DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer house speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed has ex­pressed con­cern over the grow­ing pub­lic per­cep­tion that par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures are in­creas­ing­ly be­ing used as po­lit­i­cal weapons rather than tools for sub­stan­tive de­bate and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Mo­hammed made the com­ment while re­spond­ing to the Op­po­si­tion’s un­suc­cess­ful at­tempt to re­fer House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh to Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.

The mo­tion, filed by Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les on May 8, ac­cused the House Speak­er of fail­ing to de­clare a po­ten­tial con­flict of in­ter­est linked to his pre­vi­ous le­gal work in­volv­ing clients in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor.

Gon­za­les ar­gued that Singh should have dis­closed those con­nec­tions while serv­ing as chair­man of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC), which ex­am­ined pro­cure­ment prac­tices in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try and raised con­cerns over what mem­bers de­scribed as the emer­gence of a pos­si­ble mo­nop­oly.

How­ev­er, Deputy House Speak­er Dr Aiy­na Ali dis­missed the mo­tion on May 21, rul­ing that it did not meet the thresh­old re­quired for re­fer­ral to Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.

In her rul­ing, Ali not­ed that the PAAC had held mul­ti­ple meet­ings with­out any ob­jec­tion be­ing raised re­gard­ing the al­leged bias or con­flict of in­ter­est. She al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing of the com­plaint, point­ing out that it was on­ly filed af­ter de­bate on the com­mit­tee’s spe­cial re­port on May 1.

Mo­hammed said the Op­po­si­tion like­ly be­lieved there was suf­fi­cient mer­it to raise the mat­ter, while stress­ing that par­lia­men­tary rules and stand­ing or­ders ex­ist pri­mar­i­ly to safe­guard the in­tegri­ty of the in­sti­tu­tion.

“It is a pity that there is a pub­lic per­cep­tion that the con­duct of Par­lia­ment is less than de­sired. That is not a nice thing at all. How­ev­er, the stand­ing or­ders are the rules of pro­ce­dure and they ought to be in­ter­pret­ed in the best in­ter­est of Par­lia­ment, bear­ing in mind that Par­lia­ment is un­der an oblig­a­tion, col­lec­tive­ly, to pre­serve its own in­tegri­ty and its own im­age of re­spectabil­i­ty,” Mo­hammed said.

“So, the peo­ple who are en­trust­ed with such re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, we, the mem­bers of the pub­lic, we ex­pect them to do their jobs in the most dili­gent man­ner and with hon­esty and in­tegri­ty, bear­ing in mind that Par­lia­ment is a mod­el for all mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance,” he added.

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad ar­gued that the move against Singh ap­peared to be dri­ven more by po­lit­i­cal fall­out than by ev­i­dence of a gen­uine con­flict of in­ter­est.

She al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the Op­po­si­tion’s move was po­lit­i­cal­ly cal­cu­lat­ed, de­spite ques­tions sur­round­ing the tim­ing of the com­plaint.

“You see, when they were caught be­tween their legs with Janelle John-Bates, they start­ed to scram­ble for de­fence mech­a­nisms. They were caught be­low the belt. And then some­body said, ‘well, okay, let’s go af­ter the Speak­er.’ And they thought that would have had some im­pact and it didn’t,” Ram­per­sad said.

Ram­per­sad al­so de­scribed the in­creas­ing­ly con­fronta­tion­al at­mos­phere in Par­lia­ment as a nor­mal fea­ture of po­lit­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion, not­ing that op­po­si­tion par­ties of­ten re­ly on pro­ce­dur­al tac­tics as part of broad­er po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy.

“When the Op­po­si­tion are in op­po­si­tion, we know it’s win­ner takes all. They don’t have many cards to play. So, they look for whichev­er po­lit­i­cal card they can play at a par­tic­u­lar point in time. That’s the na­ture of pol­i­tics.”

The con­tro­ver­sy comes amid con­tin­ued scruti­ny of par­lia­men­tary con­duct, in­clud­ing re­peat­ed Op­po­si­tion walk­outs and ac­cu­sa­tions of bias against the House Speak­er dur­ing the first ses­sion of the 13th Par­lia­ment.

Par­lia­ment was pro­rogued on May 22, and the sec­ond ses­sion of the 13th Par­lia­ment is sched­uled to re­sume on June 5.