Sto­ries by DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has warned that democ­ra­cy in T&T is un­der threat, af­ter House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh blocked the op­po­si­tion from ask­ing sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions dur­ing Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tion Time (PMQT) on Fri­day, cit­ing that the Stand­ing Or­ders do not pro­vide for such ques­tions.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in Port-of-Spain, Gon­za­les said PMQT, in­tro­duced in­to the Stand­ing Or­ders in June 2015, had tra­di­tion­al­ly al­lowed sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions un­der for­mer Speak­ers Wade Mark and Bridgid An­nisette-George for the past 15 years. He said the op­po­si­tion sub­mits ques­tions to the Speak­er, who ap­proves or dis­ap­proves them at his dis­cre­tion.

“Last week, the op­po­si­tion was de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask sup­ple­men­tary ques­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter,” Gon­za­les said. “We were tak­en by sur­prise be­cause the an­swers pro­vid­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter war­rant­ed fur­ther scruti­ny by the elect­ed op­po­si­tion.”

Gon­za­les ex­pressed con­cern over the prece­dent set by Singh’s rul­ing, not­ing that Stand­ing Or­der 26 makes no pro­vi­sion for sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions.

“When the stand­ing or­ders are in­ter­pret­ed in a man­ner that un­der­mines the op­po­si­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion­al func­tions, it does not au­gur well for democ­ra­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Singh ad­vised that the op­po­si­tion could re­quest an ur­gent meet­ing of the Stand­ing Or­ders Com­mit­tee—where the gov­ern­ment holds a ma­jor­i­ty—to ad­dress what he de­scribed as a “la­cu­na” in the rules, not­ing that he does not have the au­thor­i­ty to per­mit sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions to the Prime Min­is­ter.

Stand­ing Or­der 26 pro­vides that dur­ing the sec­ond sit­ting of the House each month, PMQT shall take place at the time des­ig­nat­ed in the Or­der of Busi­ness. Ques­tions may be put to the Prime Min­is­ter on cur­rent mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance or gov­ern­ment per­for­mance, must not ex­ceed 15 sec­onds, be asked with­out ar­gu­ment or opin­ion, and ad­dress no more than one mat­ter of gen­er­al gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. The to­tal ses­sion is lim­it­ed to 30 min­utes. The Stand­ing Or­ders make no men­tion of sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions.

Gon­za­les said he will meet with the Clerk of the House, the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, and the Speak­er to re­solve the is­sue with­out amend­ing the Stand­ing Or­ders.

“All we are ask­ing is for the tra­di­tions of Par­lia­ment to be main­tained,” he said.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les ques­tioned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s abil­i­ty to re­spond to sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions.

“Even when she is present in the cham­ber, she of­ten waits for in­for­ma­tion and is un­pre­pared to an­swer ques­tions on her feet. As a coun­try, we have to be very care­ful,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Prime Min­is­ter and House Speak­er for com­ment, but they had not re­spond­ed by press time.