Kay-Marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh has come un­der re­newed crit­i­cism from the Op­po­si­tion fol­low­ing a rul­ing that spared him re­fer­ral to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee over al­le­ga­tions of bias in his role as Chair­man of the Pub­lic Ac­counts and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC).

The is­sue stems from a de­ter­mi­na­tion by Deputy Speak­er Dr Aiy­na Ali on Fri­day that Singh’s con­duct did not dis­close a pri­ma fa­cie breach of priv­i­lege war­rant­i­ng con­sid­er­a­tion by the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.

Singh had been ac­cused by Op­po­si­tion mem­bers of fail­ing to dis­close pri­or pro­fes­sion­al in­volve­ment in mat­ters linked to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal im­por­ta­tion while pre­sid­ing over a PAAC in­quiry in­to the same sec­tor.

In a writ­ten state­ment on Sat­ur­day, Trinci­ty/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said the rul­ing rais­es fur­ther ques­tions about fair­ness and per­ceived bias in the par­lia­men­tary process.

She not­ed that Singh had pre­vi­ous­ly ac­knowl­edged pro­fes­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of clients in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal im­por­ta­tion sec­tor be­fore his ap­point­ment as Speak­er and PAAC chair­man, and had al­so raised con­cerns about reg­u­la­to­ry is­sues with­in the in­dus­try.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the Deputy Speak­er’s con­clu­sion—that no im­prop­er con­duct arose—was dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with es­tab­lished prin­ci­ples of pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness and ap­par­ent bias.

“In a rul­ing de­liv­ered yes­ter­day (Fri­day), it is re­port­ed that the Deputy Speak­er con­clud­ed that Speak­er Jagdeo Singh did noth­ing im­prop­er by fail­ing to dis­close his pri­or in­volve­ment in is­sues re­lat­ing to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal im­por­ta­tion while serv­ing as Chair­man of the PAAC in­quiry in­to that same sub­ject mat­ter,” she said.

She added that at least one in­di­vid­ual con­nect­ed to those in­ter­ests lat­er ap­peared be­fore the com­mit­tee as a wit­ness dur­ing the in­quiry chaired by Singh.

The Op­po­si­tion MP ques­tioned whether the rul­ing was based on the po­si­tion that pri­or pro­fes­sion­al in­volve­ment, pre­dat­ing ap­point­ment as Speak­er, did not re­quire dis­clo­sure or re­cusal.

“If that is in­deed the ba­sis of the rul­ing, then it re­flects a trou­bling­ly nar­row un­der­stand­ing of the eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions at­tached to par­lia­men­tary of­fice and, more par­tic­u­lar­ly, to the role of Chair of a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee,” she said.

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so con­trast­ed the de­ci­sion with re­cent par­lia­men­tary ac­tion in­volv­ing Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates, who was re­moved from the PAAC over al­le­ga­tions re­lat­ing to the edit­ing of a wit­ness state­ment in an in­quiry in­volv­ing for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

She ar­gued that dif­fer­ing ap­proach­es to sim­i­lar ques­tions of con­duct risked un­der­min­ing con­sis­ten­cy in par­lia­men­tary stan­dards.

“If the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion is tru­ly that no dis­clo­sure was re­quired, no con­sid­er­a­tion of re­cusal arose, and no is­sue of ap­par­ent bias ex­ists… then that po­si­tion rais­es pro­found con­cerns about its ca­pac­i­ty to ex­er­cise bal­anced, prin­ci­pled, and even-hand­ed judg­ment in mat­ters af­fect­ing par­lia­men­tary in­tegri­ty,” she said.

Robin­son-Reg­is warned that in­con­sis­tent ap­pli­ca­tion of eth­i­cal stan­dards could erode pub­lic con­fi­dence in Par­lia­ment and weak­en de­mo­c­ra­t­ic over­sight mech­a­nisms.