Some Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day opt­ed to steer clear of the is­sue re­gard­ing the award of “silk.”

The mat­ter has been a hot­ly de­bat­ed top­ic since last week Fri­day, af­ter it was learnt that Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters Stu­art Young and Faris Al-Rawi would be re­ceiv­ing “silk.” Gov­ern­ment MP Kei­th Scot­land was al­so among those el­e­vat­ed to the rank.

As he rushed in­to yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said, “I haven’t giv­en it deep con­sid­er­a­tion re­cent­ly.”

How­ev­er, his col­leagues across the floor seemed to have done the op­po­site.

Pointe-a-Pierre MP Dr David Lee said he be­lieved this year’s list may have been se­lect­ed with the pend­ing na­tion­al gen­er­al elec­tion in mind, rather than recog­nis­ing le­gal ex­cel­lence.

“Maybe there’s a sign, giv­en who have re­ceived silk, there’s a sign the elec­tion might be very close. So, giv­en the amount of sit­ting mem­bers of par­lia­ment who got silk maybe that’s a telling sign that the Prime Min­is­ter is send­ing a mes­sage to the coun­try,” Lee said.

“On a se­ri­ous note, in my per­son­al view I think that ‘silk’ should be re­viewed, it should not be left up to the Cab­i­net to make that de­ci­sion.”

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray agreed, say­ing he was very clear that the list was not one that should be di­rect­ed by the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate. His sug­ges­tion was that it be left to an in­de­pen­dent body that at least in­clud­ed mem­bers of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, not­ing the po­lit­i­cal in­ten­tion ev­i­dent in this year’s list was “too glar­ing” and need­ed to be “sort­ed out.”

How­ev­er, one of the most re­cent “silk” awardees, Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, was much more mea­sured, even in de­fence of the es­tab­lished sys­tem.

“This process has ex­ist­ed for quite some time and per­sons have been ap­point­ed to ‘silk’ un­der this process for quite some time. With every­thing, maybe we need to look at it, but that’s my view,” he said.

When ques­tioned fur­ther, Scot­land said the se­lec­tion process could be broad­ened but did not ex­pand to say who he thought should be in­clud­ed that could add much-need­ed per­spec­tives to the process.

Oth­er MPs, in­clud­ing Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Kennedy Richards, Bri­an Man­ning and Khadi­jah Ameen, all opt­ed not to make any com­ments on the mat­ter, pre­fer­ring to leave it to those with le­gal ex­per­tise.