KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les says the Op­po­si­tion is pre­pared to es­ca­late its con­cerns over the treat­ment of Op­po­si­tion Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment be­yond Par­lia­ment, tak­ing the mat­ter to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies.

Speak­ing days af­ter the Op­po­si­tion staged a walk­out dur­ing de­bate on the Vic­tims’ Rights Bill, Gon­za­les ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing its par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty and pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers to sup­press Op­po­si­tion voic­es in the Low­er House.

Gon­za­les said, “We walked out. We went to our Op­po­si­tion cau­cus room. We spoke as a team, and we left Par­lia­ment and let the Gov­ern­ment sit there and speak to them­selves. Now, this is about the sec­ond or third time we have walked out of Par­lia­ment based on sim­i­lar con­duct. It is time. I don’t be­lieve that we should con­tin­ue to walk out. I think it is time we take it to a dif­fer­ent lev­el.

“What a dif­fer­ent lev­el is, maybe we re­port to the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion on what that oth­er lev­el is. But in ad­di­tion to that, it is time that we in the Op­po­si­tion bring to the at­ten­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and re­gion­al par­lia­men­tary bod­ies what has been tak­ing place in the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, where Gov­ern­ment is us­ing its pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers and its ma­jor­i­ty to sup­press the le­git­i­mate voic­es of the Op­po­si­tion. And we will not have any of it.”

He claimed the Gov­ern­ment was de­lib­er­ate­ly lim­it­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s abil­i­ty to con­tribute to de­bates and rep­re­sent con­stituents.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, last Fri­day’s walk­out was not pre-planned but arose spon­ta­neous­ly af­ter Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle was al­leged­ly over­looked by Deputy House Speak­er Dr Aiy­na Ali dur­ing the de­bate.

Gon­za­les said the Op­po­si­tion had in­formed the Gov­ern­ment be­fore­hand that sev­er­al MPs in­tend­ed to con­tribute to the de­bate. How­ev­er, he claimed the Deputy Speak­er recog­nised Min­is­ter of Jus­tice De­vesh Ma­haraj in­stead of Mar­celle, de­spite Mar­celle al­ready be­ing on his feet seek­ing recog­ni­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip ar­gued that once the Min­is­ter pi­lot­ing a bill is recog­nised again dur­ing a de­bate, par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion ef­fec­tive­ly brings the de­bate to an end.

He de­scribed the in­ci­dent as part of a wider pat­tern of con­duct against the Op­po­si­tion.

Gon­za­les added, “This is some­thing that has been go­ing on in this Par­lia­ment where we have been muz­zled, where we have not been giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak and rep­re­sent our con­stituents.”