Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray and his Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots col­leagues will at­tend to­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting and fol­low the Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip’s in­struc­tions on any vote that aris­es on the Whistle­blow­er Bill.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to wind up a de­bate on the an­ti-cor­rup­tion bill, which he start­ed speak­ing on dur­ing last Fri­day’s sit­ting. Once con­clud­ed the bill en­ters the com­mit­tee stage. The bill is ex­pect­ed to re­quire a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage. The Op­po­si­tion has made it clear they won’t sup­port it.

In last week’s de­bate, Row­ley and oth­er Gov­ern­ment MPs urged Paray and his four oth­er MP col­leagues to sup­port the bill. MPs Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Dr Rai Rag­bir, Rod­ney Charles and Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne are part of Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots team which un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed last Sat­ur­day’s UNC’s na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions against the Star team, which was sup­port­ed by par­ty leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Paray said yes­ter­day: “I’m at­tend­ing Par­lia­ment. As men­tioned on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions be­fore, the UNC’s in­ter­nal is­sues have noth­ing to do with our par­lia­men­tary work. I re­main com­mit­ted against an in­com­pe­tent Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion. Un­til oth­er­wise stat­ed, I re­main a UNC MP un­der the hand of our Chief Whip.”

Rag­bir, the MP for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, said he will be at­tend­ing and will abide by the Whip’s in­struc­tions

MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly said: “If I’m still alive, I’ll be at­tend­ing Par­lia­ment as I usu­al­ly do when I have Par­lia­ment.”

There was no word from Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials on whether the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would present amend­ments at the com­mit­tee stage to change the bill in­to one that re­quires a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote.

—Gail Alexan­der