tions)" and in so do­ing, "ex­er­cis­es a po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence.""That is an im­pos­si­ble thing. Even if you ap­point some­body who is not a mem­ber of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, there is no guar­an­tee that such a Speak­er will be par­tial or im­par­tial. None what­so­ev­er."Take for in­stance, the Pres­i­dent was once the prime min­is­ter of this coun­try," Sinanan said.He agreed with both Seep­aul and Mo­hammed how­ev­er, that "there was ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong with a Speak­er be­ing a mem­ber of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty be­cause they can be in­de­pen­dent and dis­play such."

Lay­ing down the law...

Mo­hammed said from the on­set of his ap­point­ment to the chair, he had "made it abun­dant­ly clear" to the then gov­ern­ment that he had "set out to main­tain bal­ance" with­in the House.He told the Sun­day Guardian that while he knew the sys­tem catered for "the gov­ern­ment to have its way with its leg­isla­tive agen­da", he tried to be "as ac­com­mo­dat­ing as pos­si­ble" in en­sur­ing that "every­one had their say.""There was no need for me to show any bias to­wards the gov­ern­ment since the gov­ern­ment was told up front that it was their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and not mine to de­fend its po­si­tion.

"I made it abun­dant­ly clear that I was there at the be­hest of all elect­ed mem­bers and I in­tend­ed to give every mem­ber the fairest pos­si­ble chance to ex­press him­self on mat­ters that came up for dis­cus­sion in the House and to al­low him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to best rep­re­sent his con­stituents," Mo­hammed said.Sinanan said he, too, had no dif­fi­cul­ty ex­er­cis­ing his func­tions de­spite his po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion to the gov­ern­ing par­ty at the time and said he rep­ri­mand­ed both the prime min­is­ter and min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment dur­ing his tenure as Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer.He said: "If you check the records you will see where I even

re­ferred the then prime min­is­ter (Patrick Man­ning) to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee and told him once to take his seat."I told a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter he was talk­ing too long... and I put them in their place when cir­cum­stances called for it. I was very im­par­tial."Sim­i­lar­ly, Seep­aul said she saw her role as Speak­er as "more or less, an ex­ten­sion of" her work on the High Court bench and that her "kind of train­ing in im­par­tial­i­ty" meant that no gov­ern­ing par­ty could have de­mand­ed that she "cater to its whims and fan­cies."She said if any­one saw the role "as a par­ti­san one, then he/she could find them­selves in a lot of hot wa­ter" and could "fall prey to a sit­u­a­tion of tak­ing sides for the gov­ern­ing par­ty."

Asked whether she iden­ti­fied any such in­stances (of bias) on the part of a Speak­er, Seep­aul's re­sponse was in the af­fir­ma­tive."I have. Of course I have, bla­tant­ly so. I re­al­ly don't want to pin point any such in­stance in par­tic­u­lar but when I look at some rul­ings, there were one or two Speak­ers whom I met on so­cial oc­ca­sions and I chal­lenged them on cer­tain de­ci­sions and told them I didn't agree with them when they made that rul­ing and so on," she said. Seep­aul said it was im­por­tant that she "be true" to her own self "on the in­ner" and that "if it was right, it was right and if it was wrong, it was wrong."

Work­ing with the Stand­ing Or­ders

Sinanan, like Seep­aul, agreed that the Stand­ing Or­ders, which "has been there since 1961" was out of date and came "from an ar­cha­ic sys­tem" which was in dire need of re­view.He said as Speak­er, a draft re­vi­sion of the rules was com­plet­ed some "three or four years" ago and to date "has nev­er been act­ed up­on.""When I was Speak­er, we did a lot of work and there is a whole draft re­vi­sion of the Stand­ing Or­ders for the House but I get the im­pres­sion that mem­bers like it the way it is."I, as Speak­er, and a cou­ple mem­bers from both the gov­ern­ment and the op­po­si­tion side along with the Clerk of the House, did a lot of work and there is a draft re­vi­sion of the stand­ing or­ders sit­ting down there now for the bet­ter part of about three or four years," Sinanan told the Sun­day Guardian.Seep­aul's main con­cern was whether the rules catered ad­e­quate­ly "for all the sit­u­a­tions that oc­cur in the Par­lia­ment", giv­en the "ex­pe­ri­ences we've had."

While Mo­hammed was "not aware that the stand­ing or­ders, in its present form, in­hib­it­ed in any way the smooth func­tion­ing of the House" he said it should not "re­main sta­t­ic while the rest of the world was mov­ing on."He said: "If there are pro­vi­sions in the Stand­ing Or­ders that are not ben­e­fit­ing the smooth work­ing of the House, then sure­ly, those ar­eas need to be looked at."But there is a ten­den­cy by gov­ern­ing par­ties to want to have stand­ing or­ders that strength­en gov­ern­ments rather than ex­pose them to more de­tailed ac­count­ing through the Par­lia­ment and that is some­thing that needs to be looked at."