SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

“It does not look good, and it does not re­flect well on the con­duct of the busi­ness of Par­lia­ment at a time when there is so much so­cial ten­sion, lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly all over.”

For­mer house speak­er and at­tor­ney Nizam Mo­hammed yes­ter­day gave his take on the Op­po­si­tion, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, MPs storm­ing out of Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, fol­low­ing the de­feat of its pri­vate mem­bers’ mo­tion to hold the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count for what it termed ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment.

The Op­po­si­tion’s mo­tion was dis­missed by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal as “friv­o­lous,” stat­ing the mo­tion should be de­feat­ed forth­with.

Out­rage broke out in the Low­er House as House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh was pro­ceed­ing to put the mo­tion to a vote and close the de­bate.

Shouts of “dis­re­spect” and “abuse of process” were heard from the Op­po­si­tion Bench as Singh called on mem­bers to sit down.

By the time the vote was called and de­feat­ed, the Op­po­si­tion Bench was emp­ty.

Mo­hammed said Stand­ing Or­ders pro­vide for an or­der­ly con­duct of de­bates and bring the Gov­ern­ment un­der scruti­ny and to ac­count to the pop­u­la­tion.

He said the Stand­ing Or­ders al­so pro­vide, once a month, a pri­vate mem­bers’ day.

“And that op­por­tu­ni­ty for pri­vate mem­bers’ day must not be treat­ed friv­o­lous­ly, for to do so will not on­ly af­fect mi­nor­i­ty voic­es from hav­ing their say, but gen­er­al­ly will erode and af­fect the ef­fec­tive scruti­ny of Gov­ern­ment’s be­hav­iour by Par­lia­ment.”

Mo­hammed said a Speak­er has to be very adept at en­sur­ing the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of Op­po­si­tion voic­es on that par­tic­u­lar day.

He said gov­ern­ments nor­mal­ly take ad­van­tage of pri­vate mem­bers’ day to high­light their pos­i­tive con­duct in all spheres of gov­er­nance.

“It fell on the Speak­er’s lap to de­cide whether that mo­tion moved by Min­is­ter Mooni­lal was an abuse of the rules of the House or an in­fringe­ment of the rights of the mi­nor­i­ty. These ques­tions can­not be dis­missed friv­o­lous­ly.”

He said Mooni­lal’s move was “sprung” up­on the House.

At the time the mo­tion was de­feat­ed, Mo­hammed said Op­po­si­tion MP Kei­th Scot­land was de­liv­er­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, and the Speak­er should have giv­en him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak.

“I am say­ing that MP Scot­land had every right to be heard if a mo­tion is be­fore the House. At all times, both sides must be giv­en am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard, which is a ba­sic prin­ci­ple of pro­ce­dure based on fair­ness and rights.”

Mo­hammed said the man­ner in which the mat­ter was dealt with does not look good and can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the coun­try’s Par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy.

“It’s an un­healthy thing...let us put it that way. It’s an un­healthy de­vel­op­ment, giv­en the gen­er­al sit­u­a­tion in so­ci­ety at this time.”

Mo­hammed said the mo­tion would have pro­vid­ed the Gov­ern­ment with a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to jus­ti­fy why jobs were dis­man­tled last year.

“I am sure the Gov­ern­ment would have had enough to say.”

He added that it would have giv­en them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plain how they are go­ing to fill these job loss­es with an eq­ui­table, pro­duc­tive and work­able sys­tem.

“So all these op­por­tu­ni­ties were de­nied by the cur­tail­ment of this de­bate.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said it was not a ques­tion of whether it was right.

“The ques­tion is whether it is al­low­able un­der the rules and whether, po­lit­i­cal­ly speak­ing, that makes sense. You know whether it is some­thing that the pub­lic would high­ly re­gard the Gov­ern­ment for.”

James said it was not good for the de­bate to abrupt­ly end.

He said the Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ed some­thing like this to hap­pen.

“When they walk out... it is al­ways pol­i­tics.”