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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Camille wants Moonilal before Privileges Committee

by

Gail Alexander
2468 days ago
20181010
Leader of Government Business Camille Robinson-Regis speaks during yesterday’s Budget debate in Parliament.

Leader of Government Business Camille Robinson-Regis speaks during yesterday’s Budget debate in Parliament.

Parliament of T&T

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley fin­ished his con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing Wednes­day's Bud­get de­bate, in which he gave a per­son­al re­sponse to Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal's A&V Drilling claims the day be­fore, the lat­ter sought to re­ply, cit­ing Par­lia­ment reg­u­la­tions.

"Sit down! Sit down!" Gov­ern­ment MPs scold­ed him.

House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George said reg­u­la­tions didn't al­low re­ply on per­son­al ex­pla­na­tions.

Mooni­lal per­sist­ed on the is­sue, but An­nisette-George snapped at him, "I don't recog­nise you! Please take your seat!"

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Camille Robin­son-Reg­is then re­count­ed Mooni­lal's al­le­ga­tions, re­quest­ing the mat­ter be probed by Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee. Say­ing the al­le­ga­tions were un­true, she said Mooni­lal on­ly had "flim­sy pieces of pa­per" and "patent­ly fic­ti­tious doc­u­ments."

"The so-called bank doc­u­ment is un­dat­ed, un­signed, un­stamped unau­then­tic and ap­pears bo­gus. The oth­er doc­u­ment sup­posed to be an email he found on the In­ter­net en­ti­tled Bank­ing Co-or­di­nates," she said.

She claimed Mooni­lal "will­ful­ly and in­ten­tion­al­ly" mis­led the House, made in­ju­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions against Row­ley when a mo­tion re­gard­ing him wasn't be­ing de­bat­ed and un­der­mined Par­lia­men­tary dig­ni­ty by abus­ing free­dom of speech.

She added that al­le­ga­tions were cir­cu­lat­ed by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ac­tivists, in­clud­ing coun­cil­lor Maris­sa Ram­lo­gan, at­tor­ney Dar­ryl Heer­alal and econ­o­mist Patrick Wat­son.

"There can be no doubt a se­ri­ous mis­lead­ing of the House has oc­curred. He's brought the House in­to odi­um and ridicule by reck­less be­hav­iour and sin­is­ter con­duct - a wicked un­god­ly plot by dan­ger­ous, de­vi­ous peo­ple tar­get­ted at the Diego Mar­tin West MP," Robin­son-Reg­is said.

The Speak­er said she would ex­am­ine if a pri­ma fa­cie case was made and rule on it at lat­er date.

Mooni­lal sub­se­quent­ly told re­porters Par­lia­ment's Fourth ses­sion had just start­ed and the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee hasn't been named. He said Gov­ern­ment raised "some very se­ri­ous is­sues" to take to the com­mit­tee.

"If we go to the com­mit­tee so be it. But it's a se­ri­ous act of des­per­a­tion, I'm shocked since the Prime Min­is­ter's called for the CoP, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and FIU to probe this - so how can you go to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee if there's no com­plet­ed probe?

"You're say­ing you don't care if it's true or not - you just want to per­se­cute me. You couldn't take Email­gate al­le­ga­tions to Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee as it was the sub­ject of in­ves­ti­ga­tion."

In­sist­ing he was with­in rights to re­ply to Row­ley's per­son­al ex­pla­na­tion, he cit­ed Page 312 of May's Par­lia­men­tary Priv­i­lege, say­ing a re­ply's al­lowed if any oth­er MP is in­volved in a per­son­al ex­pla­na­tion giv­en.

Mooni­lal, Hinds evict­ed from Cham­ber

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, in con­clud­ing yes­ter­day's Bud­get de­bate, thrashed Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal's al­le­ga­tions, claim­ing Mooni­lal slan­dered Row­ley.

Mooni­lal ob­ject­ed.

Im­bert said Mooni­lal had "two scraps of pa­per," one of which had a "bo­gus" email ad­dress which Im­bert said wasn't Row­ley's and had ref­er­enced one Char­lie Di­az and his al­leged bank ac­count in­for­ma­tion.

Im­bert said the oth­er pa­per had the name and ad­dress of the bank left out and names of Vidya De­ok­iesingh and Row­ley. Im­bert said Mooni­lal took both pieces to cre­ate the im­pres­sion he had doc­u­ments that linked Row­ley to the ac­count and "some al­leged trans­ac­tion..the clear in­tent was to de­ceive. De­spi­ca­ble. Rep­re­hen­si­ble. Shame­ful."

"They had to do some­thing. They knew it was a good Bud­get so they had to bust mark - when you bust­ing mark, come with the truth, not lies," Im­bert added.

In crosstalk erupt­ing be­tween Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion, PNM's Fitzger­ald Hinds claimed he was threat­ened by Mooni­lal. UNC MPs shout­ed, "Liar!" They al­so shout­ed down At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who claimed to have heard a re­mark to Hinds that "Snake have legs..."

The Speak­er then or­dered both Hinds and Mooni­lal out of the Cham­ber for 10 min­utes.


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