Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Af­ter the Gov­ern­ment failed to pro­duce replies to oral ques­tions on yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment or­der pa­per, the Op­po­si­tion PNM and House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh spent near­ly 25 min­utes de­bat­ing how the re­spons­es could be de­liv­ered—un­til the PNM even­tu­al­ly agreed to a so­lu­tion pro­posed by Singh.

At the start of pro­ceed­ings, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath sug­gest­ed—fol­low­ing the Speak­er’s re­cent rul­ing—that an­swers to the ques­tions be pro­vid­ed in writ­ing over the next week.

Op­po­si­tion Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les ob­ject­ed. Gon­za­les, along with PNM MPs Stu­art Young and Colm Im­bert, chal­lenged the pro­pos­al based on their in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Or­ders.

Speak­er Singh, in his con­tri­bu­tions on the mat­ter, ques­tioned Gon­za­les’ in­ter­pre­ta­tion and not­ed to the PNM bench that whether the an­swers were de­liv­ered oral­ly or in writ­ing, the PNM would not lose any­thing.

Gon­za­les, how­ev­er, in­sist­ed that the peo­ple’s busi­ness must be con­duct­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, em­pha­siz­ing that cit­i­zens ex­pect the Gov­ern­ment and Min­is­ters to be ac­count­able in per­son.

Af­ter at­tempt­ing sev­er­al ap­proach­es to re­solve the is­sue, Speak­er Singh ul­ti­mate­ly pro­posed that the an­swers be pro­vid­ed in writ­ing with­in sev­en days of yes­ter­day’s sit­ting. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, he said, ques­tions could be with­drawn and re­filed.

Young con­firmed he would with­draw and re­file the three ques­tions he had on the agen­da, while Gon­za­les said he would al­so with­draw and re­file the re­main­ing ques­tions.