Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have of­fered dif­fer­ing views on the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) de­ci­sion to walk out of Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, fol­low­ing ac­cu­sa­tions of bias against Speak­er of the House Jagdeo Singh.

Dr Win­ford James de­scribed such claims as a re­cur­ring fea­ture of the coun­try’s par­lia­men­tary his­to­ry, while Dr Shane Mo­hammed ar­gued that the Speak­er has large­ly op­er­at­ed with­in the rules of the House.

Dr James not­ed that sim­i­lar to the sit­u­a­tion with the cur­rent Speak­er, claims were made against for­mer PNM-ap­point­ed speak­er Brid­gette An­nisette-George.

“It is par for the course. It is not some­thing that we don’t have to spend time on. You will find ac­cu­sa­tions of bias. With re­spect to whether the ac­cu­sa­tions are sol­id, that’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, so that means that you have to go do an analy­sis based on facts that you don’t have at hand right now.”

The Op­po­si­tion MPs walked out of Par­lia­ment, ac­cus­ing the Speak­er of “bi­ased and prej­u­di­cial be­hav­iour” be­fore Gov­ern­ment mem­bers ap­proved a mo­tion to ap­point Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin as act­ing Com­mis­sion­er. The dis­pute came to a head as Cou­va South MP Bar­ry Padarath was speak­ing, when St Ann’s East MP Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly rose on Stand­ing Or­der 55(1)(b), ob­ject­ing to “te­dious rep­e­ti­tion”.

In a state­ment ti­tled Enough is Enough, the Op­po­si­tion said all its MPs were “left with no choice but to leave the sit­ting” af­ter months of what they de­scribed as un­fair treat­ment by the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr James not­ed that the PNM’s ac­tion was pri­mar­i­ly an at­tempt to main­tain its pub­lic pro­file and rel­e­vance while in op­po­si­tion. “The PNM is look­ing for an oc­ca­sion to re­main rel­e­vant. That’s an ex­er­cise in re­main­ing rel­e­vant. They can’t prove their case. I mean, they can make their case, but they can’t prove it, and so what is hap­pen­ing here is that they are try­ing to main­tain rel­e­vance in a con­text where they have a long way to go in the po­lit­i­cal wilder­ness. They have a long way to go in find­ing things to say that can be eas­i­ly jus­ti­fied.”

Mean­while, Dr Shane Mo­hammed sug­gest­ed that while the Op­po­si­tion may have griev­ances, the Speak­er was op­er­at­ing with­in the rules of the house. “He pro­vides an ex­pla­na­tion. There are times when he gives lever­age. There are times when he tells the Gov­ern­ment stop, calm down, and with­draw. I an­tic­i­pate that as he gets more com­fort­able and builds that lev­el of ex­pe­ri­ence–it’s just been a few months, less than six months–he is go­ing to de­liv­er in a way that strikes a bet­ter bal­ance.”

Dr Mo­hammed al­so took aim at the politi­cians, who, dur­ing yes­ter­day’s de­bate, de­scend­ed in­to a war of words. He said the un­par­lia­men­tary be­hav­iour across the di­vide of the aisle must come to an end.