One at­tor­ney-at-law has added his voice to those ques­tion­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the guide­lines em­ployed by Speak­er of the House, Bridgid An­nisette-George MP, dur­ing the fiery Par­lia­men­tary ses­sion which took place on Thurs­day this week, over a mo­tion to re­move the Pres­i­dent from of­fice, which had been brought by the Op­po­si­tion Leader.

Ac­cord­ing to At­tor­ney-at-Law Dave Per­sad, Speak­er An­nisette-George has opened the door for se­ri­ous le­gal chal­lenge of her Guide­lines, which must come un­der ju­di­cial re­view.

“The guide­lines is­sued on the 19th Oc­to­ber, 2021 by the Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives are il­le­gal, con­trary to the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and es­tab­lished par­lia­men­tary prac­tice and pro­ce­dure and are con­se­quent­ly un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, null and void,” the at­tor­ney says in a state­ment re­leased this morn­ing.

Per­sad as­serts the is­sue has noth­ing to do with UNC or PNM gov­ern­ments, “but rather the up­hold­ing of the pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Rule of Law.”

“What tran­spired in the Par­lia­ment on the 21st Oc­to­ber, 2021 is a grave, de­lib­er­ate and ma­li­cious at­tack on the Con­sti­tu­tion and a bla­tant dis­re­gard for the rule of law,” he main­tains.

The at­tor­ney’s le­gal opin­ion and ar­gu­ments on the mat­ter, fol­low…

(a)        Sec­tion 36 (1) (a) (b) (d) of the Con­sti­tu­tion sets out the pro­ce­dure for the Pres­i­dent’s re­moval from of­fice. The first step is for a mo­tion to be pro­posed by a mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives seek­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by a tri­bunal to be head­ed by the Chief Jus­tice and four oth­er judges ap­point­ed by him. Such a mo­tion must give “full par­tic­u­lars” of “the grounds on which his [the Pres­i­dent’s] re­moval from of­fice is pro­posed”, and it must be signed by “not less than one-third of the to­tal mem­ber­ship of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”

This thresh­old was met by the Op­po­si­tion se­cur­ing one-third of the mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Rule 40 (a) to (h) of the Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives deals ex­clu­sive­ly with the con­di­tions of ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of the mo­tion. There is no is­sue here as the sub­ject mo­tion was ac­cept­ed by the Speak­er and placed be­fore the House pur­suant to the rel­e­vant Stand­ing Or­der.

(b)       The next con­sti­tu­tion­al step is for the vote to be tak­en. Ac­cord­ing to sec­tion 36 (c), the mo­tion is to be adopt­ed by “the vote of not less than two-thirds of the to­tal mem­ber­ship of the Sen­ate and the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives as­sem­bled to­geth­er”.

When the Sen­ate joins the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, what is the func­tion of both Hous­es? Their col­lec­tive func­tion is to deal with the mo­tion be­fore them. How do these Ho­n­ourable ladies and gen­tle­men col­lec­tive­ly con­front the mo­tion in this uni­cam­er­al set­ting? I re­spect­ful­ly sub­mit that they con­front the mo­tion pur­suant to Stand­ing Or­ders 41 (1) to (12) and Stand­ing Or­ders 42 to 53. These Stand­ing Or­ders ex­clu­sive­ly deal with the is­sue of mo­tions be­fore the House. This mo­tion is like any oth­er mo­tion moved in the House save and ex­cept that it  is the first time that such a mo­tion is be­ing moved in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives pur­suant to sec­tion 36 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. But it re­mains a MO­TION.

These Stand­ing Or­ders are made pur­suant to sec­tions 56 (1) and 20 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. The pur­pose of these Stand­ing Or­ders, as stat­ed there­in, “con­tain rules for the con­duct of the pro­ceed­ings of the House and for the ex­er­cise of the pow­ers pos­sessed by the House” (Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives).

Be­fore en­quir­ing in­to the Stand­ing Or­ders of the House re­lat­ing to mo­tions, one must ex­am­ine the very na­ture of a mo­tion un­der the West­min­ster mod­el of Par­lia­ment as ex­ists in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In Par­lia­men­tary law a mo­tion is, “a pro­pos­al made in a meet­ing, in a form suit­able for its con­sid­er­a­tion and ac­tion, that the meet­ing (or the or­ga­ni­za­tion for which the meet­ing is act­ing) take a cer­tain ac­tion or view...” (Black’s Law Dic­tio­nary, 8th Edi­tion pg. 1036).

A cur­so­ry re­view of var­i­ous Eng­lish dic­tio­nar­ies states in essence that a “mo­tion” is a for­mal propo­si­tion in a de­lib­er­a­tive as­sem­bly. And, “de­lib­er­a­tive” means the act of con­sid­er­ing rea­sons or ar­gu­ments for and against some­thing so as to reach a con­clu­sion or de­ci­sion.

In the Unit­ed King­dom, un­der the UK Par­lia­ment web­site (2021), a mo­tion is de­fined as “a pro­pos­al for de­bate or de­ci­sion in the House of Com­mons. A mo­tion must be pro­posed (moved) be­fore any de­bate or vote can take place in Par­lia­ment”.

It is clear that “a mo­tion” is de­lib­er­a­tive in na­ture and it is my re­spect­ful view that this mean­ing ought to have been af­ford­ed to this mo­tion. In oth­er words, in­her­ent in the par­lia­men­tary mean­ing of “mo­tion” is a right to de­bate.

Un­der the Stand­ing Or­ders of the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion Act (1990) as amend­ed, and fash­ioned af­ter the Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, rule 19 (CT­TRC Stand­ing Or­ders) states, “when a mo­tion has been made and, if nec­es­sary, sec­ond­ed the Chair­man shall pro­pose the ques­tion for con­sid­er­a­tion, and, af­ter de­bate, if any, shall put it for de­ci­sion of the Coun­cil”.

Rule 41 of the Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, un­der the rubric “Mo­tion- Gen­er­al Rules”, states very clear­ly at Rule 9, “Af­ter a mo­tion has been moved and where nec­es­sary sec­ond­ed, the Speak­er will pro­pose the mo­tion for de­bate in the House”.

Both the Sen­ate and the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives must de­bate the mo­tion in the man­ner set out in the Stand­ing Or­ders, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ac­cor­dance with Chap­ter V (Pub­lic Busi­ness) of the said Or­ders. On­ly then can a vote be prop­er­ly tak­en.

It is my re­spect­ful sub­mis­sion that the Speak­er vi­o­lat­ed the Stand­ing Or­ders. The Speak­er is not en­ti­tled to look out­side of the Stand­ing Or­ders es­pe­cial­ly when the pro­ce­dures deal­ing with such mat­ters are clear, pre­cise and have been his­tor­i­cal­ly utilised. To do oth­er­wise would be to cre­ate her own Stand­ing Or­ders, which she did il­le­gal­ly.

Thus far, re­search has re­vealed that it re­mains un­prece­dent­ed in the Com­mon­wealth that such guide­lines im­posed uni­lat­er­al­ly by a Speak­er of the Par­lia­ment can law­ful­ly cir­cum­vent de­bate on such a mo­tion.

Even if there ex­ists some law or rule, known or un­known, that gives the Speak­er sole dis­cre­tion to reg­u­late the pro­ceed­ings, her dis­cre­tion can­not be ex­er­cised ar­bi­trar­i­ly, un­rea­son­ably, ir­ra­tional­ly and/or in vi­o­la­tion of the Stand­ing Or­ders and the Con­sti­tu­tion. There is a say­ing that “those who feel they are giv­en God-like pow­ers, must al­so un­der­stand they must be­have like God!”

To this end the Speak­er of the House has un­nec­es­sar­i­ly and/or un­wit­ting­ly ex­posed her Of­fice to a le­gal chal­lenge by way of ju­di­cial re­view of her so-called guide­lines that ef­fec­tive­ly stymied any de­bate.