Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says she will not be si­lenced, af­ter be­ing re­ferred to Par­lia­ment’s Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges yes­ter­day for crit­i­cis­ing House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh’s con­duct.

The com­plaint was raised by Cou­va South MP and Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath dur­ing the 2026 Bud­get de­bate in the Red House, Port-of-Spain.

Im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing her re­sponse to the Gov­ern­ment’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Deputy House Speak­er Dr Aiy­na Ali in­formed the Op­po­si­tion Leader of her rul­ing.

Dr Ali ex­plained that this stemmed from com­ments made by Beck­les fol­low­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment walk­out from the Par­lia­ment on Oc­to­ber 10.

Quot­ing from a me­dia re­lease put out by the Op­po­si­tion Leader soon af­ter the walk­out, Dr Ali read, “Af­ter months of en­dur­ing bias and prej­u­di­cial be­hav­iour from the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer of the Low­er House, all Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment on the Op­po­si­tion Bench were left with no choice but to leave to­day’s sit­ting. The pat­tern of un­fair treat­ment and rul­ings has con­tin­ued unchecked and un­ad­dressed. It is now be­yond ques­tion to un­bi­ased ob­servers that the cur­rent Speak­er of the House has failed in his du­ty to act im­par­tial­ly and to up­hold the Con­sti­tu­tion and the Stand­ing Or­ders of Par­lia­ment.”

The Deputy Speak­er said the Op­po­si­tion Leader went on to claim that since be­ing ap­point­ed as House Speak­er, Singh, “has con­sis­tent­ly re­ject­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of ur­gent ques­tions and the Prime Min­is­ter’s ques­tions filed by the Op­po­si­tion.”

Dr Ali said Padarath, in mov­ing the mat­ter of priv­i­lege, said the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s words amount to con­tempt against the Low­er House and seek to ob­struct and tar­nish the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and in­de­pen­dent man­age­ment of the House Speak­er.

The Deputy Speak­er said af­ter “sig­nif­i­cant re­search and analy­sis,” it has al­ways been a prece­dent to nev­er bring the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer in­to the realm of po­lit­i­cal at­tacks or as­per­sions.

Dr Ali added, “Erk­sine’s May’s par­lia­men­tary prac­tise on page 138 speaks to con­struc­tive con­tempt as it states, and I quote, ‘in­dig­ni­ties of­fered to the House by words spo­ken or writ­ings pub­lished re­flect­ing on its char­ac­ter or pro­ceed­ings have been pub­lished by both the Lords and the Com­mons up­on the prin­ci­ple that such acts of abuse tend to ob­struct the Hous­es in the per­for­mance of their func­tions by di­min­ish­ing the re­spect due to them’, end quote.”

She ruled that a pri­ma fa­cie case (of­ten used in law to de­scribe ev­i­dence that is suf­fi­cient to es­tab­lish a fact or a case un­less it is dis­proved or re­butted) of con­tempt had been made out and she will be re­fer­ring the mat­ter to the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges for con­sid­er­a­tion.

Asked for a re­sponse soon af­ter, the Op­po­si­tion Leader told Guardian Me­dia, “As far as I’m con­cerned, that is just a dis­trac­tion for my Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, and I will not be muz­zled.”

Beck­les added, “They have made a rul­ing, so we would have to wait and see what they are go­ing to do. But as far as I’m con­cerned, to­day was the day when the Op­po­si­tion Leader presents her re­sponse. And it’s car­ried live. So, if that’s the in­ten­tion, as I said, I will not be muz­zled.”