Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les is con­tin­u­ing his ef­forts to have his mo­tion on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ter sup­ply de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment, ar­gu­ing that the is­sue has wors­ened since he first filed it in June.

He is al­so call­ing on House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh to cor­rect the par­lia­men­tary record af­ter the mo­tion failed to pro­ceed to de­bate last Fri­day.

“I will not re­file the mo­tion. I’ll give the Speak­er the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cor­rect it,” Gon­za­les said yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing Fri­day’s sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Singh ruled that Gon­za­les had failed to for­mal­ly move his mo­tion on wa­ter sup­ply dis­rup­tions be­cause he did not say “I beg to move” at the end of his con­tri­bu­tion. The Speak­er cit­ed what he de­scribed as a pro­ce­dur­al lapse.

Gon­za­les, how­ev­er, has chal­lenged the rul­ing, ar­gu­ing that it un­fair­ly pre­vent­ed the mo­tion from ad­vanc­ing to de­bate.

In a let­ter to the Speak­er this week, Gon­za­les re­quest­ed that the “in­ac­cu­ra­cy” on the par­lia­men­tary record be ur­gent­ly cor­rect­ed and that the mo­tion be re­stored to the House’s Or­der Pa­per.

In sup­port of his po­si­tion, Gon­za­les not­ed that:

• Hansard records show he opened his con­tri­bu­tion by stat­ing: “Mr Speak­er, I beg to move the fol­low­ing mo­tion stand­ing in my name.”

• When he at­tempt­ed to re­peat the words “I beg to move” at the end of his pre­sen­ta­tion, Singh stopped him, say­ing his al­lot­ted 45 min­utes had ex­pired.

• Er­sk­ine May’s Par­lia­men­tary Prac­tice states: “A Mem­ber called to move a mo­tion is ex­pect­ed in the course of their speech to move it for­mal­ly and is deemed to have done so, whether or not they ex­plic­it­ly state that they do.”

• Singh pre­vi­ous­ly al­lowed a 14-sec­ond over­run by the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, com­ment­ing: “I think we could live with 14 sec­onds, right.” Gon­za­les said this rais­es ques­tions about con­sis­ten­cy in ap­ply­ing the Stand­ing Or­ders and speak­ing-time lim­its.

Gon­za­les said yes­ter­day that he has yet to re­ceive a re­sponse from the Speak­er.

“If I do not re­ceive one, I’ll con­sid­er all law­ful op­tions avail­able to me as an MP elect­ed to rep­re­sent the pub­lic’s in­ter­est. I al­so have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the par­lia­men­tary process. If I have to do it alone, I’m pre­pared,” he said.

He main­tained that the mo­tion is even more rel­e­vant now than when it was first filed.

“When I filed that mo­tion in June, the wa­ter dis­rup­tion prob­lem was bad. The sit­u­a­tion has be­come worse, with dis­coloured wa­ter in peo­ple’s taps all over Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Gon­za­les said.

“In the min­is­ter’s re­ply on Wednes­day on wa­ter prob­lems, he al­so al­lud­ed to chal­lenges in clear­ing sed­i­ment. So I must act in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est.”

In his let­ter, Gon­za­les un­der­scored the na­tion­al im­por­tance of the is­sue.

“Cit­i­zens through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go are suf­fer­ing from se­ri­ous and re­cur­ring dif­fi­cul­ties in ac­cess­ing a re­li­able sup­ply of wa­ter, in­clud­ing pro­longed dis­rup­tions and de­pen­dence up­on stored and truck-borne sup­plies,” he wrote, al­so ref­er­enc­ing the ef­fects of El Niño con­di­tions.

He ar­gued that the Speak­er’s rul­ing pre­vent­ed Par­lia­ment from de­bat­ing an ur­gent na­tion­al mat­ter and de­nied cit­i­zens the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have their con­cerns ad­dressed by the Gov­ern­ment.

“The Hansard record es­tab­lish­es that the mo­tion was moved. Ac­cord­ing­ly, I for­mal­ly re­quest that you ur­gent­ly re­scind the in­ac­cu­rate state­ment placed on the record that I failed to move the mo­tion, re­con­sid­er the con­se­quen­tial rul­ing and im­me­di­ate­ly re­store the mo­tion to the Or­der Pa­per so that de­bate may re­sume at the ear­li­est sit­ting of the House,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The T&T Guardian emailed Par­lia­ment and con­tact­ed an of­fi­cial in the Speak­er’s of­fice for com­ment but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.